Paris: For the first time since Donald Trump's ascent to the White House, UN negotiators gather next week to draft rules to take forward the climate-rescue Paris Agreement he has threatened to abandon.
The mid-year round of haggling in Bonn is meant to begin work on a crucial rulebook for signatories of the pact. But it risks being sidetracked by mounting uncertainty over the world's number two carbon polluter, with Trump at its helm.
He chairs the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), a key negotiating bloc in the UN climate forum which will meet from May 8-18.
The deal was sealed at the 21st so-called "Conference of Parties" (COP 21) in the French capital in December 2015, after years of haggling.
A diplomatic push led by Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, and China's Xi Jinping, saw 195 countries and the EU bloc -- 196 parties in total -- OK the deal to the popping of champagne corks. Palestine has also since joined.
The agreement sets the goal of limiting average global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels -- and 1.5 C if possible.
Scientists project that on current pledges, Earth is on track for warming of around 3C -- a scenario that would doom the planet to potentially catastrophic droughts, floods, and rising seas.
Widely hailed as the last chance to stave off worst- case-scenario global warming, the Paris pact was savaged by Trump during his presidential campaign.
He called climate change a "hoax" perpetrated by China, and promised to "cancel" the deal as president.
With the rest of the world on tenterhooks ever since, Trump has said he will make his decision before the next G7 meeting on May 26-27 in Sicily.
"The question of whether this creates a difficult backdrop for the negotiations is clearly a 'yes'," said Paula Caballero, who heads the climate programme at the Washington- based World Resources Institute (WRI).
A State Department official confirmed a US delegation will travel to Bonn, though a "much smaller" one than in recent years.
Some fear a US withdrawal from the agreement would dampen enthusiasm for ramping up national emissions-cutting targets, required to bring them in line with the 2C target.
"I can see some countries... saying: 'Well, why should we do more if the US is doing less?'," said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a veteran observer of the climate negotiations.
There has been a chorus of appeals from business leaders, politicians and NGOs for the US not to abandon the agreement.
Much of the pressure is at home, where businesses, majors and governors have pledged to pursue a clean energy track with or without Trump.
Observers say the momentum, politically at least, is unstoppable.
At the last COP, held in Marrakesh in November, news of Trump's election served to spur countries into reaffirming their commitment to the pact.
In fact, the US may stand to lose the most -- in both political and economic influence.
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