So, at Bonn, diplomats focused on ways to encourage countries to ratchet up their ambitions. Next year, world leaders will meet for a formal dialogue to assess how their efforts stack up against the goal of limiting global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius. They plan to discuss which domestic climate policies are working and which ones aren’t, and then try to figure out which countries can step up the pace of their emissions cuts. Ultimately, countries plan to submit newer, stronger climate pledges to the United Nations by 2020.

Negotiators sought this year to write a “rule book” that will govern this process, laying out guidelines for how emissions from each country should be measured or how financial aid from rich countries to poor ones should be tracked. Most of the hard decisions about what this rule book should look like were put off until next year.

The biggest unknown is whether this whole process will translate into meaningful further action to cut emissions. At Bonn, there were a few signs peer pressure is working and that some countries are indeed feeling compelled to take stronger action. Leaders from the European Union, which is currently on pace to fall short of its 2030 emissions goals, said they would push to enact new legislation on increasing clean energy and efficiency.

“The level of ambition from the European Union has been questioned,” said Miguel Arias Cañete, Europe’s commissioner for climate change. “We understand the concerns.”

And elsewhere, longstanding divisions among nations reasserted themselves. Throughout the talks, China argued that the Paris agreement rule book should hold developed nations to higher standards than developing countries. In past climate talks, the United States had taken the lead in pushing back against this notion, but with the Trump administration stepping back from the Paris agreement, American influence in this area was weaker.