With less than a month to go before COP30, to be held from 10 to 21 November in Belém (Brazil), the European Commission has estimated, according to information shared on Wednesday 15 October, that at the end of the pre-COP discussions in Brasilia, participation, although judged adequate, had nevertheless fallen short of ministerial expectations.
The challenge is to demonstrate that the Paris Agreement is keeping its promises, in the absence of a significant new step.
Discussions are continuing to clarify expectations regarding the outcome of the conference. According to one European negotiator, the aim is to show that the world economy is really moving away from fossil fuels, even if no new treaty or single objective is expected to emerge.
To this end, the Brazilian Presidency wishes to organise COP30 around a summit of leaders preceding the opening, an action agenda involving governments, businesses and NGOs, a broader contribution from civil society through a “global ethical stock take”, and to continue the formal negotiations.
These will focus in particular on the new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC).
So far, only 59 parties have shared a post-2030 target, leaving more than 130 pending. The European Union has not yet formally submitted its application (see EUROPE 13711/8), which raises doubts about its ability to present itself as the “leader”. This situation gives rise to both frustration and scepticism among its partners, even if some of them recognise the complexity of the European decision-making process and show a degree of understanding.
According to the European Commission, a target in line with the guidelines already validated would be presented in time.
The new NDCs should be more precise than in the past, detailing the gradual phase-out of coal, the tripling of renewable energies and the doubling of energy efficiency gains.
Brazil would also like to try its hand at a kind of “omnibus decision”. It should make it possible to bring together, in a single package, recognition that current commitments remain insufficient, the adoption of tools to measure progress on adaptation and support for the ‘Baku-Belém roadmap’, which should make it possible to specify the implementation of financial commitments.
But two points remain under discussion and could complicate the opening of the COP: the first concerns the inclusion of unilateral trade measures on the agenda; the second concerns the financing provided for in Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement.
For the European Union, the success of Belém depends on a number of conditions: - the new national contributions must cover a significant proportion of global emissions; - concrete progress must be made on adaptation and its financing; - the trajectory set to implement the new international financing target adopted last year at COP29 in Baku (see EUROPE 13531/13) must appear credible. (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)