The climate talks in Belém entered their final day with great uncertainty. While COP30 was due to come to a close on Friday 21 November, at the time of writing (7pm Brussels time) the delegations were struggling to make progress on the most sensitive point of the summit, namely how to include a global transition away from fossil fuels in the final agreement.
The draft text presented by the Brazilian Presidency provoked major reactions by removing any explicit reference to fossil fuels.
A choice that many parties find incomprehensible given the commitments made in recent years.
A proposal deemed too unambitious. According to AFP, the two weeks of negotiations in Belém (Brazil) failed to bring positions closer together, and the document presented on Friday contains no mention of “fossil fuels” and no indication of a ‘roadmap’, contrary to what the Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, had himself publicly supported.
Furthermore, according to the European Union, the current text is too far from the level of ambition required to be acceptable. The European Commissioner for Climate Action, Wopke Hoekstra, warned that negotiators are now facing “a no-deal scenario”, in the absence of progress on mitigation.
In a statement, he said: “This is in no way close to the ambition we need on mitigation. We are willing to be ambitious on adaptation, but we would like to make clear that any language on finance should squarely be within the commitment reached last year”.
The head of the European Parliament delegation, Lídia Pereira (EPP, Portuguese), stressed that the discussions had allowed for “important progress” to be made, but said that it was essential to obtain “more concrete measures” on mitigation and the energy transition, pointing out that “the commitment has to be the same for everyone across the globe”.
A failure that would benefit “the petrostates”. Bas Eickhout (Greens/EFA, Dutch) said in a statement to the press that with such a basis, “no deal is better than a bad deal”, denouncing the total absence of any reference to phasing out fossil fuels. He added that failure would benefit “the petrostates and climate sceptics”, as well as US President Donald Trump, who withdrew from the Paris Agreement as soon as he was elected at the start of the year, as well as his allies.
Some thirty countries, for their part, informed the Brazilian Presidency that they will not support a text devoid of guidelines for reducing the world’s dependence on fossil fuels, according to Agence France Presse (AFP).
Nevertheless, oil producers were held responsible for refusing to include a clear pathway out of fossil fuels.
Saudi Arabia and Russia, but also India and a number of emerging countries, are said to have rejected the idea of including fossil fuels in the agreement.
The Brazilian Presidency is calling for an agreement in extremis. The Brazilian Presidency was still pushing for a compromise on the morning of Friday 21 November (local time).
At his press conference, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago urged the delegations to maintain their willingness to cooperate, as failure to do so would undermine the international architecture that emerged from the Paris Agreement ten years ago. “Let’s not stress this divide now in the moments we have left to reach an agreement”, he said. (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)