COP30 seals uneasy climate deal that sidesteps fossil fuels

Brazil’s COP30 presidency pushed through a compromise climate deal on Saturday that would boost finance for poor nations coping with global warming but that omitted any mention of the fossil fuels driving it.

In securing the accord, Brazil had attempted to demonstrate global unity in addressing climate change impacts even after the world’s biggest historic emitter, the United States, declined to send an official delegation.

But the agreement, which landed in overtime after two weeks of contentious negotiations in the Amazon city of Belem, exposed deep rifts over how future climate action should be pursued.

After gaveling the deal through, COP30 President Andre Correa do Lago acknowledged the talks had been tough.

“We know some of you had greater ambitions for some of the issues at hand,” he said.

Several countries objected to the summit ending without stronger plans for reining in greenhouse gases or addressing fossil fuels.

Some of the criticism came from Brazil’s neighbors in Latin America, with multiple objections made by Colombia, Panama and Uruguay before Correa do Lago suspended the plenary for further consultations.

Noting that fossil fuels were by far the biggest contributor of planet-warming emissions, Colombia’s negotiator said her country could not go along with a deal that ignored science.

“A consensus imposed under climate denialism is a failed agreement,” the Colombian negotiator said.

The three countries said they objected not to COP30’s overall political deal, but to one of the other more technical negotiating texts that countries had been due to approve at the summit’s end, alongside the headline deal.

The three had joined the European Union demanding the deal include language on a transition away from fossil fuels — while a coalition of countries including top oil exporter Saudi Arabia said any fossil fuel mention was off-limits.

After tense overnight negotiations, the EU agreed on Saturday morning not to block a final deal, but said it did not agree with the conclusion.

“We should support (the deal) because at least it is going in the right direction,” the European Union’s climate commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, told reporters before the deal was sealed.

Panama’s climate negotiator Juan Carlos Monterrey said before the final plenary that his country was not happy with the summit result.

“A climate decision that cannot even say ‘fossil fuels’ is not neutrality, it is complicity. And what is happening here transcends incompetence,” Monterrey said.

The summit also launches a voluntary initiative to speed up climate action to help nations meet their existing pledges to reduce emissions, and calls for rich nations to at least triple the amount of money they provide to help developing countries adapt to a warming world by 2035.

Developing countries have argued they urgently need funds to adapt to impacts that are already hitting, like rising sea levels and worsening heat waves, droughts, floods, and storms.

Avinash Persaud, Special Advisor to the President of the Inter-American Development Bank, a multilateral lender focused on Latin America and the Caribbean, said the accord’s focus on finance was important as climate impacts mount.

“But I fear the world still fell short on more rapid-release grants for developing countries responding to loss and damage. That goal is as urgent as it is hard,” he said.

Several countries including Sierra Leone also objected at the final plenary to a watering down of what they should be measuring in areas such as food security in order to prepare for climate impacts.

The delegate from Sierra Leone said the list of indicators agreed “is not the list crafted by experts, and is not a list that clearly tells our story.”

“Instead, we leave COP with indicators that are unclear, unmeasurable, and in many cases, unusable. So we must ask ourselves, how are we helping the most vulnerable if this is the quality of the outcomes we call ambition?” said Sierra Leone’s Climate Minister Jiwoh Emmanuel Abdulai.

The overnight impasse between the European Union and the Arab Group of nations over fossil fuels had pushed the talks past a Friday deadline, triggering all-night negotiations before a compromise could be reached.

Correa do Lago said on Saturday morning that the presidency was issuing a side text on fossil fuels — as well as on protecting forests — keeping it out of the main accord because of the lack of consensus.

But he urged countries to keep discussing the issues.

Saturday’s agreement also launches a process for climate bodies to review how to align international trade with climate action, according to the deal text, amid concerns that rising trade barriers are limiting the adoption of clean technology.