Brazil’s COP30 presidency pushed a compromise climate deal through in the Amazon city of Belém on Saturday that boosts finance for poorer nations but omits any explicit mention of fossil fuels — a glaring absence that exposed deep fractures among negotiating parties.
The two-week summit, intended to show nations can still join forces on climate change after the United States declined to send an official delegation, ended after overnight negotiations and an overtime plenary in which several countries formally registered objections to the final package.
- Advertisement -
COP30 President André Aranha Corrêa do Lago acknowledged the difficulty of the talks as he gavelled the agreement into effect. The headline text secures a voluntary initiative aimed at speeding climate action and calls for wealthy nations to at least triple adaptation finance for developing countries by 2035, provisions delegates said were vital as impacts such as sea-level rise, heat waves and extreme storms intensify.
But the summit’s failure to include clear language on phasing out fossil fuels sparked public protests from several delegations. Colombia’s negotiator said her country could not accept a deal that “ignored science,” adding, “A consensus imposed under climate denialism is a failed agreement.” Panama’s Juan Carlos Monterrey called a decision that “cannot even say ‘fossil fuels’ … complicity.” Uruguay also lodged objections.
The European Union sought explicit text calling for a transition away from fossil fuels and pushed late into the night in an impasse with the Arab Group, a coalition that included major oil exporters which said any mention of fossil fuels was unacceptable. The EU ultimately chose not to block the accord but made clear it did so reluctantly. “We should support [the deal] because at least it is going in the right direction,” EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra told reporters before the seal was finalised.
Ireland’s Minister for Climate, Energy and the Environment Darragh O’Brien said accepting the text “was not a choice made lightly,” and warned it “falls short of meaningful ambition” by omitting a credible roadmap for a fossil-fuel phaseout — a demand made earlier in the talks by more than 80 countries.
To defuse the divide, the COP presidency said it would issue side texts on fossil fuels and on protecting forests, keeping those subjects out of the main accord because consensus could not be reached. Corrêa do Lago urged continued negotiations on both fronts.
Delegates and analysts welcomed the finance commitments but warned gaps remain. Avinash Persaud, special adviser to the president of the Inter‑American Development Bank, said the pact’s financial focus is important but that rapid-release grants for loss and damage remain an urgent unmet need.
Smaller states also voiced frustration at technical compromises. Sierra Leone’s climate minister, Jiwoh Emmanuel Abdulai, said indicators agreed at the summit — including measures tied to food security — were “unclear, unmeasurable, and in many cases, unusable,” and questioned how such outcomes would help the most vulnerable.
The final deal also launches a process to review how international trade rules can be aligned with climate action, reflecting growing concern that trade barriers could hinder the spread of clean technologies.
With fissures over fossil fuels unresolved and the world’s largest historic emitter absent from the floor, delegates left Belém with a mixed legacy: a strengthened finance pledge and renewed processes, but no consensus on the fossil-fuel transition that most scientists say is essential to limit warming.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
