Belém (Brazil) (AFP) – Nations sealed a modest deal at the UN climate summit in the Amazon Saturday, as Europe and others dropped their demands for a plan to phase out fossil fuels after fraught negotiations with oil-producing countries and emerging economies. Nearly 200 countries approved the deal by consensus after two weeks of COP30 talks in the Brazilian city of Belem, with the notable absence of the United States as President Donald Trump shunned the event.
Applause rang out in the plenary session after the head of COP30, Brazilian diplomat Andre Correa do Lago, slammed a gavel signalling its approval following several sleepless nights of negotiations. The EU and other nations had pushed for a deal that would call for a “roadmap” to phase out fossil fuels, but the words do not appear in the text. Instead, the agreement calls on countries to voluntarily “accelerate” their climate action and recalls the consensus reached at COP28 in Dubai. That 2023 deal called for the world to transition away from fossil fuels.
The EU, which had warned that the summit could end without a deal if fossil fuels were not addressed, accepted the watered-down language. “We’re not going to hide the fact that we would have preferred to have more, to have more ambition on everything,” EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra told reporters. “It is not perfect, but it is a hugely important step in the right direction,” he said.
More than 30 countries, including European nations, emerging economies, and small island states had signed a letter warning Brazil they would reject any deal without a plan to move away from oil, gas, and coal. But a member of an EU delegation told AFP that the 27-nation bloc was “isolated” and cast as the “villains” at the talks. The push to phase out oil, coal, and gas—the main drivers of global warming—grew out of frustration over a lack of follow-through on the COP28 agreement to transition away from fossil fuels. French ecological transition minister Monique Barbut had accused oil-rich Saudi Arabia and Russia, along with coal producer India and “many” other emerging countries, of refusing language on a fossil-fuel phaseout.
Correa do Lago acknowledged the disappointment. “We know some of you had greater ambitions for some of the issues at hand,” he told COP30 delegates. The diplomat said he would launch “roadmaps” to halt deforestation and transition away from fossil fuels and hold high-level meetings on the issues. The deal caps a chaotic two weeks in Belem, with Indigenous protesters breaching the venue and blocking its entrance last week and a fire erupting inside the compound on Thursday, forcing a mass evacuation.
Finishing without a deal would have been a black eye for Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who had staked political capital in the success of what he called the “COP of truth.” It was also a major test for international cooperation when Trump decided to skip COP30. “At the COP of truth, science prevailed. Multilateralism won,” Lula said at the G20 summit in Johannesburg, which was also taking place Saturday.
The head of China’s delegation at COP30, Li Gao, told AFP that the summit will go down as a success. “I’m happy with the outcome,” Li said. “We achieved this success in a very difficult situation, so it shows that the international community would like to show solidarity and make joint efforts to address climate change.”
Developing nations, for their part, had pushed the EU and other developed economies to pledge more money to help them adapt to the impact of climate change, such as floods and droughts, and move toward a low-carbon future. The EU had resisted such appeals, but the deal calls for efforts to “at least triple” adaptation finance by 2035. “Intergovernmental negotiations work on a minimum common denominator, but our fight will continue,” a negotiator from Bangladesh told AFP in a muted reception of the terms.
Barbut, the French minister, said the EU accepted the Belem deal “because of the accusation against Europeans—that one of the reasons we opposed the text was that we didn’t want to give money to the poorest countries.” The EU had also rejected language on trade in the text, as demanded by China and other emerging countries. The final deal calls for “dialogue” on trade issues.
Ani Dasgupta, president of the World Resources Institute think tank, said some of the breakthroughs achieved in Belem show that “even against a challenging geopolitical backdrop, international climate cooperation can still deliver results.” “But many will leave Belem disappointed that negotiators couldn’t agree to develop a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels,” Dasgupta said.
© 2024 AFP
