There’s been a lot of chatter about Roadmaps in Belem. The WWF and Greenpeace have led a call for a roadmap to end deforestation. Currently, 45 countries have indicated support. More than 80 countries have called for a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels. Additionally, there are four other roadmaps on finance from developed to developing countries. Climate Action Network wonders, “Roadmap or mazes? Will those lead us somewhere, or will we be even more lost with so many of them?!”
Brazil’s TFFF plan has raised $5.5bn — far below even Brazil’s reduced target of $10bn by next year. Norway, Brazil, Indonesia, Portugal, France, and the Netherlands have all committed to pay into the fund, while Germany has said it will announce its contribution soon. The UK and China, on the other hand, do not plan to pay in.
Away from COP30 negotiations, talks continued over the COP31 host, with Türkiye and Australia striking a compromise: Türkiye will host the conference, and Australia’s climate change and energy Minister, Chris Bowen, as COP president, will chair the talks.
UN Secretary General, António Guterres, returned to Belém on Thursday to urge the world’s nations to find compromises in the final hours of COP30 and deliver a deal to accelerate climate action: “We are down to the wire and the world is watching… The world must pursue a just, orderly, and equitable transition away from fossil fuels.”
On Tuesday, COP30 hosts Brazil produced a first draft of an agreement between nations at the UN climate talks after negotiations on the sticking points stretched late into the night. The nine-page “Global Mutirao” document – a reference to an Indigenous concept of uniting toward a common goal – came after Brazil on Monday urged delegates to work day and night to produce an agreement by midweek.
Over the next few days, negotiations intensified. On Friday morning, the Presidency published its new mutirão text that contains no mention of a phase-out of fossil fuels. At least 29 nations threatened to block any draft without this phase-out and then rejected the text. The letter states, “We cannot support an outcome that does not include a roadmap [on fossil fuels].” Countries that signed the letter in favor of the fossil fuel phase-out include: Austria, Belgium, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Iceland, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, the Marshall Islands, Mexico, Monaco, the Netherlands, Panama, Palau, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and Vanuatu. Another bloc of around 80 countries, that includes Saudi Arabia, Russia and some other petrostates, as well as some countries dependent on consuming fossil fuels is negotiating against the fossil fuel phase out roadmap.
Colombia and the Netherlands also announced that they will co-host the First International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels in Santa Marta, Colombia, in April next year.
The climate talks are now likely to continue into the weekend. The European Union’s commissioner for climate, Wopke Hoekstra, warned there was a risk of no agreement being reached, and expressed dismay at the current text saying there was no science, no mention of a transition for fossil fuels, no global stocktake.
No UN climate conference has finished on time since 2003.
Aside from the fossil fuel debate, other issues also remain to be resolved, including a response to the fact that countries’ national climate plans are too weak to limit global heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels as set out in the 2015 Paris agreement, and questions of finance, trade and transparency, and how much cash developing countries will receive to help them adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis.
The issue of gender has become contentious and has been lifted by the COP30 Presidency from technical negotiations to a higher political level with ministers. Conservative nations — from the Vatican to Iran — are pushing to narrow the definition of gender at COP30 to exclude trans and non-binary people, which threatens to increase the difficulty of already torturous negotiations. The effort uses footnotes in key texts to attach country-specific interpretations. Paraguay, Argentina, Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia, as well as the Vatican have so far entered footnotes into the draft Gender Action Plan (GAP) meant to guide work for the next decade. Similar footnotes have also appeared in a text related to the “just transition” — the framework to shift to environmentally sustainable economies without leaving workers and communities behind.
Outside the negotiating rooms, civil society groups have complained about the “militarization” of the COP30 venue, which is now guarded by heavily armed officers in riot gear following UNFCCC chief Simon Stiell’s complaints earlier. Indigenous activists say they feel particularly targeted.
The Global Afro Descendants Climate Justice Collaborative is calling for Afro-Descendant peoples to be recognized as a formal constituency within the UNFCCC. Their petition states, “For generations, Afro-Descendant and African communities have been at the heart of global struggles for equity, justice, and renewal. We are the descendants of those who cultivated, resisted, and rebuilt. We have carried the wisdom of sustainable living, the memory of displacement, and the spirit of resilience that continues to sustain our planet.” Read the full letter here. Meanwhile, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Australia are explicitly opposing the inclusion of references to people of African descent in the Gender Action Plan, acting to silence and delegitimize legitimate and historically grounded demands.
“Simple message about COP30,” said Dr. Sam Grant, “This is a place of virulent anti-blackness.”
While a formal constituency is yet to be established, the Global Afrodescendant Climate Justice Collaborative announced Friday that for the first time, people of African descent appear in UNFCCC COP decisions and are referenced across multiple strands of negotiating texts. The texts are not finalized. “Nonetheless we are calling it a win to have people of African descent in the draft decisions,” said Mariama Williams of the GACJC.
Youth activists, more than 30,000 young people from over 100 countries, held a series of Youth-Led Forums and outlined calls for “full, fast, fair fossil phase-out,” institutionalizing intergenerational equity, moves toward peace, climate finance centered on justice, and adaptation “as a moral and political priority”.
The People’s Plenary was scheduled on Thursday, a space where civil society at COP comes together to make clear what their expectations and demands are of the negotiations, as we near the close. But a fire broke out in the Blue Zone, and the venue was evacuated. The fire has been contained with limited damage, and no serious injuries have been reported. Hosts report the fire was electrical.
There are more than 300 industrial agriculture lobbyists at COP30. According to DeSmog, the number of lobbyists representing the interests of industrial cattle farming, commodity grains, and pesticides is up 14 percent over last year’s summit in Baku — and is larger than the delegation of the world’s 10th largest economy, Canada, which brought 220 delegates to COP30 in Belém. Agriculture is responsible for 25 – 30% of global emissions.
We will continue to follow negotiations and hope to share the final agreements in our final window into COP30 Digest, scheduled to be released on December 3. Stay tuned.
Photo credit: Kiara Worth
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