EU Warns of No Deal With COP30 Climate Talks in Disarray
(Bloomberg) -- International climate negotiations were in disarray Friday afternoon after Arab nations and Russia objected to further talks on shifting away from fossil fuels and taking stronger steps to counter global warming.
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The Brazilian officials running the COP30 summit in Belém abruptly halted broad closed-door discussions and directed the UK, China and the European Union to lead smaller huddles on the most challenging issues facing negotiators, specifically finance, trade and climate ambition.
Inside the closed meeting, Brazilian officials ruled out discussions on adopting a road map for how countries will transition away from oil, natural gas and coal, according to people familiar with the meeting who asked not to be named because deliberations were private. Roughly 80 countries have demanded the COP30 summit produce some kind of guidelines or formal process for helping the world deliver on its two-year-old promise to transition away from fossil fuels.
“We’re facing the reality of a no-deal scenario,” said Wopke Hoekstra, the EU’s climate commissioner earlier Friday. “How can anyone who is reading that across the world not be deeply disappointed?”
Although the COP30 talks were scheduled to close Friday evening, they are now set to run into overtime amid the clashes. The day started for delegates in the early hours after the Brazilian summit presidency unveiled a seven-page draft proposal that provoked widespread anger. A fire that erupted Thursday at the conference venue on the edge of the Amazon, closing it for roughly six hours, has added to the challenges in Belém.
A group of 36 countries, ranging from the UK to Colombia and Palau, said they wouldn’t be able to support the proposal in its current form, and they criticized Brazil for pitching it as a “take-it-or-leave-it” text. EU ministers at the COP30 summit were told to check with national capitals whether they would allow a veto of the deal, according to people familiar with matter.
“We cannot support an outcome that does not include a road map for implementing a just, orderly, and equitable transition away from fossil fuels,” the countries said in a letter seen by Bloomberg. “True leadership requires delivering a text that advances the global response to the climate crisis — not one that lowers expectations to accommodate the most reluctant.”
Many countries had sought a stronger response to sobering assessments of the world’s lagging progress so far in curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Some had been pushing for a more formal, aggressive response to individual country commitments — known as nationally determined contributions — for future emission-cutting work.
Dubbed the “Global Mutirão,” after the Brazilian term for joint effort, the draft may also cause further rifts within the Brazilian government, with environment and climate minister Marina Silva being one of the main proponents of a fossil fuel road map.
COP30 leaders stressed the importance of achieving some deal, even if it leaves some parties dissatisfied.
“We all know how many obstacles there are for putting words into practice and also we all know how difficult it is to reach consensus,” COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago told delegates Friday. Even for Brazil there are very significant challenges, “and some of our priorities may not go ahead the way we like.”
Nations who are strongly behind the road map, including some that are bearing the brunt of climate change, described the Brazilian presidency as silencing their call for ambition.
“We have had 30 years trying to address the real problems, and we are 30 years too late,” said Irene Velez Torres, Colombia’s environment minister. “We cannot accept a text that is not dealing with the real problems.”
Negotiators arrived in Belém almost two weeks ago amid a gloomy outlook for progress of climate action, following President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement, which commits countries to keep the rise in global temperatures below 2C and ideally 1.5C.
Developed country negotiators, who asked not to be named while deliberations are ongoing, said that during talks Thursday, a small number of hardline countries were rejecting any effort to include a process to move away from polluting sources of energy.
The push to exit from fossil fuels has long been one of the most controversial aspects of the annual UN climate talks. Corrêa do Lago has said there’s “significant resistance” to an agreement that envisages the next steps away from fossil fuels, and producer countries such as Saudi Arabia have frequently acted as a block on references to their phase-out.
A “Belém Mission to 1.5” is proposed as a way to help countries implement their national emissions-cutting pledges, while the draft decision also calls for efforts to triple adaptation finance by 2030 from 2025 levels, which is usually seen as roughly $120 billion.
That reflects a clamor from some of the world’s least-developed countries for more support adapting to rising seas, intensifying storms, punishing droughts and other consequences of global warming they had little hand in creating.
Trade has emerged as a particularly challenging dispute, with some developing countries bristling at the European Union’s carbon border adjustment mechanism and other “unilateral trade measures.”
The draft proposal envisages three dialogues over the coming years, with participation from the World Trade Organization and other institutions.
(Updates with more details on negotiations starting in first paragraph; adds Colombian minister’s comments in 13th paragraph.)
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