World secures compromise deal at COP30 that ditches fossil fuels

• The EU says it supports the deal because it goes in the right direction.
• Insufficient efforts to keep temperature to 1.5C: scientist.
• Climate actors to reconsider the alignment of trade with climate action.
  

World governments agreed on Saturday to a compromise climate deal at the COP30 conference in Brazil that will boost funding for poor countries facing global warming but omit any mention of the fossil fuels that are driving it.

To secure the deal, countries sought to demonstrate global unity in addressing the effects of climate change, even as the world’s largest historical emitter, the United States, declined to send an official delegation.

But the deal, reached in overtime after two weeks of contentious negotiations in the Amazon city of Belem, also exposed rifts between rich and developing countries, as well as between those governments with opposing views on oil, gas and coal. After finalizing the agreement, COP30 president Andre Correa do Lago acknowledged that the talks had been tough.

“We know that some of you have had higher aspirations for some of the issues you’re facing,” he said.

The European Union was the main holdout on the fossil fuel transition language, but eventually agreed to drop it after a coalition of countries, including top oil exporter Saudi Arabia, said it was off limits.

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

Some countries had harsher words.

“A climate decision that cannot even say fossil fuels is not neutrality, it is complicity. And what is happening here goes beyond incompetence,” said Panamanian climate negotiator Juan Carlos Monterrey.

Financial support

The agreement launches a voluntary initiative to accelerate climate action to help nations meet their existing commitments to cut emissions and calls on rich nations to at least triple the amount of money they provide to help developing countries adapt to a warming world by 2035.

Scientists said existing national commitments to cut emissions have significantly limited projected warming, but are not enough to prevent global temperatures from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, a threshold that could unleash the worst effects of climate change.

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

Avinash Persaud, Special Adviser to the President of the Inter-American Development Bank, a multilateral lender focused on Latin America and the Caribbean, said the deal’s focus on financing is important as climate impacts grow.

“But I fear the world is still short of more rapid release grants for developing countries responding to loss and damage. This goal is both urgent and difficult,” he said.

Fossil fuel side text

The impasse between the European Union and the Arab Group of nations over fossil fuels had pushed the talks past a Friday deadline, sparking overnight negotiations before a compromise was reached.

Correa do Lago said on Saturday morning that the presidency issued a secondary text on fossil fuels — as well as forest protection — keeping them out of the main agreement due to a lack of consensus.

However, he urged countries to continue discussing the issues.

“I know that most of you are tired, but as the president of this conference, it is my duty to recognize some very important discussions that took place in Belém and that must continue during the Brazilian presidency, until the next COP, even if they are not reflected in this text that we just approved,” he said.

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