By SETH BORENSTEIN, MELINA WALLING and ANTON L. DELGADO, Associated Press
BELEM, Brazil (AP) — Several nations and environmental groups on Friday slammed proposals in the final stages of this year’s U.N. climate talks for failing to explicitly mention the cause of global warming — the burning of fuels such as oil, gas and coal — with one top negotiator warning the talks are on “the verge of collapse.”
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Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez, a top negotiator for Panama, said the decades-long United Nations process risks “becoming a clown show” for the omission. His nation was among 36 to object to a proposal drafted by conference president André Corrêa do Lago of host Brazil.
Do Lago countered by telling negotiators he thought the negotiators “are very close” to doing what they set out to do when they started meeting a week ago.
The Brazilian proposals came on what was supposed to be the last day of the talks, and on the heels of a fire on Thursday that briefly spread through pavilions of the conference known as COP30 on the edge of the Amazon. Thirteen people were treated for smoke inhalation. Though no one was seriously hurt, the fire meant a largely lost day for the talks and increased the likelihood they would sprawl into the weekend, as they frequently do.
Agreements at these talks are officially reached when no nation objects, and typically require many rounds of negotiations. In practice, the proceedings can end with agreements adopted and the presidency adjourning the meeting after noting any objections.
Cold reception from many for proposals
“After 10 years, this process is still failing,” said Maina Vakafua Talia, minister of environment for the small Pacific island nation of Tuvalu. “The Pacific came to COP30 demanding a survival road map away from fossil fuels. Yet the current draft texts that came out (do) not even name the main threat for our very survival and existence.”
When do Lago convened Friday’s plenary meeting to discuss the texts, he recapped the world’s climate problems, including the United States’ pullout of climate-fighting efforts under President Donald Trump, as well as an increase in costly and deadly extreme weather.
“The world is watching us,” do Lago said. For the world to make progress, he said, acting “all together is the formula for us to reach what we really need to do.”
A key text among host Brazil’s proposals — called the mutirao decision, for an Indigenous term that means to act together — deals with four difficult issues. They include financial aid for vulnerable countries hit hardest by climate change and getting countries to toughen up their national plans to reduce Earth-warming emissions.
Then there’s the dispute over whether to create a detailed road map for the world to phase out the fossil fuels that are largely driving Earth’s increasing extreme weather. Any such plan would expand on a single sentence — to “transition away” from fossil fuels — that was agreed upon two years ago at the climate talks in Dubai. But no timetable or process was spelled out for that, and powerful oil-producing nations like Saudi Arabia and Russia oppose it.
More than 80 nations have called for stronger direction and Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva also pushed for it earlier this month.
“Failing to name the causes of the climate crisis is not compromise, it is denial. It is criminal,” Panama’s Monterrey Gomez said.
Tackling fossil fuels
On phasing out fossil fuels, the mutirao decision says that it “acknowledges that the global transition towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development is irreversible and the trend of the future.”
The text “also acknowledges that the Paris Agreement is working and resolves to go further and faster,” referring to the 2015 climate talks that established the goal to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), compared to the mid-1800s. A key issue is that the 119 national emissions curbing plans submitted this year don’t come near close to limiting warming to 1.5 degrees.
Even though the text didn’t address a fossil fuel transition road map, it could eventually end in a vaguely worded section about a plan for the next couple years in a separate road map.
The 36 nations who thought the text didn’t go far enough included wealthy ones such as the United Kingdom, France and Germany along with smaller climate vulnerable islands Palau, Marshall Islands and Vanuatu. They said the proposal doesn’t meet “the minimum conditions required for a credible COP outcome.”
“We cannot support an outcome that does not include a road map for implementing a just, orderly, and equitable transition away from fossil fuels,” it added. “This expectation is shared by a vast majority of parties, as well as by science and by the people who are watching our work closely.”
Do Lago said his presidency is open to compromise and further discussion.
“We cannot be divided inside the Paris accord,” do Lago said, in remarks that drew only scattered cheers and applause from delegates. “We can only strengthen the Paris accord if we have consensus in Belem. Let’s not stress the divide now in the moments we have left.”
Activists were just as unhappy.
“Hopes were raised by initial proposals for road maps both to end deforestation and fossil fuels, but these road maps have disappeared,” Greenpeace climate policy expert Tracy Carty said. “We’re again lost without a map to 1.5°C and fumbling our way in the dark while time is running out.”
David Waskow of the World Resources Institute said that it was clear the COP presidency was “trying to push this to conclusion as fast as they can.”
Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find the AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
This story was produced as part of the 2025 Climate Change Media Partnership, a journalism fellowship organized by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.
