Climate Summit Ends With Few Plans, Plenty of Criticism

The UN climate summit ended Saturday in Brazil with a final statement that avoided any direct mention of fossil fuels—widely recognized as the main cause of global warming—drawing criticism from diplomats and climate advocates and raising doubts about the world's ability to confront the accelerating climate crisis. The resolution was considered a victory for major oil producers such as Saudi Arabia and Russia, the New York Times reports. It included warnings about the consequences of inaction but offered few concrete steps to address rising global temperatures, though scientists warn that without a rapid shift away from oil, gas, and coal, the world faces escalating risks from extreme weather events. Developments included:

• The conflicts: COP30 nearly collapsed before a series of last-minute meetings produced a compromise. Oil-producing nations, joined by several African and Asian countries, resisted any move to single out fossil fuels. These countries argued that wealthy Western nations, historically responsible for most greenhouse gas emissions, should bear the greatest financial responsibility for climate action. Roughly 80 countries, mostly outside the group of major economies, pushed for a clearer plan to phase out fossil fuels, but no such plan materialized. The US boycott of the talks removed a key source of pressure on other large emitters, such as China, which also declined to take a leading role.

• The deal: The final agreement only referenced previous commitments to transition away from fossil fuels, without setting new targets. Some progress was made on funding to help vulnerable nations adapt to climate impacts, including a pledge to triple adaptation finance by 2035. However, a Brazilian initiative—the summit was held in Belém, on the edge of the Amazon—to raise $25 billion to protect tropical forests fell well short, with only about $5 billion pledged. The summit's president, André Aranha Corrêa do Lago of Brazil, acknowledged that many countries wanted a stronger agreement.
• The politics: The summit was pretty much like the rest of the world, Politico notes: politically divided. Nations that produce oil and the emerging economies that need it mostly got their way. European nations had difficulty demonstrating they could lead the effort to combat global warming. And the US sat the whole thing out. Disappointed participants took what they could get in the final deal. "It's a fairly bland text," said France's environment minister. "This text does not raise our overall ambition, but it does not undermine previous progress." The UK's energy secretary felt similarly. "I would have preferred a more ambitious agreement," Ed Miliband said. "But at a time of great political challenge—when you've got America, for example, that has left the Paris Agreement—I think this is a significant moment."

• Criticism: Rich countries failed their obligation, said Mariana Paoli of Christian Aid, per the Guardian, to "to fund the energy transition away from fossil fuels and help vulnerable communities adapt to a climate crisis they have done nothing to create." Had the wealthy not failed, a plan for phasing out fossil fuels would have been possible. Panama's negotiator was among the displeased, per the AP. "A climate decision that cannot even say 'fossil fuels' is not neutrality, it is complicity. And what is happening here transcends incompetence," Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez said. "Science has been deleted from COP30 because it offends the polluters."
• What's next: Two dozen countries agreed to work with the UN in a new effort to transition from fossil fuels, per NPR. That will begin at the first international conference on the matter, to be hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands in April. Ralph Regenvanu, the climate change minister of Vanuatu, an island nation dealing with rising sea levels, said that's the biggest achievement of COP30.