Countries agree compromise climate deal at COP30 – but omit mention of fossil fuels

Countries attending COP30, the biggest climate meeting of the year, have agreed to a compromise deal setting out steps to help speed up climate action.

The deal would boost finance for poor nations coping with global warming but it omits any mention of the fossil fuels driving it.

In securing the accord in Brazil, countries attempted to demonstrate global unity in addressing climate change impacts even after the US, the world’s biggest historic emitter, declined to send an official delegation.

“It’s a weak outcome,” said former Philippine negotiator Jasper Inventor, now at Greenpeace International.

In the text of the draft deal, instead of a transition plan away from fossil fuels, the agreement “acknowledges that the global transition toward low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development is irreversible and the trend of the future,” and says “the (2015) Paris Agreement is working and resolves to go further and faster.”

Despite no transition plan being included in the deal, the summit’s president Andre Correa do Lago said “roadmaps” on fossil fuels and forests would be published as there was no consensus on these issues.

The annual United Nations conference brings together world leaders, scientists, campaigners, and negotiators from across the globe, who agree on collective next steps for tackling climate change.

The two-week conference in the Amazon city was due to end at 6pm local time (9pm UK time) on Friday, but it dragged into overtime.

The standoff was between the EU, which pressed for language on transitioning away from fossil fuels, and the Arab Group of nations, including major oil exporter Saudi Arabia, which opposed it.

The impasse was resolved following all-night talks led by Brazil, negotiators said.

The European Union’s climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said on Saturday that the proposed accord was acceptable, even though the bloc would have liked more.

“We should support it because at least it is going in the right direction,” he said.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and about 80 countries, including the UK and coal-rich Colombia, had been pushing for a plan on how to “transition away from fossil fuels”.

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This is a pledge all countries agreed to two years ago at COP28 – then did very little about since.

But scores of countries – including major oil and gas producers like Saudi Arabia and Russia – see this push as too prescriptive or a threat to their economies.

UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband told Sky News on Friday that while the UN climate talks are a “nightmare”, they are the “best process we’ve got”.

The annual COP talks are “so hard” because they see more than 190 countries negotiating over the future of their economies, oceans and forests, he said.

But he pointed to achievements from the three decades of talks, including lowering expected global warming by a substantial margin, and the fact that around 80% of global GDP is now covered by a net-zero climate target.

Mr Miliband said: “So it’s painful, it’s painstaking, it makes you tear your hair out, but it does represent progress.

“This is a global problem; we’ve got to have global cooperation to tackle it.”