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HT@Belem: UN climate talks stall as Brazil’s draft drops fossil fuel roadmap
Developed countries have said they will not reopen discussions on finance, which they argue was addressed at COP29 in Baku in the New Collective Quantified Goal text
Belem, Brazil: UN climate talks remained stalled since Friday morning as negotiators failed to agree on the text proposal put forward by the Brazil Presidency.
Developed countries have said they will not reopen discussions on finance, which they argue was addressed at COP29 in Baku in the New Collective Quantified Goal text.
“Look at it. None of it is in there. No science. No global stocktake. No transitioning away. But instead, weakness. Weakness on mitigation. And on top of it, a clear breach of last year’s agreement on the NCQG (New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance). So, I am going to be just as clear. Under no circumstances are we going to accept this,” EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said during consultations on the draft released earlier in the day.
HT reported on Friday that UN climate talks teetered on the brink of collapse as the Brazil Presidency released a final text that dropped all mention of fossil fuel phaseout roadmaps, exposing a fundamental divide between developed and developing nations over who should bear the burden of emissions cuts.
The draft agreement, uploaded early on Friday after nearly two weeks of negotiations, omitted the words “fossil fuels” or “roadmap” entirely — despite Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva publicly supporting such language. China, India, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Russia rejected any prescriptive fossil fuel roadmap, according to a negotiator who asked not to be named, while around 30 countries led by Colombia warned they could not accept a deal without it. “The issue of fossil fuel phaseout has already been addressed in the COP28 text. It cannot be changed now. It talks about transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner. Now we cannot accept a roadmap,” a developing country negotiator said.
“We are seeing the same playbook from developed nations, led by the European Union (EU): block progress on the just transition mechanism, fail on adaptation finance commitments, and then spin the narrative to blame emerging economies. This hypocrisy of posing as the custodians of 1.5°C while stalling progress in negotiations is accelerating the climate emergency for those least responsible for the crisis,” climate activist and founding director of the Satat Sampada Climate Foundation Harjeet Singh said.
The EU is insisting on text on the 1.5°C goal with a plan to keep it in sight.
The text refers to a “Belém Mission to 1.5”, aimed at enabling ambition and implementation of nationally determined contributions and national adaptation plans, to reflect on accelerating implementation and international cooperation and investments in nationally determined contributions and national adaptation plans across mitigation and adaptation.
“This is extremely unfair. The mandate under Article 9.1 is that developed nations pay for mitigation and adaptation in developing countries. In fact, it is developed nations with historical responsibility who should go net negative in emissions immediately so that the rest can have carbon space to grow equitably,” an India delegate said.
The “Mutirao” text — named after the Portuguese word for collective action — acknowledges the likelihood of a temporary overshoot of the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C warming goal. It recognises that limiting warming to 1.5°C requires deep, rapid and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions of 43% by 2030 and 60% by 2035 relative to 2019 levels, reaching net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050.
The text also notes that developed countries failed to achieve the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s previous target of reducing emissions by 25–40% below 1990 levels by 2020.
Finance gains, implementation concerns
The package delivered a key demand from developing countries, particularly India, by establishing a two-year work programme on climate finance under Article 9, paragraph 1. The provision is a legal obligation requiring developed countries to provide financial resources to developing nations for climate mitigation and adaptation.
The text reaffirms the call to scale up financing to developing countries from all public and private sources to at least $1.3 trillion per year by 2035 and calls for efforts to triple adaptation finance compared to 2025 levels by 2030.
