German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (left), and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Friday during the Cop30 UN climate summit. Photo / The Washington Post
Nearly 200 countries agreed to step up efforts to adapt to global warming and warned about the risks of inaction, but rejected proposals to directly address the fossil fuels warming the planet.
The deal, reached at the annual United Nations climate talks in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, represents a win for the oil, gas and coal industries and underscores the extent to which the global political environment has shifted since the same group struck the Paris agreement a decade ago. That accord pledged to keep the world “well below” a temperature rise of 2C compared to pre-industry levels and strive to limit warming to 1.5C.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, with the support of about half the countries, had pushed for a road map for ending the use of oil, gas and coal to be included in the final agreement. But major oil producers Saudi Arabia and Russia and dozens of developing countries objected, with several of them arguing that they were unable to curtail fossil fuels while many of their citizens lack electricity.
“We will not be in support of any climate change implementation response that would lead to our sudden economic contraction and heightened social instability,” a Nigerian representative told the gathering.
President Donald Trump, who is withdrawing the United States from the Paris agreement, did not send any representatives to the negotiations. The US absence removed a negotiating heavyweight from the complex process of reaching a final deal and did help ease agreement in areas other than fossil fuels, diplomats and analysts said.
This year’s talks were marked by unusual drama, including a fire in the venue that led to a panicked evacuation that interrupted the talks for several hours. The interruption helped push the negotiations into overtime, with many diplomats going more than 24 hours without sleep. After the main deal was gaveled and met with applause, Colombia attempted to block a separate technical-level agreement on cutting emissions, which it argued should include fossil fuels, holding up the final session for an hour before backing down.
The new agreement also calls for “efforts to at least triple” funding by 2035 to help poor countries adapt to the effects of a changing climate. And nations agreed to open discussions on trade issues related to climate over the next three years, at a time when tariffs are snarling the sale of solar panels and electric vehicles, though it is unclear how any future trade provisions would affect the deployment of clean energy across the globe.
Several negotiators expressed regret that they could not reach consensus on language that would have committed the world’s nations to phasing out fossil fuels. The European Union was the major holdout pushing for a deal to take stronger actions to slash climate emissions, but it agreed to support the accord after an all-night negotiation session that extended well into the morning on Saturday.
“We would have liked to have more,” said EU Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra. “Climate change needs more battling, more action.”
The accord, 10 years after the Paris agreement, comes at a low point for global climate action, with fossil fuel interests gaining political ground internationally. UN Secretary General António Guterres has acknowledged it is inevitable that the world will fail to meet the goal of holding warming to 1.5C set out in the Paris agreement.
Even so, some experts argue that the talks remain relevant in showing the world still has an appetite to tackle climate issues, and as a counter to the US and other countries pushing fossil fuels.
“We’re living through complicated geopolitical times,” Hoekstra said. “So there is value in itself, intrinsic value, no matter how difficult, to seek to come together.”
Many analysts agree that the annual agreements themselves have waned in importance. A decade after the Paris agreement, the negotiations have already established most of the rules and system for prodding nations to set climate targets every five years. The emphasis is now on implementing these targets in the real world.
Including the road map in the final decision would have sent “a pretty strong signal” that the world was serious about ending fossil fuel use, said Sue Biniaz, former deputy climate envoy under President Joe Biden. “I had hoped it would be in there.”
The outcome caps a year of victories for fossil fuel interests in international talks. In August, Trump officials showed up in force at talks in Switzerland to oppose any hard limits on producing plastic, which is generally made from petroleum and natural gas.
Then, in October, the administration intervened to block a global agreement to cut emissions for cargo ships, which previously appeared sure to pass the International Maritime Organisation, by threatening countries with “serious consequences” if they supported the measure.
That sparked fears that the United States could similarly spoil the annual climate summit.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) was the only federal representative to attend, but he did not represent the US in negotiations.
“If the US delegation were here, even if this is the Biden delegation, they don’t want to talk about trade,” said Li Shuo, a climate analyst at the nonprofit group Asia Society.
“When it comes to trade and tariffs, they’re the one imposing tariffs. And China is promoting free trade. So they’re on the defence, and they don’t want to open up an issue on which they’re on the defence,” Li added.
Biniaz noted that, in the past, “we were quite negative on creating a forum” to discuss trade at climate summits.
“I think the US tariffs have raised the profile of the trade issue,” she said.
Although the agreement on trade was mainly aimed at Europe’s tax on carbon emissions for imported products, the language was generic enough to possibly encompass Trump’s tariffs or Chinese restrictions on rare earth metals that are critical for clean energy manufacturing.
Reaching an agreement on climate finance and calling for accelerated action on global warming counts as a success, said Jake Schmidt, a climate analyst with the Natural Resources Defence Council.
“In light of the largest headwinds against climate action, because the US is pulling in the wrong direction, leaders still showed up and still sent a clear signal that they’re going to continue with climate action,” he said.
More than 80 countries that supported the fossil fuels measure will move forward with a plan to phase them out, Schmidt said, with South Korea recently announcing it will close all its coal plants by 2040.
Brazilian officials said they would announce the fossil fuels road map as a separate, optional initiative.
“The road map now belongs to 80 countries, to civil society, and President Lula is taking the idea to the G-20,” Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva said. “He is committed to it, and that has made all the difference.”
Brazil, as the host country, had emphasised that real-world action matters more than the negotiations themselves, with the summit highlighting more than 400 initiatives globally to tackle climate change.
The summit included announcements from hundreds of voluntary initiatives by local governments, nonprofits and companies that amounted to hundreds of billions of dollars in actions to tackle climate change, from financing to protect forests to clean electricity grids.
“We are moving in the right direction, but at the wrong speed,” Lula said in his speech opening the talks. “Moving forward requires a more robust global governance architecture, one capable of ensuring that words translate into action.”
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