BELEM, Brazil — Negotiators at the United Nations climate talks will soon decide on a newly forged final deal released on Saturday that does not include a plan to wean the world from the coal, oil and gas that is heating the planet.
While guidelines wanted by 80 nations for a fossil fuel phase-out are not in the document called “Uniting humanity in a global mobilization against climate change,” the Brazilian presidency has promised it will join Colombia in coming up with an independent road map that’s not needed to be approved by all 190 nations.
“While far from what’s needed, the outcome in Belem is meaningful progress,” said former German special climate envoy Jennifer Morgan, who is now a fellow at Tufts University.
The conference leaders are aiming for an early afternoon meeting with all nations to approve the deal. Some nations could try to scuttle it if they prefer no deal to what they consider a feeble agreement, but Morgan said she doubted that any country will block the agreement. It was crafted after more than 12 hours of late night and early morning meetings in COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago’s office.
“It’s a weak outcome,” said former Philippine negotiator Jasper Inventor, now at Greenpeace International.
A fossil fuel transition plan will be in a separate proposal issued later by do Lago’s team that won’t carry the same weight as a deal accepted by nations at the conference.
In the text, 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.”
The annual talks this year are held in Belem, a Brazilian city on the edge of the Amazon rainforest. They were scheduled to wrap up Friday, but negotiators blew past that deadline and worked through the night.
Some of the biggest issues include how to distribute $300 billion a year — a sum previously agreed upon — in financial aid for vulnerable countries hit hardest by climate change, getting countries to toughen up their national plans to reduce Earth-warming emissions and dealing with climate trade barriers. Poorer nations have requested a tripling of financial aid for adapting to extreme weather and other climate change harms. While that’s in the deal, the deadline has been moved back five years to 2035.
Also included in the agreement is the final result of the Action Agenda, which was a list of initiatives aimed at making progress on past deals. That included: a promise of $1 trillion for improving energy grids and infrastructure; ramping up the production of biofuels; industrial decarbonization plans in developing countries; $5.5 billion toward a fund to pay countries to keep their forests standing; and other pledges of funding, including from the private sector, for projects in areas like farming and adaptation.
Whatever deal is proposed still needs a consensus approval from what’s left of the nearly 200 nations that came to the two-week conference. Some delegates, observers and others had to leave Saturday morning when the cruise ships lodging them set sail.
Earlier this week, do Lago issued what he had hoped to be a final proposal. It was roundly criticized by the European Union, small island nations and Latin American countries as too weak on fossil fuels and pushing nations to sharpen their new climate-fighting plans. But other countries including Saudi Arabia pushed back against the call to transition away from fossil fuels.
“Oil producing nations are trying to hold on, to really stop the decline of fossil fuels,” Morgan said.
Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had pushed for a stronger plan to move away from fossil fuels, as did more than 80 countries. But the earlier proposal by do Lago — a Lula appointee — didn’t even mention the words “fossil fuel.”
Agreements coming out of COP30 technically have to be approved by consensus. But in the past, individual countries’ objections have been overlooked by the chair in the rush to gavel everything to the end.
One of the points that negotiators will highlight is language sprinkled in the document that won’t be an explicit road map away from fossil fuels, but will refer back to previous agreements to maintain momentum and “live and fight another day,” said Alden Meyer, a veteran analyst for the European think-tank E3G.
It’s not enough, Greenpeace’s Inventor said: “We need to reflect on what was possible and what now appears to be missing: the road maps to end forest destruction and fossil fuels and an ongoing lack of finance. We rise up, though, and continue the fight.”
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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.
