BELEM, Brazil — With a direct letter sent to nations and a draft text released Tuesday, host country Brazil is shifting the U.N. climate conference into a higher gear.
The letter sent late Monday comes during the final week of the first climate summit in the Amazon rainforest, a key regulator of climate because trees absorb carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that warms the planet. COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago later released a proposal with 21 options for negotiators to choose from on four sticky and interrelated issues.
“It’s text Tuesday and we’re sort of off to the races,’’ said World Resources Institute’s David Waskow, who said the nine-page proposal “addresses some of the core questions that have been part of the presidency consultations.’’
The four key political issues are whether countries should be told to do better on their new climate plans; details on handing out $300 billion in pledged climate aid; dealing with trade barriers over climate; and improving transparency, which Waskow said is really about reporting climate progress.
While the options in the draft text “are a first step, what’s required now is to eliminate the options that add to delay and ignore the urgency of action,” said Jasper Inventor, deputy program director of Greenpeace International.
Tuesday was also a day for speeches from high-level ministers.
“At this very moment, there are people in a number of countries across the world, including my own, who want to deny the crisis even exists or delay the urgent action we need to address it,” said U.K. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband.
Sophie Hermans, the Netherlands’ deputy prime minister, said “the transition is no longer about setting targets. It is about executing them. And execution requires realism, planning and the ability to adjust when circumstances change.”
The documents ask leaders to hash out many aspects of a potential agreement by Wednesday so that much is out of the way before the final set of decisions Friday, when the conference is scheduled to end. Climate summits routinely go past their last day as nations face balancing domestic concerns with the major shifts needed to protect the environment and cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was scheduled to return to Belem on Wednesday and the deadline may be timed for him to push parties together or celebrate some kind of draft agreement, observers said. But many don’t think countries will actually be ready with everything Brazilian leaders have asked for by Wednesday. That timeline is “pretty ambitious,” said Alden Meyer, a senior associate at climate think tank E3G.
Brazil’s guidance for the summit, called COP30, is raising hopes for significant measures to fight global warming, which could range from a road map to move away from fossil fuels like oil and coal to more money to help nations build out clean energies like wind and solar.
“There are important concessions we expect from all sides,” do Lago said Monday evening. “It is said you have to give to receive.”
Some have expressed concern that the agreements will be short of what’s needed. “The draft text might have the right ingredients, but it’s been cooked up in a way that leaves a bitter aftertaste,” said Andreas Sieber of 350.org, which works to end use of fossil fuels. Without a fossil-fuel transition at the core, the documents are “weak and empty, a dish with its main component left out.”
But Monday night, Meyer, of E3G, said the optimistic spirit of the host country “is starting to get a little infectious” and that is part of building trust and goodwill among nations.
“I sense ambition here. I sense a determination,” former German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan said Monday morning.
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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.
