This year’s United Nations global climate summit held in Belem, Brazil, ended on Nov. 22 with a formal agreement that conspicuously failed to address the central issue of phasing out fossil fuels, the main driver of the climate crisis—and didn’t even mention fossil fuels at all. While delegations from 194 nations participated in this year’s UN COP30 conference, Donald Trump, who says climate change is a hoax, did not send a U.S. representative and announced a series of sweeping proposals to roll back environmental protections and encourage fossil fuel drilling.
During the conference held in the city that’s the gateway to the Amazon rainforest, 80 developing countries, along with the United Kingdom, Germany, Mexico and Brazil, demanded agreement on a “roadmap” to transition the world away from fossil fuels. But major fossil fuel producers, Russia and Saudi Arabia opposed any timetable to phase out the use of oil, gas and coal. Columbia and the Netherlands responded by announcing a plan to host the first international conference in April to focus on the phaseout issue.
Climate scientists at the conference also urged a rapid transition away from fossil fuels, declaring the planet is approaching a tipping point from which there is no return. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Zimyl Adler, senior forest, land and climate finance policy advocate with Friends of the Earth U.S. Adler attended COP30 and the parallel People’s Summit in Belem and reports on what was, and was not accomplished at the summit.
ZIMYL ADLER: What was accomplished in Belem, Brazil at the headwaters of the Amazon rainforest were basically some baby steps. The Mutirão texts, which is the overall flagship outcomes document that outlines the sort of consensus that was reached among the parties, has a lot of language around the need for further multilateral action. And it reiterates a lot of the very grave concerns regarding huge gaps in adaptation and mitigation finaning, finance that goes to countries that are on the front lines of climate change to help them basically adapt and prepare for future climate catastrophes. And also it named that there’s not been enough reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, the magnitude of the risks that we’re facing. And it called on parties to make further commitments in their strategies for this. But we didn’t actually leave the COP with some important concrete deliverables. And there are many concerns with even the outcomes on the climate finance side. The call for scaling up finance for developing countries to $1.3 trillion per year and a tripling of adaptation finance. That’s important. But the reality is that these outcomes from the COP left out deforestation and a roadmap to ending deforestation. It left out the roadmap to phasing out fossil fuels. There is not enough guardrails on insurance public finance flows to climate finance adaptation for countries on the front lines of the climate crisis. And even in the work plan that was delivered on a just transition, there’s some major concerns about workers’ rights and human rights and how that’s actually understood and a pathway to a just transition.
So without including a phaseout of fossil fuels, no forest protection roadmap, despite this being an earlier version during the negotiations, it essentially is underscoring this voluntary action. And I really think that these voluntary commitments end up weakening decisions on where finance flows, especially again, like public finance. But northern countries, those responsible historically for causing the climate crisis should be accountable to their fair share. And instead, what we ended up seeing coming out of these meetings was a lot of voluntary and market-based private finance initiatives that are being lauded as solutions.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well, Zimyl, from my understanding what happened at COP30, there was really no global consensus and there’s very much a divide between many of the world’s nations and the oil-producing states like Russia and Saudi Arabia. Do you see any glimmer of hope that there could be some consensus? I mean, it was very stark, maybe not surprising that fossil fuels were not even mentioned in the final agreement when fossil fuels are the biggest driver of the climate crisis.
ZIMYL ADLER: Yeah, absolutely. I think that was what really ended up dividing parties towards the end of the negotiation without including any mention of a phaseout of fossil fuels in the final text or roadmap to ending deforestation. And also this narrative that was pushed of the forest COP, it’s the COP of the Amazon, the COP that had the most indigenous people ever admitted, the COP of diverse representation. It didn’t deliver on that.
I do think it is a positive sign that nation states who were really strongly backing a phaseout of fossil fuels and a roadmap to ending deforestation—which by the way, had already been committed to achieve zero deforestation by 2032 years ago—I think it’s really important that we see a convergence of governments at all levels, at national and subnational levels coming together to really deliver on a transition out of our extraction-based economy.
And so having the leadership of states that want to convene outside of this kind of corporate-captured process, I think is a good thing. And I look forward to watching and seeing what happens and what the agenda is and how a just transition is defined in those conversations.
I think that there is hope because there is a really amazing declaration that came out of the People Summit. The People Summit, which gathered well over 20,000 people during the first full week of the COP, really put forward a declaration that not only delivered on a very clear analysis of the problems, but also put forward a very clear pathway, justice-oriented pathway and roadmap for how we face these challenges of the climate crisis.
And I think that the march that happened over the weekend after the People Summit of 70,000 people in the streets of Belem, uplifting calls for solidarity and action demands across many social movements around the world, lives and banners, calling for an end to environmental destruction, a feminist economy, respect of human rights, people over profit, a just transition. I think the hope really lies in the people’s power building process that the People’s Summit really delivered on.
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