Climate summit goes into overtime amid growing fears of failure

Negotiations at the COP30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belém have now passed the official deadline of Friday at 6 p.m. Brazilian time.

The world’s countries will therefore continue their discussions in a delayed overtime phase that could stretch well into the weekend, as they are still far from reaching an agreement.

As time goes by, fears of a flop are growing on several fronts.

For the Colombian delegation – one of the countries leading the push for CO₂ reductions – the presidency’s draft agreement is far too unambitious.

“If it remains like this, it’s a failure,” Colombia’s environment minister, Irene Velez Torres, tells Ritzau.

The Brazilian presidency published the latest draft agreement early Friday morning, but after a full day of negotiations, no visible progress has been made, Irene Velez Torres reports.

Together with a coalition of over 80 countries, including Denmark and the EU, she is pushing for the climate summit to agree on a pathway away from fossil fuels.

The draft agreement does not include this, as the summit enters overtime.

“They are trying to erase the elephant in the room, which is the need to phase out fossil fuels,” says the Colombian environment minister.

The Brazilian hosts have given grand speeches filled with green slogans, but they have yet to turn words into action, she says.

“There is no clear delivery. The text says we must be ambitious, but those are empty words unless accompanied by action.”

From the EU’s side, frustration is also running high, and Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra has warned that Europeans are ready to go home without an agreement if CO₂ reductions are not included.

“What is on the table is unacceptable, and we are so far from where we need to be that we must unfortunately say we are looking at a ‘no-deal’ scenario,” he told Ritzau earlier on Friday.

As the official deadline passes, Danish climate minister Lars Aagaard is negotiating on behalf of the EU presidency with the Brazilian hosts and representatives of the world’s other major groups.

Here, attempts are being made to craft a compromise that can satisfy the parties.

After this, the climate summit awaits the Brazilians’ next proposal for an agreement text.