Global climate talks ‘down to the wire’ as last day of COP30 kicks off
Global climate talks are headed for the finish line as a major compromise on exiting fossil fuels, climate ambition and adaptation finance is taking shape.
“We are down to the wire,” said the UN’s António Guterres on Thursday, addressing the annual COP30 conference which is being held on Brazil this year. As if to support his point, the venue promptly caught fire that afternoon – all attendees had to be evacuated.
Talks are scheduled to go until 2 p.m. European time on Friday, but regularly overrun.
Delegations are ready to pounce on a missing draft text from the Brazilians that strikes the right notes on two issues: a fossil fuel exit roadmap and a concrete figure for finance to help poorer countries adapt to a warmer an increasingly unstable. Agreement of the final wording could be stymied by various countries taking a hard line on these central issues.
All eyes, therefore, will be on the forthcoming “Mutirão” decision – the Brazilian term for collective action – that ought to satisfy the many countries at loggerheads “because it turns into a package and then it is easier to do the trade-offs”, as Linda Kalcher at the think tank Strategic Perspectives put it.
No more money
The EU’s main line: a deal from last year to boost global climate finance to $300 billion is off limits. “We don’t think we should be tempted in any way to open [it],” said Wopke Hoekstra, the bloc’s climate commissioner, on Wednesday.
“Europe is still at roughly 30% of all the money that is being put on the table. That is more than our fair share,” he added.
EU countries have largely focused on a new road map out of fossil fuels – which would affirm a decision struck at COP28 two years earlier to ‘transition away’ from coal, oil and gas. Over 80 countries have signed up to it, including nations like Norway and Brazil, who together account for 7% of global oil production, according to the news website CarbonBrief.
The underlying motivation: currently submitted climate targets see global emissions fall by just 12% compared to their peak levels by 2035 – which means that, without a ratcheting up of ambition, the planet is on track to exceed 2°C of global warming, the upper limit specified the Paris Agreement ten years ago.
Meanwhile, developing countries are pressing a own core demand of their own: €120 billion a year from rich nations to help them adapt to a rapidly heating planet. How much finance industrialised economies and their investment banks are prepared to cough up could decide what the final compromise will look like.
Turkey has won the bid to host COP31 next year after rival Australia conceded. In a compromise that some say favours Ankara, it will be up to Canberra to actually chair next year’s talks. In 2027 that talks will head to Africa, with Ethiopa having secured the right to host the 32nd iteration of the conference.
(rh)