Published

2 years ago

January 31, 2024

Alice Rush

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s Cropped.
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.

This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

Key developments

Amazon affairs

DRY SPELL: Climate change made last year’s agricultural drought in the Amazon around 30 times more likely to occur, according to a new rapid attribution study covered by Mongabay. The El Niño climate pattern “played a much smaller role” than many had assumed, the outlet said. World Weather Attribution scientists analysed data from the Amazon region between June and December last year, finding that both El Niño and climate change “contributed to reduced rainfall” during these months. But climate change “also led to high temperatures, significantly increasing water evaporation from plants and soils”, the outlet added. The report authors “predict that dry spells in the Amazon will become more frequent and harsher” under continued warming, Mongabay said.

CRIME COOPERATION: A $1.8m Amazon rainforest security centre will open in Manaus, Brazil in the coming months, Climate Home News reported. The centre is financed through the Amazon Fund and will “bring together Amazon nations in policing the rainforest, sharing intelligence and chasing criminals”, the outlet said. Climate Home News quoted Humberto Freire, head of the Brazil federal police’s environment and Amazon department, who said the centre will “fight drug trafficking and the smuggling of timber, fish and exotic animals, as well as deforestation and other environmental crimes”. It will also focus on illegal gold mining on Indigenous land, the outlet said.

LAND CONFLICT: Meanwhile, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said the federal government will “help resolve” a land conflict between Indigenous people and farmers that led to the fatal shooting of a tribal leader, Reuters reported. Maria Fatima de Andrade was shot and killed after 200 land owners tried to “evict an Indigenous community” from a farm in the state of Bahia and take the land, which is claimed by the Pataxó tribe, the newswire said. Another leader was also shot and brought to hospital, Reuters said, noting that the incident “underlines years of tensions between Brazil’s Indigenous peoples and agricultural settlers over land rights”. The country’s minister for Indigenous peoples, Sonia Guajajara, said the attack was “unacceptable”, the newswire added.

Offsets scrutinised

EU BAN: Labelling products and services as “climate neutral” or “climate positive” based on the use of carbon offsets will be banned in the EU from 2026, the Guardian reported. Carbon offsets involve a polluting entity, such as an airline, paying for emissions to be reduced elsewhere, such as by preventing deforestation. Companies often use carbon-offsetting to make claims that their products are “net-zero” or “environmentally friendly”, but evidence – previously set out in detail by Carbon Brief – shows these can be exaggerated or misleading. On 17 January, members of the European parliament voted to outlaw the use of terms such as “environmentally friendly”, “natural”, “biodegradable”, “climate neutral” or “eco” without evidence. The European parliament also introduced a total ban on using carbon-offsetting to back up such claims, the Guardian reported. The NGO Carbon Market Watch called the move “a big step towards more honest commercial practices and more informed European consumers”.

GUYANA CREDITS: Elsewhere, the Financial Times reported on Guyana’s plans to generate $3bn from forest carbon offset schemes by the end of the decade. Forests currently cover 85% of the South American country’s land surface, the FT said, with the government estimating they could generate credits representing 19.5bn tonnes of CO2 – more than the annual emissions of China. However, offsetting plans could be put at risk by conflict with neighbouring Venezuela, which has threatened to annex more than half of Guyana’s territory, the FT said. It added that most of Guyana’s forests are in the mineral-rich region of Essequibo, “a tract of Amazon jungle that would be a prime target for Venezuelan loggers and miners in the event of a takeover”.

COOKSTOVE CONTROVERSY: Finally, Heatmap was among several publications covering a new study finding that carbon offset schemes using so-called “clean” cookstoves are “kind of bogus”. Clean cookstove schemes involve the distribution of more efficient cooking equipment, with the goal of cutting reliance on traditional fuels, such as firewood – leading to lower emissions. The study from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, found that cookstove projects have generated, on average, nine times more carbon credits than they should have, Heatmap reported. The research was published in the journal Nature Sustainability.

Spotlight

French farmers and the far right

In this spotlight, Carbon Brief looks at the ongoing EU farmer protests and how far-right political groups could latch on to the outrage ahead of the European parliament elections in June.

Farmers have used tractors to blockade the streets of Berlin, Brussels and Bucharest in recent weeks. Farmers across the EU have been protesting against “competition from cheaper imports”, tightening environmental rules and rising production costs, according to Reuters.

This week, the French farmer protests escalated. Hundreds of tractors blocked off major roads into the country’s capital in what has been dubbed the “siege of Paris” by many media outlets, including BBC News. President Emmanuel Macron is “scrambling to end an escalating political and social crisis”, the Times said.

According to Le Monde, farmers are raising issues around “pesticides, free-trade agreements and wages”. France is an EU agricultural powerhouse, producing huge amounts of meat, dairy and wheat each year.

The nation’s newly appointed prime minister, Gabriel Attal, announced some concessions to farmers, including simplified technical procedures and a “progressive end to diesel fuel taxes for farm vehicles”, the Associated Press reported.

But the two main farmers’ unions said these measures did not go far enough and vowed to continue the protests.

The protests are the “first big test” of Attal’s leadership, Bloomberg noted. And, just months out from the European parliament elections, Euractiv said they are also the “first major political test for EU election candidates in France”.

Ahead of these elections, Politico said that right-wing parties in countries – such as France, Italy, the Netherlands and Germany – are “piggybacking on farmers’ noisy outrage”. Recent polling has suggested that there could be a “sharp turn to the right” in the June vote, Deutsche Welle reported.

Dr Gilles Ivaldi, a politics researcher at Sciences Po who has examined the far right in Europe, said that right-wing groups may use the farmer protests to “boost their electoral support” in France and elsewhere. He told Carbon Brief:

“What we see, particularly in France, is that the far right is seeking to capitalise on public discontent with the impact of the green transition, not only among farmers but also in social groups affected most by the economic cost of environmental policies.”

He said the French far right is “clearly trying to instrumentalise” the farmer protests to “mobilise against the government and the EU”. Sky News said the protests “are being seized upon by various groups”, including Marine Le Pen’s right-wing Rassemblement National party.

But Ivaldi noted that the far right’s EU election focus will mostly remain on topics such as immigration, the economy, the future of the EU and the bloc’s Green Deal. The “main factors” behind a potential right-wing surge will not come from agriculture alone. He added:

“Far-right parties are currently capitalising on the economic crisis and rise in prices, on the immigration issue, particularly growing concerns about the massive influx of refugees in Germany and, more broadly, the many anxieties caused by the war in Ukraine and geopolitical instability.”

News and views

LET’S EAT BALANCED’: A £4m advertising campaign aimed at convincing young people to eat more meat and dairy has been released in the UK, with support from the government, DeSmog reported. Timed to coincide with Veganuary (a popular challenge where people go vegan for January), the “Let’s Eat Balanced” campaign – voiced by British comedian Richard Ayoade – targets cinema screens, TVs, newspapers, social media channels and major supermarkets, DeSmog said. The campaign attempts to communicate the health benefits of eating meat and dairy, which “flies in the face of science”, experts told DeSmog. It was developed by the PR agency Ogilvy, which counts BP as a former client, and is run by the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, a UK government-appointed board funded by farmers’ levies.

AT SEA: Chile and Palau became the first countries to officially sign off on the High Seas Treaty, Euronews Green reported. Palau was the first to ratify the treaty governing the sustainable use and conservation of international waters since it was agreed last March, the outlet said. The Chilean senate “unanimously” voted in favour of ratification, which will become official “once it is published in the government’s official journal”. The outlet quoted Rebecca Hubbard, director of the High Seas Alliance, who said she hopes Palau “inspires” others to “redouble their efforts to ratify the treaty without delay so that it can enter force as soon as possible” once 60 nations sign off.

COLOMBIA FIRES: Colombia, due to host the biodiversity summit COP16 later this year, is currently battling intense fires in the mountains around the capital city of Bogotá, as dozens of other blazes have burned across the country, the New York Times reported. The president, Gustavo Petro, has declared a national disaster and asked for international help fighting the fires amid the country’s hottest January in three decades, according to the publication. It comes after the UN Convention on Biological Diversity announced that six cities in Colombia have expressed interest in hosting COP16. It is not yet clear if the fire emergency could affect Colombia’s ability to host the summit.

TAKE OFF: The world’s first plant using ethanol partly made with corn to produce “sustainable aviation fuel” opened in the US, Bloomberg reported. The $200m facility in Georgia plans to use the ethanol made from “American-grown corn, as well as from advanced technologies”, the outlet said. The facility’s opening spurred industry groups in Iowa – the US state that produces the most corn – to warn farmers and ethanol producers that they risk “missing out on the chance to significantly profit from the developing market for sustainable aviation fuel”, the outlet said. A 2022 study found that corn-based ethanol is likely more carbon-intensive overall than petrol, Reuters previously reported.

HUNT FOR POWER: Climate Home News investigated lithium mining in Zimbabwe, where Chinese companies have “flocked” to secure supplies of the lightweight metal, which is crucial for electric vehicle batteries. Lithium mining “brought the promise of jobs and a better life” for some, the piece outlined, but the country’s “poor progress on establishing robust resource governance” could prevent local communities from “seeing any of the benefits”. The country’s president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, “aspires to turn Zimbabwe into a battery manufacturing hub” to help “catapult the country into an upper-middle-income economy by 2030”, the outlet said.

CAMBODIA DEFORESTATION: A Mongabay investigation alleged that a vast forested wildlife sanctuary in Cambodia is being put at risk by mining concessions granted by the government to a “timber baron” who has previously been sanctioned over corruption in relation to natural resource extraction. In 2023, the Cambodian government announced a ban on extractive practices inside the Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary, a “sprawling carbon sink” home to 250,000 Indigenous peoples, according to Mongabay. However, the government made an exemption for companies that had already been awarded contracts, it added. This included the mining company of Try Pheap, “a powerful tycoon and adviser to the previous prime minister”, Mongabay said. Mongabay was unable to make contact with the Cambodian government or representatives of Try Pheap, despite repeated attempts.

Watch, read, listen

TREE GRIEF: Al Jazeera spoke to Palestinians who are grieving the loss of their olive trees, which have long been a symbol of the Palestinian spirit, amid Israel’s assault on Gaza.

HIT THE WAVES: The Climate Question, a BBC podcast, looked towards Northern Ireland and South Korea to see why tidal power is not more commonly used in renewable energy.

TINY WILD CAT: A long read by Mongabay explored how conservationists are working to save the guina, the Americas’ smallest wild cat species, native to Chile and Argentina.

‘BLACK MOSS’: The South China Morning Post examined the Chinese new year staple “fat choy” and how its overharvesting has turned parts of China “into desert”.

New science

Atmospheric CO2 emissions and ocean acidification from bottom-trawling
Frontiers in Marine Science

Bottom-trawling – the fishing practice where nets are scraped along the seabed – could have caused the release of up to 370m tonnes of CO2 between 1996 and 2020, a new study found. As well as being harmful for wildlife living near the bottom of the ocean, bottom-trawling disturbs carbon that was previously locked up for millenia, the researchers said. They used a combination of satellite data tracking fishing events and carbon cycling modelling to examine how bottom-trawling could cause CO2 emissions. The researchers also found that, in heavily trawled seas, the volume of carbon released is likely to be enough to drive ocean acidification – known to be harmful to a range of ocean wildlife, from coral reefs to fish.

Multi-decadal trends of low-clouds at the tropical montane cloud forests
Ecological Indicators

New research suggested that low-cloud cover is declining over tropical montane cloud forests because of climate change, posing an existential threat to these unique mountain ecosystems. The study used climate data to study changes to the proportion of sky covered by cloud cover and other climate variables in 521 tropical montane cloud forests across the world from 1997 to 2020. The researchers found that proportional cloud cover has declined at 70% of these sites, with cloud forests in central and South America and south-east Asia most affected. Decreases in cloud cover were associated with increases in surface temperature and decreases in soil moisture, “revealing that the tropical montane cloud forests’ climate is changing”, the researchers added.

Livestock increasingly drove global agricultural emissions growth from 1910-2015
Environmental Research Letters

Emissions from agriculture in 2015 were more than three times bigger than they were around one century prior, a study found. Scientists developed a dataset of global emissions from the agriculture sector across 10 time periods between 1910 and 2015. They found that agriculture emissions from livestock, soil management and fossil energy inputs “increased continuously” during this time by an overall factor of 3.5, with methane accounting for the majority of these emissions. The study said that reduced emissions intensity, especially for livestock, “partly counterbalanced” the overall rise in emissions to varying degrees. The researchers wrote that the findings “underscore the large potential of reducing livestock production and consumption for mitigating the climate impacts of agriculture”.

In the diary

6 February: European Commission to publish 2040 emissions-reduction target recommendations
12-17 February: Fourteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals | Samarkand, Uzbekistan
14 February: Indonesian general election

Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org

The post Cropped 31 January 2024: French farmers and the far right; Amazon affairs; EU offsetting ban appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Cropped 31 January 2024: French farmers and the far right; Amazon affairs; EU offsetting ban

Climate Change

Week Two at COP30: What Happens When the World Can’t Agree

Published

7 hours ago

November 23, 2025

Alice Rush

I’m writing this from Boston, not Belém. I left COP30 a day before it ended—exhausted, frustrated, and strangely hopeful all at once.

Brazil’s presidency pushed hard to close the deal, with President Lula returning to witness what they hoped would be a historic finish. Draft texts circulated rapidly. But negotiators were still debating language that over 80 countries wanted included, while others refused. The venue briefly shut down after a fire, then reopened. Civil society held a “funeral for fossil fuels” in the streets while diplomats removed any mention of a fossil fuel phase-out from the draft agreement.

This is what Week Two taught me: global climate policy is messy, imperfect, and maddeningly slow. And yet, something important is still happening.

The Hard Truth About Consensus

Here’s what didn’t make it into the final text: a roadmap for a fossil fuel phase-out. Over 80 countries pushed for it. Small island nations whose existence depends on it advocated for it. Youth activists and Indigenous leaders demanded it. And it was removed.

Some negotiating blocs, including the Arab Group and Like-Minded Developing Countries, opposed any language on fossil fuels in the final agreement. In consensus-based negotiations, that’s all it takes. One bloc says no, and the whole thing stalls.

But here’s what educators and students need to understand: the absence of that language doesn’t mean the conversation isn’t shifting. Three years ago, fossil fuel phase-out wasn’t even on the agenda. Now it’s what over 80 countries are fighting for. That’s movement, even when it doesn’t feel like it.

The Shift No One’s Talking About

Here’s what I’ve learned after attending multiple global forums: the real negotiations aren’t happening where you think they are.

Brazil’s aggressive push to finish on time revealed something important — when host countries center their own priorities (in this case, Indigenous leadership and Amazon protection), it fundamentally changes what’s “negotiable.” The fossil fuel language got removed, yes, but Indigenous participation went from roughly 200 people at previous COPs to over 900 at COP30. That’s a 350% increase.

This is strategic presence in action. When you change who’s in the room, you change what’s possible — even if outcomes aren’t immediate.

After years of working in global meetings and events, I’ve developed what I call the Presence-to-Policy approach. It has four elements: who’s in the room (strategic presence), how they engage (cultural intelligence), what networks form (relationship architecture), and what outcomes emerge (policy influence). COP30 demonstrated this perfectly — increase Indigenous presence from 200 to 900+ participants, and you don’t just add voices. You shift what’s considered legitimate knowledge, what matters as a priority, and which solutions are explored.

For educators: this is the lesson. Representation isn’t symbolic. It’s tactical.

When Money Becomes the Sticking Point

Adaptation finance became one of the headline topics this year — and one of the most contentious. Countries were pushed to triple adaptation finance to $120 billion, but by the end of Week Two, no new concrete commitments emerged. The Adaptation Fund is facing a significant deficit while wealthy nations negotiate how much they’ll actually contribute.

This is where cultural intelligence matters. In many Western diplomatic contexts, finance discussions and moral discussions often operate separately. But many Global South delegations frame climate finance as reparations, as justice, as basic accountability. When you understand that framing, you know why these negotiations feel so urgent, so non-negotiable.

One encouraging shift: finance ministries and environment ministries are finally working together on climate issues. Initiatives like the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action are bringing economic decision-makers into conversations previously dominated by environmental officials. This convergence matters more than most headlines suggest — it’s the structural change that enables everything else.

What Stayed Strong

Despite frustrations, some things held. Indigenous representation remained centered throughout Week Two. Over 900 Indigenous participants continued to lead conversations, present traditional knowledge systems, and refuse to be sidelined. Even when access to decision-making spaces remained imperfect, they fundamentally changed what this COP prioritized.

Civil society showed up relentlessly. The “funeral for fossil fuels” wasn’t just theater — it was thousands refusing to let negotiators ignore what science demands. Health workers added urgent voices, bringing research showing that fossil fuels drive 7 million premature deaths annually from air pollution alone. Yet even as medical professionals demonstrated direct connections between fossil fuels and human suffering, these fuels remained largely absent from official negotiations.

For Climate Generation’s Work

This connects directly to overcoming disinformation. Because one form of disinformation is the narrative that global forums are useless, that diplomacy doesn’t work, that nothing ever changes. The truth is more complex: change happens slowly, unevenly, and through sustained pressure from multiple directions.

And when negotiations fail to produce what’s needed, localized action becomes even more critical. That’s where actual implementation happens — in communities, classrooms, and organizations that refuse to wait for international consensus. This is Climate Generation’s approach to personalizing and localizing climate change action in practice.

Three Classroom Applications

For educators working with Climate Generation’s mission, here are practical ways to use COP30:

1. Teach coalition-building, not just science. Have students map the 80+ country alliance pushing for fossil fuel language. What do Small Island Developing States, European nations, and Latin American countries have in common? This teaches geopolitics through climate.

2. Explore the disinformation narrative. The “COPs don’t work” message serves fossil fuel interests. Help students analyze who benefits from climate action paralysis. This builds critical thinking about the systems that perpetuate the crisis.

3. Examine power through presence. Compare Indigenous participation at previous COPs with that at COP30. What changed when representation increased by 350%? How did this shift priorities? This connects directly to Climate Generation’s work centering anti-racism and systemic equity.

What COP30 Means for Antalya

COPs are often judged immediately and deemed “failures.” But their real impact shows up 2-3 years later when relationships built here materialize into policy shifts.

Watch what happens at COP31 in Antalya, Turkey, next year. The over-80-country coalition pushing for fossil fuel language won’t disappear. The health workers making connections between fossil fuels and human suffering won’t stop. The finance and environment ministries learning to work together will keep building bridges.

Climate Generation’s work preparing the next generation matters because these young people will inherit these coalitions, these relationships, these incremental shifts. They need to understand not just the science of climate change, but the mechanics of how power actually moves.

That’s not taught in most classrooms. But it should be.

Coming Home

As I sit in Boston processing these two weeks, I keep thinking about that environmental justice leader from the Gulf Coast, the Indigenous forest guardians who traveled days to make their voices heard, and the youth activists holding a funeral for fossil fuels in the streets.

They’re not waiting for perfect agreements. They’re building movements that outlast individual COPs, that shift power gradually, that create change from multiple directions at once.

That’s what Climate Generation does — it builds sustained capacity to act through centering marginalized communities, working with BIPOC partners on the convergence of racial and climate justice, and engaging educators and students where disinformation is most prevalent.

COP30 didn’t deliver everything it needed to. But it delivered relationships, knowledge, pressure, and possibility. That’s not nothing.

The work continues — in Belém, in Antalya next year, in communities worldwide, and in every classroom — refusing to accept an inadequate status quo.

___

About This Partnership: Climate Generation provided COP30 credentials to Terra40 in exchange for on-the-ground insights and educational content. Learn more at climategen.org. Learn more about Terra40’s global climate engagement work at terra40.com.

The post Week Two at COP30: What Happens When the World Can’t Agree appeared first on Climate Generation.

Week Two at COP30: What Happens When the World Can’t Agree

Climate Change

COP30 fails to land deal on fossil fuel shift but triples finance for climate adaptation

Published

18 hours ago

November 22, 2025

Alice Rush

After all-night talks, governments at COP30 agreed on Saturday to launch limited initiatives to strengthen emissions-cutting plans, as well as tripling finance to help poor countries cope with worsening climate change impacts by 2035. But the Amazon summit’s outcomes fell short on the global transition away from oil, gas and coal.

In an effort to deliver something on fossil fuels, the Brazilian presidency complemented the final Belém package by promising to create roadmaps on transitioning away from fossil fuels and protecting forests – as requested by Brazilian President Lula da Silva.

Brazil tabled its roadmap proposal at the eleventh hour as a compromise solution after some nations – especially European and Latin American states – voiced disappointment that a formal deal was not reached on one after strong pushback from large fossil fuel producers led by Saudi Arabia.

Brazil’s roadmap process will sit outside the UN climate regime. It will be supported by other countries such as Colombia, which is organising the first global conference on the issue, said COP30 president André Aranha Corrêa do Lago. He added that he will also craft a second roadmap to halt and reverse deforestation and report back to the COP on them both.

“We know some of you had greater ambition for some of the issues at hand,” Corrêa do Lago told a closing plenary. “I will try not to disappoint you.”

Nov 21, 2025

News

Colombia seeks to speed up a “just” fossil fuel phase-out with first global conference

The summit, co-hosted with the Netherlands, aims to help countries work out a fair path to stop using planet-heating oil, gas and coal – a sticking point at the COP30 talks in Brazil

Read more
Nov 21, 2025

Politics

COP30 Bulletin Day 11: With talks in “crisis”, countries urged to unite for a deal

Hopes for an ambitious deal fade as talks drag on into Friday night, with rifts over a missing fossil fuel transition roadmap and adaptation finance

Read more
Nov 20, 2025

News

Rich nations push back on calls for new just transition mechanism

The Belém Action Mechanism’s backers say it would fortify efforts to shield workers and communities hurt by fallout from the clean energy shift, but developed countries are resistant to the proposal

Read more

After week-long row, COP30 fails to mention fossil fuels

After more than 80 countries called for a roadmap to phase down oil, coal and gas to be kickstarted at COP30, observers said fossil fuel heavyweights, including Gulf States, Russia and India, had insisted it stay out of the final Global Mutirão decision adopted in Belém, along with any explicit mention of fossil fuels.

On Friday, the European Union and the UK had fought hard against that opposition but ultimately had to settle for two new processes that are meant to reinforce ambition and implementation of countries’ national climate plans (NDCs), with reports and a high-level dialogue due next year.

Before the final plenary, EU Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said it had been “an intense and sometimes difficult week and evening”, adding “we would have liked to have more”. But, he said, “we think we should support [the COP outcome] because at least it is going in the right direction.”

The Mutirão text encourages countries ”to strengthen their existing nationally determined contribution at any time with a view to enhancing its level of ambition” and calls on them to accelerate their implementation “while striving to do better collectively and cooperatively”.

In a last-minute push, Colombia – which championed a declaration to transition away from oil, coal and gas – told the closing plenary the country was “left with no other choice” but to object to the outcome of the dedicated mitigation track on emission-cutting efforts unless a mention to fossil fuels was added. After the presidency tried to dismiss concerns, Colombia insisted and the plenary was suspended.

The Colombian delegate calls for the inclusion of fossil fuels in the final decision. Photo: UN Climate Change – Kiara Worth

Developed countries – especially the EU – had felt isolated in their push for stronger language on emission-cutting measures after failing to win vocal support from traditional allies such as the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and the Least Developed Countries (LDCs).

That was mainly because of Europe’s inability to make a compelling offer on finance for adaptation, negotiators and observers said.

“Adaptation COP” triples finance for climate resilience

A demand from the world’s poorest nations to triple adaptation finance was agreed, but only by a deadline of 2035 rather than 2030, and without a clear number.

However, the main Mutirão decision urges developed countries to increase their collective provision of climate finance for adaptation to the Global South. It also sets up a two-year process on climate finance as well as a high-level ministerial roundtable to discuss progress towards meeting the new climate finance goal agreed last year at COP29.

That COP29 goal sets a target for rich nations to provide $300 billion a year for climate action by 2035 – and the tripling of adaptation finance decided in Belem will be part of this, as the EU had insisted.

“It is very clear that we should stand shoulder to shoulder with the poorest nations,” the EU’s climate chief Wopke Hoekstra said before the final conference session began.

Some African ministers gave the outcome on adaptation finance a cautious welcome. But many countries – including the EU, some Latin American states, Switzerland and Canada – were angry about a text that adopted indicators to measure progress on adaptation efforts.

They made interventions rejecting the decision on a new Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) – expected to be a flagship outcome at this COP – which included a rewritten and shortened list of metrics to measure progress on climate resilience originally developed by technical experts.

Jiwoh Abdulai, environment minister of Sierra Leone, said they had worked tirelessly to craft a set of indicators that would reflect “lived realities” on the ground, but are now left with “unclear, unmeasurable and – in many cases – unusable” ones.

“For us, this is not technical, this is about our survival,” he added before the plenary was suspended.

COP30 President Andre Correa do Lago in consultations after the closing plenary was suspended. Photo: Ueslei Marcelino/COP30

Trade and just transition land wins in Belém deal

As the Belem political package was adopted to muted applause from countries, campaigners at the back of the room whooped with joy as the conference approved a decision on just transition.

They and developing countries had swung behind a new “Belém Action Mechanism”, intended to serve as a hub to support countries in taking concrete steps to ensure their shift from dirty to clean energy systems is fair and equitable.

The Mutirão decision also includes trade, another key issue that was not on the official negotiating agenda, along with long-term climate finance and the gap in emissions-cutting ambition.

Annual dialogues will take place at the next three mid-year Bonn sessions on boosting international cooperation on trade – an emerging economy priority in the context of a carbon levy on imports proposed by the EU.

Experts said the inclusion of trade in a COP decision was a big win for China. “For the first time, trade is elevated alongside mitigation and finance as a critical third pillar for climate progress,” said Kate Logan, director of China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, adding that this “is likely to remain a key arena for China’s influence” in the climate regime.

The decision reaffirms that “measures taken to combat climate change, including unilateral ones, should not constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or a disguised restriction on international trade”.

The post COP30 fails to land deal on fossil fuel shift but triples finance for climate adaptation appeared first on Climate Home News.

https://www.climatechangenews.com/2025/11/22/cop30-brazil-deal-fossil-fuel-transition-fails-triples-finance-climate-adaptation/

Climate Change

COP30 fails to land deal on fossil fuel transition but triples finance for climate adaptation

Published

19 hours ago

November 22, 2025

Alice Rush

“We know some of you had greater ambition for some of the issues at hand,” Corrêa do Lago told a closing plenary. “I will try not to disappoint you.”

Nov 21, 2025

News

Colombia seeks to speed up a “just” fossil fuel phase-out with first global conference

The summit, co-hosted with the Netherlands, aims to help countries work out a fair path to stop using planet-heating oil, gas and coal – a sticking point at the COP30 talks in Brazil

Read more
Nov 21, 2025

Politics

COP30 Bulletin Day 11: With talks in “crisis”, countries urged to unite for a deal

Hopes for an ambitious deal fade as talks drag on into Friday night, with rifts over a missing fossil fuel transition roadmap and adaptation finance

Read more
Nov 20, 2025

News

Rich nations push back on calls for new just transition mechanism

The Belém Action Mechanism’s backers say it would fortify efforts to shield workers and communities hurt by fallout from the clean energy shift, but developed countries are resistant to the proposal

Read more

After week-long row, COP30 fails to mention fossil fuels

That was mainly because of Europe’s inability to make a compelling offer on finance for adaptation, negotiators and observers said.

“Adaptation COP” triples finance for climate resilience

A demand from the world’s poorest nations to triple adaptation finance was agreed, but only by a deadline of 2035 rather than 2030, and without a clear number.

“It is very clear that we should stand shoulder to shoulder with the poorest nations,” the EU’s climate chief Wopke Hoekstra said before the final conference session began.

Poorest countries appeal for more adaptation finance at COP30

“For us, this is not technical, this is about our survival,” he added before the plenary was suspended.

Trade and just transition land wins in Belém deal

As the Belem political package was adopted to muted applause from countries, campaigners at the back of the room whooped with joy as the conference approved a decision on just transition.

The Mutirão decision also includes trade, another key issue that was not on the official negotiating agenda, along with long-term climate finance and the gap in emissions-cutting ambition.