After an opening call by Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to discuss a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels at COP30, countries are starting to rally behind the idea, with experts saying it could lead to an agreement in Belém to move forward on the idea.
Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva hosted ministers from the UK and Germany at Brazil’s COP pavilion on Wednesday to launch a call for a planned shift away from fossil fuels, with support from Denmark, Kenya, Colombia, France and the Marshall Islands.
“We need a dialogue with everyone – producers, consumers and those who are affected by our actions. We need a compass to guide us away from our dependency on fossil fuels,” said Silva, who first suggested the idea in London in June.
UK climate envoy Rachel Kyte told the COP30 event that “there is a way for us to walk out of here with a roadmap to manage the transition away from fossil fuels, [to] manage their just transitions, but also manage what was set out in the Paris Agreement.”
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“Jigsaw” of initiatives
Observers at the UN climate talks told Climate Home News that while several proposals for a fossil fuel transition roadmap have emerged, it remains unclear how they could land in the formal climate talks, as the topic is not on the negotiating agenda.
An agreement to start working on a roadmap could be included in a cover decision for the talks – a general text brokered by the COP presidency at some summits – or in any of the established formal negotiations on cutting emissions, they said.
The Environmental Integrity Group – composed of Mexico, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Korea, Switzerland and Georgia – also expressed support for the Brazil-led initiative and have even submitted a proposal to discuss a roadmap in the negotiating rooms.
But the EIG proposal was rejected by oil-producing countries in the Arab group – among them Saudi Arabia, which last year blocked all mentions of fossil fuels at COP29. Major coal producers in the Like Minded Developing Countries (LMDCs) – among them China and India – are also opposed.
Colombia has opted for a different approach, seeking support for a political declaration on a planned fossil fuel transition outside of the UN climate talks, which is so far backed by small islands and Panama, one observer told Climate Home News.
The country also announced on Thursday a plan to make the Colombian Amazon free of fossil fuels and large-scale mining, which picks up on campaigners’ calls to create oil and gas “exclusion zones” such as across biodiversity-rich areas. Colombia will also host a fossil fuel phase-out summit in 2026.
The “jigsaw” of initiatives and the “diplomatic heavyweights” supporting it suggests there is a “growing sense that this needs to be part of the final package” in Belém, according to Romain Ioualalen, global policy campaign manager with Oil Change International.
“Now the job for the next few days is giving confidence to the [COP30] presidency that there is a broad base of support for this,” he said, adding that countries also need to pin down how such a roadmap could look.
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COP host lukewarm
But while Brazil’s political leadership is pushing the fossil fuel transition up the agenda, the COP30 presidency’s top diplomats have distanced themselves. On Wednesday, COP30 President André Correa do Lago said it was not an item on the agenda, and COP30 CEO Ana Toni reiterated the same point on Thursday, after several countries had voiced support for the discussions.
“The topic is not – at the moment at least – in the negotiations, and we will need to see how parties come together,” Toni told a press conference in Belém.
Brazil has been caught up in controversy for awarding a drilling license to state-oil company Petrobras near the mouth of the Amazon River just days before COP30. The Amazon Basin has emerged as a new oil and gas frontier, with growing production plans.
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The South American country is also one of the 20 major oil and gas producers planning to expand their fossil fuel output in the next decade, according to this year’s Production Gap report, and is set for one of the largest oil expansions alongside Saudi Arabia and the US.
Meanwhile, Indigenous activists who have been affected by new oil and gas drilling in their territories ramped up calls for this COP to address fossil fuels.
Olivia Bisa, leader of the Chapra nation in the Peruvian Amazon whose land is crossed by a large oil pipeline, told an event at COP30 that Indigenous people are “giving their lives” fighting back.
“Some weeks ago, a brother leader in my territory was murdered. I don’t want his death to remain unpunished, just for defending life. We are defenders of life,” she said. “We need support in this fight – not just at COPs but in our territories where we’re exposing our lives.”
The post At COP30, roadmap away from fossil fuels gains ground – but next step unclear appeared first on Climate Home News.
At COP30, roadmap away from fossil fuels gains ground – but next step unclear
Next week, diplomats from around the world will descend on Yerevan, Armenia, to negotiate a series of decisions under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
Between 19 and 30 October, 196 parties will gather to hammer out the precise wording of the dozens of legal texts that make up the decisions under the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the CBD.
This year’s summit is particularly significant, as it marks the halfway point between the agreement of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the deadline for achieving its targets.
The CBD has found that countries are currently not on track to meet 22 out of the framework’s 23 targets.
During the fortnight, delegates will also be negotiating decisions relating to the two supplemental protocols to the CBD: the Cartagena Protocol, which covers biosafety; and the Nagoya Protocol, which covers access and benefit-sharing for the use of genetic resources.
(The Cartagena and Nagoya Protocols, which are each governed by a “meeting of the parties”, or “MOP”, have fewer parties than the CBD as a whole, with 173 and 141, respectively.)
Carbon Brief is tracking the progress of countries towards consensus on dozens of negotiating texts using the interactive table below.
The tracker includes texts from the COP, as well as the MOPs for the Cartagena and Nagoya protocols. It also includes draft decisions from the most recent subsidiary body meetings, as these form the starting point for the negotiations in Yerevan.
The CBD has three subsidiary bodies: the subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice (SBSTTA), the subsidiary body on implementation (SBI) and the subsidiary body on article 8(j) and other provisions (SB8J).
SB8J focuses on issues related to the Indigenous peoples and local communities. It was established at COP16 in Cali, Colombia, in 2024.
The first two columns of the interactive tracker list the topic of each agenda item and the relevant body, with subsequent columns including dates, page counts and links to the original documents.
The table is searchable and can be sorted using the arrows in the header.
Areas of disagreement in UN draft texts are denoted by square brackets. Counting the brackets in a particular iteration of a text therefore gives a sense of how far parties are from reaching consensus.
The bracket column is colour-coded, with dark green indicating a low number of brackets and red indicating a high number of brackets remaining.
Texts can also present parties with choices using “options” or alternatives (“alt”), which are counted together in the sixth column of the table.
The key discussions in Yerevan will centre around two agenda items in particular. The first is the global review, which will assess progress towards the GBF and make recommendations for accelerating action.
The second is finance, which can be separated into two parts: resource mobilisation and the financial mechanism. On resource mobilisation, biodiverse global south countries are likely to push for an increased amount of international finance for conservation.
Disagreement over the creation of the financial mechanism led to the suspension of COP16 in Cali in October 2024, as parties failed to find agreement on the mobilisation of finance before the end of the summit.
Global south countries want the establishment of a separate financial mechanism under the control of the CBD; global north countries largely prefer to maintain the existing mechanism, which sits under the Global Environment Facility.
At the resumed session of COP16 in Rome in early 2025, countries agreed on a roadmap that would lead to the establishment of a permanent mechanism.
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The post Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP17 biodiversity summit appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP17 biodiversity summit
A beacon of love
On an outer island of Fiji, two thousand nautical miles from Sydney, is a shining light of hope and resilience for our troubled world.
The island of Kioa is home to a Tuvaluan community who migrated from their atoll of Vaitupu in the late 1940s. It is a land of warm hearts, big smiles, and deep cultural roots; a place where the sound of a conch still summons the island together, where islanders paddle out to fish in carved outrigger canoes, and healthy happy children walk barefoot to school.
Here, culture is life. Kioans live sustainably through their traditional knowledge and practices. The island is alive with song, dance and the rhythms of a life tied to the tides, the winds, and the seasons.
Facing the future
Greenpeace has been lucky to have a relationship with Kioa for a number of years now, and we are continually learning from this remarkable community.
Last week, as part of our Voyaging Oceania project, we returned to the island. Our purpose was twofold —- to carry messages from the island to leaders gathering in Nadi this week for the Pacific Pre-COP, and to support the Kioa community in their efforts to improve water security for the island.
Unlike Tuvalu itself, with its eight atolls, Kioa is a mountainous, forested and richly fertile island. It will remain habitable far into the future. Kioans did not initially migrate from Vaitupu due to climate change, but the move was prophetic. They now have a lifeboat.
However, even Kioa faces challenges on our rapidly warming planet, in particular when it comes to water. Climate change is shifting once reliable rainfall patterns. On top of this, the island is already feeling the effect of this year’s intensifying El Niño event, which for Fiji means reduced rainfall and prolonged dry spells.
Right now, fresh water has to be carefully rationed, and is only available for a few hours a day. During last week’s visit aboard our campaigning ship Oceania, Greenpeace was privileged to work with the Kioa community on a new solar-powered water distribution project for the island.
Designed and led by the island, the project involves using a solar pump to move water from a reliable source to a storage tank and then using gravity to distribute the water around the village.
It was a lesson in how local knowledge and ingenuity can be the backbone of today’s climate solutions. To build a dam around the source, the local community knew the exact spot where they could gather gravel at low tide to mix with the cement. They took only what was needed, knowing that all resources must be carefully conserved. Kioa has no roads and no machinery, and it was an all-of-island effort to carry the materials up to the project site, including many heavy bags of sand and rock.
Such projects truly bring to life the vision of a resilient, locally-led, fossil fuel free Pacific.