Following a dramatic fire and evacuation yesterday afternoon, negotiations restarted and continued into the night, with the COP30 presidency putting out a series of draft texts, including the main “Mutirão” cover decision at 3am local time. What’s most contentious is what’s not in them.
There are no roadmaps for transitioning away from fossil fuels or for halting deforestation, as called for by Brazil’s president and around half of countries.
Because of these omissions and concerns on finance, a group of 29 countries – from Europe, Latin America and small islands – wrote a joint letter to the Brazilian COP presidency expressing their “deep concern” over what they call “a take it or leave it” proposal.
“The legacy of the Presidency in making COP30 a milestone moment will depend on the quality – rather than the speed – of the outcome,” they wrote, adding “a weak text would be remembered as a missed and regrettable opportunity and would undermine the credibility of the process, of the Presidency and of the [climate] regime itself”.
They added that they are “concerned by emerging narratives suggesting that ambitious countries are slowing progress” and “the challenge arises when a package that omits essential elements is presented with the expectation of unconditional acceptance, reflecting only what is acceptable to a limited few”.
They call for the Presidency to submit a revised proposal and not ask them to “accept only what the least ambitious are willing to allow”. EU Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said the text was “no way close to the ambition we need on mitigation” and “we are disappointed with the text currently on the table”.
All governments are scheduled to gather for a plenary meeting around 10 or 11am, where fireworks are likely.
Vague goal to triple adaptation finance included
The draft text does include a “call for efforts” for developed countries to triple adaptation finance compared to 2025 levels by 2030 and “urges” developed countries to “increase the trajectory” of their adaptation finance.
But it has no numbers attached to it and the EU’s climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said that that the EU is “willing to be ambitious on adaptation, but we would like to make clear that any language on finance should squarely be within the commitment reached last year on the [New Collective Quantified Goal on finance agreed at COP29]”.
The tripling idea emanated from the Least Developed Countries in Bonn in June and was later picked up by other developing countries. With indicators for the Global Goal on Adaptation being negotiated in a separate room, developing countries have argued that deciding on metrics to measure adaptation has little point if developed countries are not going to properly fund it.
“Calls” is the same verb used in the COP26 pledge – which is off track – for developed countries to double adaptation finance by 2025. “Calls” is one of the softer verbs used in climate talks, weaker than “instructs”, “urges”, “invites” or “encourages”.
And the baseline – and lack of a quantitative target – will likely raise concerns. Developing countries want a tripling from the amount of adaptation finance developed countries should be providing in 2025, which would be an increase from at least $40bn to $120bn a year.
If calculated from actual 2025 adaptation finance levels, analysis by CARE and Oxfam suggests that is likely to be around $25 billion, though exact figures will not be available until 2027. Using that baseline rather than the 2025 goal could shave about $50 billion a year off what developing countries can expect in 2030, which will not meet rapidly rising needs amid worsening droughts, floods, storms and heatwaves.
Tricky issues of trade, finance and emissions cuts covered
The ‘Mutirao’ text covers the contentious issues which competing negotiating blocks tried, and failed, to get on the COP agenda. It proposes outcomes including new initiatives, talks and calls – but nothing concrete and significant.
On emissions-cutting ambition – a small island and EU priority – the text proposes the creation of a “Global Implementation Accelerator” and a “Belem Mission to 1.5” – both aimed at helping countries improve their climate action. Governments are also “encourage[d]” to strengthen their existing NDC climate plans “at any time with a view to
enhancing its level of ambition”.
On finance – a developing country priority – the text “decides” to scale up finance for developing countries and “calls for enhanced efforts” to meet the COP29 promise to triple annual outflows of funds like the Green Climate Fund. And it promises a “roundtable” of senior ministers on how they’re meeting the finance goal decided at COP29.
On the nexus between trade and climate – an emerging economy priority to discuss – it requests three annual dialogues at the June Bonn sessions. An African trade negotiator told Climate Home News it was “a start” but disappointing that there is not a “full COP item on it”. “It’s like they want to kill it but in a polite way,” the negotiator said.
The post COP30 Bulletin Day 11: Countries revolt as new text leaves out fossil fuel roadmap appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP30 Bulletin Day 11: Countries revolt as new text leaves out fossil fuel transition roadmap
Fifty-six years after the first one rallied 20 million people across America, “we need to do things that make us feel more powerful.”
From our collaborating partner Living on Earth, public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by host Steve Curwood with environmental historian Adam Rome.
It was the second defeat for the Trump administration’s unusual litigation to stop states from acting on climate change.
In a setback to the Trump administration’s extraordinary legal campaign against state climate action, a federal judge threw out the Justice Department’s lawsuit seeking to prevent the state of Hawaii from suing oil companies for damages.
Judge Dismisses Trump Administration’s Bid to Block Hawaii Climate Lawsuit
Climate Change
DeBriefed 17 April 2026: Fossil-fuel power slumps | ‘Super’ El Niño warning | Afghanistan’s climate struggle
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Oil prices rebound
OIL UP AGAIN: Oil prices surged by more than 7% and back above $100 a barrel on Monday after US-Iran peace talks faltered and US president Donald Trump ordered the blockading of Iranian ports, reported BBC News. The jump came after prices fell last week in the wake of the announcement of a conditional two-week ceasefire, it said.
RESCUE PLANS: European countries unveiled plans to protect citizens and businesses from rising energy prices. Ireland announced a support package worth €505m, reported BBC News, while Germany agreed on measures worth €1.6bn, said Bloomberg. Meanwhile, Reuters reported on a draft EU proposal due to be unveiled next week that would see the bloc reduce electricity prices and roll out clean energy more quickly in response to the crisis.
UNSOLICITED ADVICE: Trump renewed his criticism of UK energy policy and called on the government to “drill, baby drill”, reported the Independent. Via social media, the president said: “Europe is desperate for energy, and yet the United Kingdom refuses to open North Sea oil, one of the greatest fields in the world. Tragic!!!” (See Carbon Brief’s recent factcheck of various false claims about the North Sea.)
Around the world
- C-WORD: Faced with pressure from the US, countries attending spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank were urged to “not mention the climate”, reported the Guardian. It added that plans to agree a new “climate change action plan” for the World Bank “may be shelved, along with substantive discussion of the climate crisis”.
- NEW DIRECTION: Péter Magyar’s landslide victory over Victor Orbán in Hungary’s elections “presents new opportunities for the country to reduce emissions and invest in clean energy”, reported Time. Carbon Brief explored what it means for European climate action.
- ‘FURNACE’ SUMMER: There was widespread coverage – including in the Boston Globe, ABC News, CNN, Euro Weekly News, Guardian and New Scientist – of warnings from meteorologists of the development of a “super” El Niño phenomenon that could ramp up temperatures and drive extreme weather.
- ANTALYA COP: The Turkish government unveiled the dates and venues for the “leaders’ summit” segment of November’s COP31 conference, according to Climate Home News.
- PACIFIC PRE-COP: Meanwhile, the Guardian reported that Tuvalu will host a special meeting of world leaders before the climate summit in Antalya.
€10bn a year
The amount of state support that French prime minister Sébastien Lecornu has pledged for electrification through to 2030 in a bid to reduce the country’s dependence on fossil fuels. In a speech late on Friday 10 April, Lecornu noted the figure amounted to a “doubling” of existing support.
Latest climate research
- Over a four-month period of 2023, more than 70% of editorials discussing net-zero in four right-leaning UK newspapers included “at least one misleading statement” | Climate Policy
- Air pollution from global transport currently has a net cooling effect that offsets 80% of the warming impact of the sector’s CO2 emissions | npj Climate and Atmospheric Science
- The incorporation of “observational constraints” into climate-model projections suggests that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation could weaken by 50% by 2100 in a medium-emissions scenario | Science Advances
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) found that global electricity generation from fossil fuels fell in the first month of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Across all countries with real-time electricity data outside of China, coal-fired power generation fell 3.5% and gas-fired power generation fell 4.0%, according to CREA. This was offset by a rise in solar power and wind generation, which increased by 14% and 8%, respectively. Hydropower generation also saw a small increase, the analysis showed, but this was “more than offset” by a drop in nuclear power generation.
Spotlight
How climate change affects Afghan lives
This week, Carbon Brief reports on the impact of climate change in Afghanistan, following deadly floods this year.
Earlier this month, heavy rains, flash floods and landslides struck large parts of Afghanistan, damaging thousands of homes, destroying crops, bridges and roads and taking nearly 100 lives.
The flooding – reported to have affected 74,000 people in 31 of 34 provinces – is the latest weather-related catastrophe to afflict the nation, whose communities have suffered the brunt of repeated flash floods, droughts and landslides in recent years.
Hameed Hakimi, non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center, told Carbon Brief the recent floods would hurt livelihoods and food security, noting reports of destroyed wheat and rice crops in the most affected eastern parts of the country. He said:
“This is common. For at least a decade now, [we have seen] these flash floodings and the damage that happens to rural life, farming, the disruption to crops…Flash flooding physically eats up the land. So, it not only damages where people live, but also people’s livelihoods, based on what they grow.”
The damage to crops will be felt acutely, he explained, given that food security in the landlocked nation is already strained by the blockage of its main transit trade artery through Pakistan and international sanctions that have frozen long-term development aid.
Speaking to Carbon Brief, Abdulhadi Achakzai, founding CEO of the Environmental Protection Trainings and Development Organization (EPTDO), an Afghan NGO, described flooding in Afghanistan as a “chronic situation”.
Achakzai, whose organisation runs projects that help urban and rural communities adapt to climate impacts, says climate change hurts the country in four key ways: extreme drought; extreme temperature; “natural hazards”, including landslides and dust storms; and, finally, flash flooding. He said:
“Climate change is a serious matter in Afghanistan. Every nation and every corner within this country is severely affected.”
Ranked 176 of 187 on the University of Notre Dame “global adaptation index”, Afghanistan is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change.
Average temperature across the country has increased from 12.2C in 1960 to 14.2C in 2024, according to the World Bank’s climate change knowledge portal. Drought is widespread, severe and persistent – harming food and water security in a nation of subsistence farmers.
Meanwhile, extreme weather events are the leading driver of internal displacement in the country. More than three-quarters of the 710,000 people who relocated within Afghanistan in 2024 did so driven by “environmental hazards”, such as drought and flood, according to a recent climate vulnerability assessment from the International Organization for Migration.
Finance struggles
Despite feeling the impacts of extreme weather, Afghanistan has been barred from UN climate negotiations and had limited access to climate finance since 2021. (The government attended COP29 in Baku as guests of the Azerbaijan hosts, but did not take part in formal negotiations.)
This is because the international community does not recognise the Taliban government, which resumed power in 2021, due to its record on human rights and its repression of women and girls in particular.
Almost all financing from key climate funds has been suspended, with the exception of a few projects where UN agencies and NGOs act simultaneously as a “requesting” and “implementation” partner.
Aid from UN climate funds fell from $5.9m annually over 2014-20 to $3.9m annually over 2021-24, according to recent analysis by the Berghof Foundation. Multilateral development banks provided a further $337m of funds badged as “climate finance” over 2021-23, it said.
By comparison, Afghanistan’s national climate plan, submitted to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2016, requested $17.4bn in climate finance over 2020-30. An updated national climate plan seen by Carbon Brief – completed in 2021 and later endorsed by the Taliban government, but not accepted by member governments of the UNFCCC – called for $20.6bn through to 2030.
Achakzai, whose organisation attends the COP climate summit each year in an observer capacity, has in the past been the sole delegate from Afghanistan to the conference.
He is calling on the UNFCCC to accept the country’s latest climate plan – and to find an “alternative solution” that would give the people of the country a voice in negotiations. He said:
“Every year we are losing hundreds, thousands of people because of climate change-related matters. Every year we are losing hundreds, thousands of hectares of crops. We are affected by [the decisions of] other countries. Why are we not part of this process?”
Watch, read, listen
BLOSSOM WATCHER: The Guardian reported on the successful search to find a researcher to continue Japan’s 1,200-year cherry blossom record.
COP OUT: Deutsche Welle spoke to experts to understand why India walked away from its bid to host COP33 in 2028.
‘BOMBS AND PORN’: The New Republic looked at who is set to benefit from the rapid build-out of energy-intensive AI datacentres.
Coming up
- 20-24 April: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) working group one report author meeting, Santiago, Chile
- 22 April: Earth day
- 22 April: Launch of third edition of the Lancet Countdown’s Europe report
- 24-29 April: First conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels, Santa Marta, Colombia
Pick of the jobs
- International Organization for Migration, senior thematic associate (climate action) | Salary: UN G-6 salary grade | Location: Dakar, Senegal
- Climate Action Network UK, several board member roles | Salary: Unknown. Location: Unknown
- UK Department for Energy, Food and Rural Affairs, G7 science lead | Salary: £56,375. Location: Bristol, London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne or York, UK
- Save the Children UK, senior climate change advisor | Salary: £62,000-£65,000. Location: London
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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The post DeBriefed 17 April 2026: Fossil-fuel power slumps | ‘Super’ El Niño warning | Afghanistan’s climate struggle appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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