African and Arab nations are calling for a two-year postponement of an agreement on a set of indicators designed to track countries’ progress in adapting to climate change – a deal that is expected to be one of COP30’s flagship outcomes.

As seen in a new draft text on the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) issued in Belém on Wednesday, the two groups of countries have raised concerns on some proposed indicators which they argue could unfairly shift financial responsibility for climate adaptation onto developing countries.

They say the indicators which are meant to track progress in adapting to climate change are “not consistent with the Paris Agreement” because they include domestic budgets and national spending as part of adaptation finance.

This risks blurring the line between developing countries’ own money and the international support they are supposed to receive under the Paris accord, they argue. Asking governments to count their own spending towards global adaptation funding could place a further burden on poorer countries’ already limited resources, they fear.

An additional concern is that the proposed indicators related to expenditure tracking and national budget allocations could undermine countries’ sovereignty on how they spend their fiscal resources.

Africa needs over $50 billion a year to adapt to climate change. In 2019 alone, countries spent 0.95% of their governments’ budgets on adaptation – and in some countries like Botswana and Seychelles, it gobbled up 4% of their GDP, according to the 2023 UN Adaptation Gap Report.

In the new draft text, countries also note that the indicators fail to measure the quality and accessibility of climate finance. Observers told Climate Home News that this is especially key for African nations who want to avoid indicators that could set unrealistic criteria for accessing limited funds or locking them into high interest loans.

Responding to a question from Climate Home News, Richard Muyungi, chair of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) said the indicators must be linked to finance, adding that this funding has to come from the international community so that developing countries are “supported” rather than being forced to use their own money to adapt to climate change.

The AGN wants the indicators to be shaped by government negotiators over the next two years so that they can be made more realistic, fair and reflective of national capacities.

An adviser to a North African government noted that deferring the adoption of the GGA indicators would not stop countries from using them to measure their adaptation progress, even though that would not be reported internationally in a formal way.

Analysts: NDCs have made little difference to projected warming

Last year, Climate Action Tracker (CAT) said the world was on course for 2.6C of global warming.

Since then, over 100 countries have updated their NDC climate targets. Now, CAT says, the world is on course for…still 2.6C.

“In other words, the 2035 NDCs so far submitted don’t change the dial in terms of keeping warming to 1.5˚C,” the analysts concluded.

On the other hand, as New Climate Institute’s Niklas Höhne says, CAT’s 2015 report predicted we were on course for 3.6C of warming. So “the Paris Agreement works”, he argues. Just not enough to hold global warming to its lowest limit of 1.5C, which the UN has now admitted will be exceeded, at least temporarily.

Also released today, Exeter University’s global carbon budget report projects – although with little confidence – that total carbon dioxide emissions in 2025 will be very slightly lower than last year.

While emissions from fossil fuels are likely to rise slightly in 2025 – with a big increase in the US as coal rebounds – emissions from land use look like they will fall.

That’s thanks partly to COP30’s Brazilian hosts, as deforestation rates in the Amazon have declined and are at their lowest level this season since 2014.

London Metropolitan University geography professor Julia Pongratz said this “demonstrates the success that environmental policies can achieve”.

Even if emissions have peaked though, the global average temperature will keep on heating up at least until we reach net zero, when no more greenhouse gas emissions are added to the atmosphere than are taken out by forests and other ways of removing them.

Amnesty study maps fossil fuel threat to health and human rights

From artisanal fishing communities in Brazil to Indigenous land defenders in Canada and coastal communities in Senegal, living near fossil fuel infrastructure is putting the health and human rights of hundreds of millions of people at risk, according to a new report from Amnesty International.

The global rights organisation teamed up with researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder in a mapping exercise showing that at least 2 billion people – a quarter of them children – live within 5km of more than 18,000 fossil fuel operations across 170 countries. Those include oil drilling and fracking sites, gas pipelines and coal power plants.

Among the 2 billion people, at least 463 million live within 1km of the sites, exposing them to much higher environmental and health risks, says the report released on Wednesday on the sidelines of COP30.

Exploration, processing, site development, transportation and decommissioning of fossil fuels have led to severe pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as damaging key natural areas, it found, turning communities and ecosystems into “sacrifice zones”.

Studies show that exposure to sites where fossil fuels are produced and used raises the risks of negative health impacts including cancer, heart disease and birth problems, the report adds.

“This report provides yet more evidence of the imperative for states and corporate actors to ’defossilise’ the global economy to mitigate the worst impacts of the climate crisis on human rights,” Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, said in a statement.

The study shows that 16% of global fossil fuel infrastructure is sited on Indigenous territories, while around a third of the total overlaps with one or more ‘critical ecosystems’ that are rich in biodiversity or important carbon sinks.

The report warns that, despite governments pledging to transition away from fossil fuels two years ago at COP28, more than 3,500 fossil fuel infrastructure sites are either proposed, in development, or under construction globally.

The researchers estimate that such expansion could put at least 135 million more people at risk. The number of oil and gas projects is set to increase across all continents, it notes, while coal plants and mines are being added mostly in China and India.

Local people are often not consulted by authorities and companies managing the projects nor given enough information about their potential impacts, Amnesty said.

“Most affected groups condemned the power imbalance between their communities and corporate operators, as well as the lack of effective remedy,” said Candy Ofime, researcher and legal advisor on climate justice at Amnesty International.

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COP30 Bulletin Day 4: African and Arab groups want adaptation indicator delay