Published

2 years ago

March 13, 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

Drought hits food supplies

BLOW TO AFRICA: “The driest February in decades” swept across a swathe of southern Africa, wiping out crops and jeopardising energy supplies, Bloomberg reported. It cited preliminary data suggesting that large parts of Zambia, Botswana and Zimbabwe had record-low February rainfall last month. The outlet noted that 45% of planted areas in Zambia “have been destroyed” and the president has declared a national disaster. The crop failures have “threatened to send already high food prices surging further”, Bloomberg wrote, noting that in both Zambia and Zimbabwe, prices have risen by about 75% compared to last February. In addition, “dangerously low” water levels in reservoirs in several countries could force the governments to ration power supplies.

‘DIRE NEED OF FOOD’: In the Federated States of Micronesia, in Oceania, thousands of people have been affected by drier-than-normal conditions recorded since December last year, Radio New Zealand (RNZ) reported. The news site interviewed Cromwell Bacareza, UNICEF’s Micronesia field office chief, who said that around 16,000 people – 40% of whom are children – “are in dire need of food”. Bacareza told the outlet: “It’s not an isolated incident, but rather a grim reminder for everyone of the impacts of climate change on vulnerable communities, particularly the small island states.” RNZ cited the US National Weather Service, which has projected that the current El Niño would continue to worsen weather conditions.

SICILY’S ‘SEVERE DROUGHT’: The southern Italian island of Sicily is also under a “severe drought” due to a lack of winter rains, which has forced dozens of towns to ration water for both agriculture and residential consumption, Reuters reported. The newswire added that the risk to agriculture in Sicily was considered a “particular concern” by the EU’s crop monitoring service. Meanwhile, in the Po valley in northern Italy, rice farmers are still dealing with the impacts of a persistent drought that began in 2022 and devastated 7,500 hectares of rice fields last year alone, according to the Guardian. The outlet noted that Italy accounts for about 50% of the rice produced in the EU, and most of it comes from the Po Valley, where arborio and carnaroli rice – used in risotto – is harvested. The Guardian added that farmers have sought to diversify their crops in response to climate change.

Indigenous peoples driving conservation

INDIGENOUS VOICE: El Mostrador reported that the Chilean government has announced that it will involve Indigenous peoples in developing the country’s adaptation plan for its water sector. It added that “citizen participation” workshops will take place during March and April with the 11 Indigenous peoples legally recognised by Chile. El Mostrador quoted Cristian Núñez Riveros, the director general for water in Chile’s public-works ministry: “This will make it possible to recognise [Indigenous peoples’] interrelationship with water, considering their environment, ways of life and productive activities. It will shed light on the impacts of climate change from their voices, considering their practices and contributions to sustainable water management.”

LEADING CONSERVATION: Indigenous and coastal minority women are at the forefront of efforts to conserve Kenya’s “blue forests”, Inter Press Service reported. The women are restoring mangroves and fish ponds near Tsunza, a southern Kenyan coastal village, after fish disappeared from the area following several oil spills between 2003 and 2006, the newswire reported. Elsewhere, the Indigenous Achuar people in the Ecuadorian Amazon, who fought for more than 40 years to stop oil development in the area, now have solar panels in 12 of their villages, the Washington Post reported. The community had previously had little electricity coverage, but a new project has brought solar electricity to schools and homes and even allowed a switch from petrol boats to solar-powered boats.

‘THE SOLUTION’: Nearly 200 representatives of peasant and Indigenous organisations met at the end of February in south-eastern Mexico to address issues that affect them, including climate change, violence and food sovereignty, EFE Verde reported. The meeting organisers told the news agency that the meeting sought to establish actions to defend their rights in the run-up to the Mexican general elections on 2 June. In an interview with the outlet, Jesús Andrade, a member of a group of farmers’ organisations, said “the solution is peasant agroecology, which can cool the planet”. EFE Verde added that activists, NGOs and communities condemned the murder, disappearance and forced displacement of Indigenous communities by organised crime groups.

Spotlight

Dutch farm visit

In this spotlight, Carbon Brief speaks to John Arink, a Dutch organic farmer, on a media trip organised by Clean Energy Wire.

“When I look at the agricultural system at this moment, we have big problems. It is due to the system that the water is polluted…so we have to change the system.”

Amid ongoing farmer protests across the EU, one farmer in the Netherlands recently showcased the less-intensive future he wants for the agriculture sector.

John Arink, an organic farmer, spoke to Carbon Brief and other media outlets on his farm near the village of Lievelde in the east of the Netherlands, around two hours from Amsterdam.

John Arink, a Dutch organic farmer, on a media trip organised by the Clean Energy Wire.

Arink and his family run a small organic farm, shop, hotel and restaurant. He is a small producer by Dutch standards – the average dairy farm in the country has more than 100 cows. Arink has 50, alongside three pigs and 100 chickens.

Walking around the farm, a rooster crowed in an outdoor enclosure with a solar-powered coop, horned cows looked out from their pen and a group of piglets huddled around their feed.

Arink started out as a more conventional, intensive farmer in the mid-1980s. Then he visited a smaller organic farm and saw how animals could be raised with limited use of chemical fertilisers and antibiotics. He said:

“On my way back home, I thought, well, that’s the direction I want to go with my farm. In the 30 years after that, that’s what we did here.”

The Netherlands – a country around one-third the size of England – is the world’s second-largest exporter of agricultural goods, behind the US. Overall in the Netherlands, average farm sizes are getting bigger, but the number of farms is shrinking.

In recent years, the Dutch government had to develop plans to substantially reduce nitrogen emissions from, among other things, manure and chemical fertilisers on farms.

In 2022, the government set targets to cut nitrogen pollution by as much as 70% in some areas by the end of this decade. A voluntary “buy out” scheme for farms is among the measures aimed to reach this goal.

Protests kicked off in 2019 in response to the nitrogen crisis and demonstrations continued over the past few years.

On these protests and the wider farmer outcry across Europe this year, Arink believes that many farmers “cannot look over the hill” to a possible future producing less meat and more plants. He added:

“In Holland, we have some kind of a mantra that says the intensive way of producing milk and meat is very efficient. But it is not when you calculate all of the indirect dues of materials and energy.

“Maybe from the financial point of view, it can be efficient, but we have to look at it in the ecological way. And from that point of view, it’s very inefficient.”

Government formation talks remain ongoing in the Netherlands, months after the country’s general election last November. The next government will be tasked with enforcing the nitrogen reduction measures in the coming years. Arink said:

“That [nitrogen] problem is not to be solved only by farmers, but the whole society.”

News and views

REEF RIFT: Coral reefs around the world are on the brink of a fourth mass bleaching event, which “could see wide swathes of tropical reefs die”, Reuters reported. This follows “months of record-breaking ocean heat fuelled by climate change and the El Niño climate pattern”, the newswire added. Bleaching is triggered by heat stress and “can be devastating for the ocean ecosystem”, Reuters said. Dr Derek Manzello, the coordinator of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s coral reef monitoring authority, told the outlet: “We are literally sitting on the cusp of the worst bleaching event in the history of the planet.” Australia’s Great Barrier Reef “lost nearly a third of its corals” during the last global bleaching between 2014 and 2017, the newswire noted.

RISK FACTOR: The EU is planning to delay its deforestation-risk rating system for countries, which was due to take effect at the end of this year, according to the Financial Times. The law aims to prevent the sale of products that have been produced on deforested land. The rules would categorise countries as posing either a low, standard or high risk for deforestation. Three EU officials told the FT that all countries will be listed as “standard risk, to give them more time to adapt”. The newspaper said that the change came after “several governments in Asia, Africa and Latin America complained that the rules would be burdensome, unfair and scare off investors”. The European Commission declined to comment, the FT said. (Read Carbon Brief’s Q&A on the law for more.)

NIGERIA’S ‘BLUE CARBON’: A mangrove-restoration carbon credit project received an early green light in an “oil-rich Nigerian state”, Bloomberg reported. A UK-based company, Serendib Capital, was granted the rights “to restore the mangroves and seagrass beds” on about 9% of land in Delta State, in southern Nigeria. The outlet said that the project developer claimed this “could potentially sequester, or store away, 5.32m tons of carbon each year”. Huge oil companies “have been blamed for much of the damage that’s historically destroyed the area’s wetlands and farms”, Bloomberg added, noting that “they, in turn, could now become some of the biggest buyers of carbon offsets”. Parts of the carbon offset market have “cooled recently amid increasingly sharp criticism from scientists and experts”, the outlet said.

FARMERS RALLY ON: “Thousands of angry farmers” threw smoke bombs and lit fires near parliament buildings in Warsaw as EU farmer protests continued, Al Jazeera said. Polish farmers demonstrated against EU rules and “cheap Ukraine imports”, according to the outlet, adding that there were also “tractor blockades on roads across the country”. The country’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, “failed to reach an agreement with Polish farmers to end protests”, Euronews reported. Separately, ITV News said that farmers in Wales lined “thousands of wellies…on the steps of the Senedd [parliament] in protest against the Welsh government’s new farming plans”.

AFRICAN AGRI: A report from civil-society groups criticised a $61bn plan to “industrialise African food systems”, saying it would pose a “significant threat to small-scale farmers”, Mongabay reported. The African Development Bank (AfDB) recently released “agricultural development plans” for 40 African countries, aiming to improve food security and productivity. The groups said the initiative’s “emphasis on principal commodity crops, mechanised farming tools and standardised land tenure systems” push towards agro-industrialisation, Mongabay said. The outlet added that the groups believe this would “increase dependency on multinational corporations for seeds and agrochemicals, and lead to the loss of land and biodiversity”. The AfDB did not respond to the outlet’s request for comment.

COASTAL VILLAGE THREAT: Coastal villages in the east of India that were “hit hard by a super-cyclone” 25 years ago have since experienced “a rise in soil and water salinity and subsequent loss of agricultural land, livelihoods and marriage prospects”, according to the Migration Story. The outlet spoke to residents in the villages of Udaykani and Tandahar about the continuing impacts of the super-cyclone that “lashed” the state of Odisha in 1999, which was the “most intense ever recorded in the northern Indian Ocean”. One villager, Vaidehi Kardi, told the outlet: “When the soil turned salty, our crops shrivelled…Gradually, the water, too, turned salty and our lives withered.”

Watch, read, listen

GREEN BURIALS: In a podcast, National Public Radio examined sustainable burials and how costly they can be for your wallet and the planet.

AN OPTION FOR BELIZE: Inside Climate News looked at a “fevered push” from conservationists to “save what’s left” of the tropical rainforest in Belize through carbon offsets.

‘ENVIRONMENTAL CRIMES’: The Diplomat interviewed Prof John McManus, a professor at the University of Miami, to talk about environmental damage in the South China Sea.

‘GREEN GOLD’: In a Financial Times long read, the newspaper’s Brazil bureau chief Bryan Harris explored the agriculture and agribusiness “boomtowns” in the central-west parts of Brazil.

New science

Australia’s Tinderbox Drought: An extreme natural event likely worsened by human-caused climate change
Science Advances

Climate change made low rainfall levels during an “extreme and impactful” drought in Australia from 2017-19 “around six times more likely”, compared to pre-industrial times, new research suggested. This drought “helped create favourable conditions for the most intense and widespread outbreak of forest fires ever recorded in south-east Australia”, the study said. The researchers looked at the characteristics and causes of the “tinderbox drought” in south-east Australia and used modelling to assess how unusual the drought was compared to “natural climate variability”. They found multiple ways in which human-caused climate change may have worsened the drought, but said that other aspects of the drought were “unexpected”.

Bornean tropical forests recovering from logging at risk of regeneration failure
Global Change Biology

When logged forests are restored, they have higher seedling mortality compared to unlogged forests, new research has found. Over a year and a half, researchers examined the diversity, survival and characteristics of more than 5,000 seedlings of 15 species in northern Borneo. Some of the seeds germinated in unlogged forests and some in forests that were logged 30-35 years ago and were subsequently restored either naturally or with restoration techniques such as tree planting. They found that both restoration types had lower species richness and evenness than unlogged forests five-to-six months after the trees began to produce stems.

Giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) in the UK: carbon storage potential and growth rates
Royal Society Open Science

A new study revealed that giant sequoias planted in the UK can absorb carbon between 2.5 and 20 times faster than other tree species commonly planted on plantations. The researchers used laser scanning to calculate the above-ground biomass and annual biomass accumulation rates of individual giant sequoia trees at three different sites. They found that the UK trees grew at similar rates as those in the US, “varying with climate, management and age”. The study said that giant sequoias are one of the country’s largest tree species and have “undoubted public appeal”. It added that they “represent a small but potentially important addition to the UK’s carbon sequestration efforts”.

In the diary

15 March: Third meeting of the informal advisory group on benefit-sharing from the use of digital sequence information on genetic resources | Online
11-13 March: 11th annual World Ocean Summit and Expo | Lisbon
18-29 March: First part of the 29th session of the International Seabed Authority | Kingston, Jamaica
21 March: International Day of Forests
22 March: World Water Day

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 13 March 2024: Drought hits food supplies; ‘Mass bleaching’ of coral reefs; Industrialising African ag appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Cropped 13 March 2024: Drought hits food supplies; ‘Mass bleaching’ of coral reefs; Industrialising African ag

Climate Change

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

Published

8 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

19 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.