Negotiators from around the world will soon descend on Brazil as it prepares to host the latest round of UN climate talks, on the banks of the Amazon river.
COP30 in Belém will see them discuss issues including the best ways to track progress on adaptation and how to pursue a global “just transition”.
Some of the event’s most important topics, such as countries’ new climate targets and raising international climate finance to $1.3tn, will officially take place outside the formal negotiations.
Nevertheless, these issues will likely drive much of the COP30 narrative.
In order to track parties’ positions on key negotiating points at the summit, Carbon Brief has analysed nearly 100 submissions to the UN and captured them in the interactive table below.
The first column in the table shows the countries and UN negotiating blocs, the second shows the topics up for debate and the third indicates specific issues within those topics.
The final column indicates the positions that the parties have expressed on each topic. These range from “priority” – meaning the party is likely to be pushing the issue – to “oppose”, meaning it is likely to push against it.
This is a “living document” that will be updated during the course of COP30.
Please get in touch if you would like to offer additions to the table by emailing policy@carbonbrief.org.
Explanations of the overarching issues and jargon-filled language that permeate the talks can be found below the interactive table.
Adaptation
At COP28 in 2023, governments adopted a “framework” for the “global goal on adaptation”, which was originally included in the Paris Agreement, but had seen little progress till then.
Over the following two years, negotiators and experts have been discussing a list of measurable “indicators” that can be used to track global progress on adaptation.
At COP30, a final list of 100 of these indicators is expected to be adopted, making it one of the key concrete outcomes expected at the summit in Belém.
From an initial list of more than 5,000 potential indicators, a group of experts worked to refine this down into a set of around 500 in June. This has been reduced further to 100 proposed final indicators, which will be negotiated at COP30.
These indicators must be both specific enough to allow for accurate measurement of progress and versatile enough to apply to the vast array of location-specific adaptation practices.
Beyond the list of indicators, divergences between parties remain around the topics of the “Baku Adaptation Roadmap”, the concept of “transformational adaptation” and adaptation finance. (See the Carbon Brief Q&A on the adaptation indicators for more details.)
Climate finance
As ever, discussions of “climate finance” – the financial resources channelled into climate action in developing countries – are likely to feature prominently at COP30.
Last year, countries had a deadline to decide on a new global climate-finance target known as the “new collective quantified goal on climate finance” (NCQG), meaning this issue took centre stage at the COP29 negotiations.
In Belém, formal climate-finance negotiations are less prominent. However, the launch of the “Baku to Belém roadmap to $1.3tn” ahead of the summit will provide an opportunity for parties to reflect on the topic and may influence wider negotiations.
The roadmap was mandated last year, due to a view among developing countries that the NCQG’s main target of “at least” $300bn a year by 2035 was insufficient.
Parties and negotiating blocs have made 36 submissions to the Baku to Belém consultation process, outlining what they want to see reflected in the final roadmap.
While the submissions refer to the Baku to Belém outcome specifically, they tend to reflect countries’ broader positions on the topic of climate finance.
Familiar issues, such as developing countries calling for more grant-based finance and developed countries stressing the importance of the private sector, feature prominently.
(For more analysis of countries’ positions on the roadmap, see Carbon Brief’s explainer on this topic.)
Just transition and global stocktake
Besides climate-adaptation indicators, the COP30 presidency has highlighted two other negotiating strands as priorities – the “just transition work programme” (JTWG) and the “dialogue” on implementing the outcome of the first “global stocktake”.
The former refers to discussions between parties about how best to support those affected by the transition to a low-carbon world.
As for the stocktake dialogue, this involves taking forward the outcomes from COP28, where countries were called on to contribute to various targets, including “tripling” global renewable energy capacity and “transitioning away” from fossil fuels.
There remain fundamental differences between parties about the scope of both of these discussions.
Broadly within the JTWP, developing countries want to see a holistic transition that takes into account not just fossil-fuel workers, but the wider communities and groups impacted by the low-carbon transition, along with financial support from developed countries needed to underpin this.
Developed countries generally want to keep the negotiations focused on labour and how to share knowledge from “best practice” examples of transition management.
Within the stocktake dialogue, some large developing countries – particularly the Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDCs) – want discussions to focus on climate finance.
Other developing countries and developed countries have pushed for a focus on climate ambition, including transitioning away from fossil fuels.
By the start of COP, nations are expected to have submitted their new climate plans under the Paris Agreement, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs).
To date, only around one-third of countries have announced or submitted their 2035 climate pledges, covering roughly half of global emissions.
The ambition – or lack of it – contained in these plans will set the stage for talks in Belém.
COP reforms
A decade on from the Paris Agreement, many experts have voiced concerns about the way COPs work and called for various reforms. (See Carbon Brief’s “COP experts: How could the UN climate talks be reformed?”)
Some of these proposals – including major changes such as the introduction of majority voting – have come from outside the COP process.
However, the Brazilian COP30 presidency has brought some of these discussions into the formal negotiations under the heading of “arrangements for intergovernmental meetings” (AIM). Here, countries have the opportunity to discuss improvements in the way the COP operates.
Under AIM, some parties have suggested ideas for streamlining the COP process, such as reducing the number of items on the agenda, potentially through multi-year planning so that discussions at each summit are more focused, or through limiting the number of new issues that can be introduced.
Other ideas include, capping the number of participants allowed to attend each summit and giving a more formal status to the COP “action agenda”, where pledges from countries or other actors are often made, but not always tracked and followed up.
See Carbon Brief’s previous interactive tables showing “who wants what” at COP26, COP27, COP28 and COP29.
The post Interactive: Who wants what at the COP30 climate change summit appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Interactive: Who wants what at the COP30 climate change summit
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.