Former US climate envoy and Secretary of State John Kerry has lamented the lack of progress in global climate negotiations on transitioning away from fossil fuels over the last two years.
Kerry told an audience of climate professionals at London’s Chatham House think-tank on Tuesday that he was still “reeling a little bit” from the COP30 climate summit in Belém, which he did not attend.
When going through papers at his home in Boston recently, he said he had found the front page of The Guardian from December 2023 with the headline: “Landmark COP28 deal agreed to transition away from fossil fuels”.
Kerry said that deal in Dubai, which he was involved in as the US’s lead negotiator at the time, was the “most important single mission statement since Paris”. But, he asked in London two years on, “what happened to the promise that we made future generations?”
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According to Kerry, at COP30, a draft text of the main political decision was put forward that was “so weak that our friends from the European Union, backed by the [UK’s] Starmer government, actually had to take the unusual step of threatening to walk out and protest”.
Kerry said this was because – in the words of the EU’s top climate official Wopke Hoekstra – the text contained “no science” and “no transitioning away, but instead weakness”. In the end, they had to back down on getting a roadmap in the text, amid strong push-back from major fossil fuel producing nations.
He also cited the New York Times’ headline on Saturday which ran, “Oil producers – but maybe not the planet – get a win as climate talks end”. Kerry said “that headline underscores that there’s really been a change in the last two years – a change that has been purposefully fought for and achieved by the expenditure of billions of dollars to pass on disinformation and to attack common sense itself”.
China escapes scrutiny
He blamed this backtracking since COP28 partly on the administration of Donald Trump pulling the US out of the Paris Agreement, which gave “new life” to “old excuses” for other countries like China.
Kerry, a semi-retired diplomat who enjoyed cordial relations with his Chinese counterpart, said China now “enjoys newfound freedom from scrutiny”, adding that in his time in the Obama and Biden administrations, the US had successfully pressured China to do more on climate change.
One developed-country diplomat told Climate Home News that, at COP30, China and Saudi Arabia were under less pressure to support a roadmap away from fossil fuels than would have been the case if a Democrat-run US had been at the talks. This time the US sent no official delegation.
Kerry said he would push Australia, which will run negotiations at COP31, to get discussions back on track by summoning the 20-25 nations most responsible for climate change, whose emissions cover about 80% of the global total, and try to get them to agree to a roadmap.
Australian climate minister Chris Bowen, who is set to lead the talks next year, said on Saturday that he and the Pacific Islands would “push to advance” a transition away from fossil fuels.
Instead of a negotiated plan, the COP30 Brazilian presidency has promised to produce a global roadmap on transitioning away from fossil fuels outside of the UN climate process, and report back on it at the next COP. Colombia and the Netherlands will co-host an international conference on the issue in April.
To laughter, Kerry ended his speech by saying that the battle can still be won if the opponents of fossil fuels “get your ass in gear to do the things you need to do”.
The post John Kerry laments lack of fossil fuel transition in COP30 agreement appeared first on Climate Home News.
John Kerry laments lack of fossil fuel transition in COP30 agreement
Delegates will soon gather in the Turkish resort city of Antalya for UN climate negotiations, against a backdrop of war, energy crisis and climate extremes.
At COP31, nations will try to find agreement on various issues, including climate finance for developing countries and a global “just transition” towards a cleaner economy.
This summit is unusual due to its joint presidency, which means that Australia is leading the negotiations while Turkey hosts the conference.
Outside the formal negotiations, Turkey is also pushing its own priorities as part of a wider “action agenda”, including electrification, oceans and “green industrialisation”.
In order to track parties’ positions on key negotiating points and wider issues at COP31, Carbon Brief has analysed around 100 documents and captured them in the interactive table below.
The first column 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 over the course of COP31.
Please get in touch if you would like to offer additions by emailing policy@carbonbrief.org.
Brief explanations of the key issues and jargon-filled language that permeate the talks can be found below the interactive table.
Just transition
At COP30 in Brazil in 2025, nations agreed to establish a practical mechanism to help drive a “just transition” to a low-carbon economy.
Key aspects of this “Belém-Antalya mechanism” (BAM) – often referred to as the “just transition mechanism” (JTM) – were agreed during the June climate negotiations this year, but many details are missing and dividing lines remain between parties.
Parties have disagreed about the scope of the mechanism and whether it should be tied to the provision of finance.
Nevertheless, following progress in June within the “just transition work programme” (JTWP), civil society groups highlighted that getting the mechanism up and running is a “key expected outcome” from COP31.
Climate finance
Climate finance is always a highly contested issue at UN climate negotiations.
Developing countries have successfully pushed for a “work programme” on climate finance to feature on the conference agenda.
These parties see this programme as a way to pressure developed countries into providing more funding from their public coffers, specifically under Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement. Some are even proposing a “burden sharing” arrangement for climate-finance provision.
This comes against a backdrop of major donors cutting their aid budgets and the Trump administration in the US pressuring multilateral development banks (MDBs) to drop their climate objectives.
Developed countries, which have traditionally been responsible for providing finance, would prefer to keep a broader focus on issues such as improving access to existing finance and broadening the range of donors. Some developing countries, such as small-island states, also support these goals.
Nations have also been discussing Article 2.1c of the Paris Agreement under the “Veredas dialogue”. This focuses on making all global “financial flows” consistent with climate action.
Countries have different views about what this involves, with developing countries again hoping to keep the focus on developed countries’ responsibilities to financially support them.
Adaptation and mitigation
At negotiations in June, parties were unable to agree on the details of a “global goal on adaptation” (GGA), which is intended to drive climate adaptation worldwide.
Having agreed at COP30 on a list of 59 “indicators” – ways to assess progress towards the GGA – nations now need to refine these before COP32 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This is a highly technical process that involves a taskforce working out how to use and track these indicators.
Broadly, developing countries stress the importance of finance to fund adaptation efforts, rather than simply to track progress. They also want reassurances about a pledge made last year to “triple adaptation finance”.
At the June climate negotiations, negotiators also failed to make any progress when discussing the mitigation work programme (MWP) – the only formal agenda item that concerns cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Among other things, parties disagreed on whether the MWP should continue running over the next few years, or simply be brought to a close.
Global stocktake and NDCs
Back in 2023, the first “global stocktake” (GST) of the Paris Agreement set out the state of climate action and what needed to be done to set the world on course.
On mitigation, nations agreed to a package of measures, including “transitioning away from fossil fuels”, tripling renewable energy and “halting and reversing deforestation” by 2030.
Some of these outcomes remain contentious among certain parties, particularly large, developing countries and those with economies that rely on fossil-fuel exports.
Developing countries have persistently argued that they need more climate finance to implement the global stocktake outcomes.
Parties were meant to update their climate plans under the Paris Agreement, informed by the first global stocktake, by 2025. These plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), cover the period out to 2035.
So far, only 150 parties – responsible for three-quarters of global emissions – have submitted new NDCs.
Iran, Vietnam, Egypt and Argentina are among those without new NDCs – and the US has withdrawn its climate plan under the Trump administration.
Some parties, such as the EU, have stressed the need for countries to submit their new NDCs ahead of COP31 – and to ensure they are aligned with the 1.5C temperature limit.
COP31 will also see the launch of the second global stocktake, which will conclude in 2028.
Action agenda and other issues
Turkey will be pushing its “action agenda” priorities at COP31, including global targets for electrification, reducing waste and reducing building-sector emissions.
(The Australian “presidency of negotiations” is intending to pursue a “cover text” decision at COP31 that may capture some of these wider targets, such as the electrification goal.)
The action agenda is meant to provide a complementary track to the formal negotiations, where governments and non-state actors can advance specific, real-world solutions.
A new COP31 presidency effort dubbed the “climate implementation bridge” is also meant to complement these ambitions by turning NDC goals into an “investable project portfolio”
Some parties have explicitly signalled their support for various elements beyond the formal negotiations, in the run-up to COP31.
For example, a joint letter signed by 105 parties called for COP31 to “put the ocean at the heart of climate action” by embedding ocean-based climate action in the UNFCCC architecture.
The post Interactive: Who wants what at the COP31 climate change summit appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Interactive: Who wants what at the COP31 climate change summit
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