A growing group of countries wants COP30 to kick off the process of crafting a roadmap for the world to transition away from fossil fuels, which are by far the largest driver of planetary heating.
More than 80 countries on Tuesday issued a call for the “Mutirão” decision – expected to be the main political outcome of the Belém summit – to include a commitment to develop a blueprint that builds on the landmark COP28 agreement in Dubai, which for the first time signalled a global shift away from oil, coal and gas.
The call’s supporters include industrialised nations like the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, as well as large developing countries such as Colombia and Kenya, and low-lying Pacific island states.
“This is a global coalition with Global North and Global South countries coming together and saying with one voice: this is an issue which cannot be swept under the carpet,” UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband told a press conference on Tuesday. “We have an opportunity to make COP30 the moment we take forward what we agreed at COP28,” he added.
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Countries must confront fossil fuels head-on in their NDCs
Other nations should follow the rare example set by Colombia and Vanuatu, whose climate plans contain explicit goals for cutting back on oil, gas and coal
Since all governments agreed for the first time at the UN climate conference in Dubai to explicitly reference fossil fuels in an official climate summit outcome, major fossil fuel-producing countries – led vocally by Gulf states like Saudi Arabia – have pushed back against efforts to build on that landmark decision.
But calls for the creation of a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels have been gathering momentum in Belém since Brazilian President Lula da Silva mentioned the idea at the leaders’ summit nearly two weeks ago.
“Key for 1.5C”
Rapid developments over the past ten days in the Amazon city have caught many countries off guard. The European Union has yet to form a joint position on the roadmap, for instance, even though the bloc supports the implementation of the Dubai agreement.
Tina Stege, climate envoy for the low-lying Marshall Islands, said a global shift away from fossil fuels is “key for keeping the door open on 1.5C and limiting the scale and duration of any overshoot”. UN Secretary General António Guterres conceded last month that the global average temperature will breach, at least temporarily, the key threshold set in the Paris Agreement.
Stege added that the current reference to a fossil fuel roadmap in the draft outcome decision presented by Brazil’s COP presidency on Tuesday morning was “weak and presented as an option”, while “it must be strengthened and it must be adopted”.
COP30 Bulletin Day 8: Draft decision draws battle lines on fossil fuel transition, finance and trade
The draft “Mutirão” decision – which the COP30 hosts hope to land by the end of Wednesday – mentions the transition away from fossil fuels among a wide sweep of options for how to find agreement on the thorniest issues being discussed in Belém.
One option would encourage governments to convene a roundtable aimed at supporting countries to develop “just, orderly and equitable transition roadmaps”, including for reducing dependency on fuels and stopping deforestation. However, that appears to refer to domestic blueprints and stops short of advocating for a global roadmap that over 80 countries are calling for.
Backlash expected from oil producers
Irene Vélez, Colombia’s Environment Minister, said such a roadmap “must be the legacy of COP30”.
“I wish that we won’t have to tell the world that the dozens of countries that are here have let them down – not only to those who mobilised today but to future generations,” she added. “We must rise to the occasion”.
Antonio Hill, a COP veteran from the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), told Climate Home it is not surprising that strong calls for a fossil fuel transition blueprint are coming from Brazil and Colombia.
“They are relatively high-cost producers [of oil and gas], they have relatively short horizons in terms of their reserves, and they’re facing structural decline,” he added. “They actually don’t have the luxury of waiting it out.”
But their push for the inclusion of a fossil fuel roadmap in the COP30 outcome is all but guaranteed to prompt a strong backlash from several other large nations heavily dependent on fossil fuel exports and consumption.
Petrostates within the Arab group, led by Saudi Arabia, are expected to mount the strongest opposition. And while renewable energy-rich Kenya has endorsed Tuesday’s call, many other African countries remain wary of committing to a fossil-fuel phase-out.
Fair and funded transition
Richard Muyungi, the chair of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN), told Climate Home News last Friday that African countries had yet to coordinate their views on the issue, which he described as “very important”.
“But… generally as a continent, we are the least responsible for the [climate] problem, and this is the continent which chooses to harness all the available energy sources to develop,” he said, adding that Africa should not be forced or pushed towards a trajectory that threatens to undermine its development agenda.
Former German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan said countries pushing for a roadmap need to reassure their counterparts that this will not be a “top-down” exercise.
“We are talking about a nationally-driven, fair and inclusive process that would also bring in the finance [element],” she told Climate Home News. “For big fossil fuel producers, it is an opportunity to have a dialogue with consumers so that it can be just, orderly and equitable.”
The post Pressure builds for fossil fuel transition plan at COP30 appeared first on Climate Home News.
But a $345 million U.S. verdict against the environmental group hangs over the case.
A lawsuit filed by Greenpeace International against the U.S.-based fossil fuel company Energy Transfer in the Netherlands is moving forward after a Dutch court recently ruled in favor of the environmental organization in rejecting the company’s bid to toss out the case.
Greenpeace’s Dutch Anti-SLAPP Case Against Oil Pipeline Giant Advances
Go behind the scenes with executive editor Vernon Loeb and oceans correspondent Teresa Tomassoni as they discuss the search for heat-resilient coral reefs that are somehow defying the odds to survive a warming planet.
The world has already lost more than half of its coral reefs, and most of what remains is at risk of disappearing in the next 25 years.
Climate Change
DeBriefed 19 June 2026: Bonn talks end in ‘gridlock’ | Energy’s ‘new era’ | Oceans in climate negotiations
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Bonn talks close
‘SIDE-STEPPING AND STALLING’: UN climate talks in Bonn have ended in “gridlock”, according to Climate Home News. The outlet reported on the failure to balance developing countries’ need for climate-adaptation finance with “richer nations’ desire to move forward” on emissions cuts. It added that both topics were subject to “rule 16”, meaning no agreement could be reached and work will be pushed to the COP31 summit in Turkey. Inside Climate News quoted UN climate executive secretary Simon Stiell, who said the talks had seen “side-stepping and stalling”.
JUST TRANSITION: One “glimmer of hope” came from negotiations on achieving a “just transition”, reported Euronews. The news outlet said negotiators “made headway on operationalising the Belém-Antalya mechanism”, intended to support people in the shift to a low-carbon economy. However, Politico concluded that much of the focus in Bonn had “shift[ed] to efforts outside diplomatic talks – raising questions about the future of global climate negotiations”.
‘ATTACKING SCIENCE’: Agence France-Presse reported on the EU, Switzerland and “dozens of developing nations” warning of “attacks on science” by a “small group of fossil-fuels interests” in Bonn. Table Briefings explained that “the 1.5C target is increasingly being challenged” and the role of the UN climate-science panel – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – in an upcoming assessment of global climate progress “remains controversial”. See Carbon Brief’s full write-up of the talks for more detail.
US-Iran deal
PRICE DROP: The US and Iran announced that they have reached an interim agreement to halt the war and reopen the strait of Hormuz, reported Bloomberg. Oil prices have fallen, as the “long-awaited deal” began the process of “eas[ing]” the global energy crisis triggered by the conflict, according to the New York Times. The Associated Press noted that high fuel prices will “likely outlast the Iran war”.
‘OIL GLUT’: The Financial Times reported that the International Energy Agency (IEA) has forecast a “glut of oil” emerging next year, if the peace deal holds. The IEA said this would allow countries to build new strategic reserves, as they “review their energy strategies and policies in response to the crisis”, according to Reuters.
‘NEW ERA’: Agence France-Presse reported that oil and gas companies have “few illusions about a return to normal for the Gulf energy industry after more than three months of blockage”. One analyst told the newswire that the war “showed the oil and gas industry that Hormuz risk is no longer just a geopolitical headline”.
Around the world
- OCEAN MONITOR: The Trump administration is “abandoning its plan” to dismantle a $368m ocean monitoring system key for tracking climate change after a “bipartisan backlash on Capitol Hill”, reported the New York Times.
- CORAL HAVEN: The New York Times covered preliminary research, presented at the Our Ocean Conference in Kenya, suggesting there could be three times as many “coral refugia” – where corals are relatively safe from climate change – than previously thought.
- BAD CREDIT: Down to Earth reported that the first carbon credits issued under the Paris Agreement’s new Article 6.4 mechanism are “facing scrutiny over alleged links to institutions controlled by Myanmar’s military junta”.
- OIL BACKTRACK: Reuters reported that oil-and-gas company Equinor has dropped a renewable-energy target and scaled back clean investments, while another Reuters story noted that Shell is selling off its offshore wind assets.
1.1 billion
The number of children facing “at least three overlapping climate hazards”, according to a new Unicef report covered by Agence France-Presse.
Latest climate research
- Including the “permafrost carbon-climate feedback” in climate models increases the chance of exceeding “tipping elements” – such as the Greenland ice sheets, Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation or Amazon rainforest – by up to 50% | Environmental Research Letters
- The intensity of influenza outbreaks could decline in temperate regions, but increase in tropical areas over the next century, as the climate warms | PNAS Nexus
- European snow cover has declined by 20% for December and January since the start of the industrial era, revealing an “unprecedented ongoing shrinkage of European winters” | Communications Earth & Environment
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
The more than 2m battery electric vehicles (BEVs), 1m “plug-in” hybrids (PHEVs) and 100,000 electric vans on UK roads are already saving drivers a total of around £3bn a year, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. This amounts to savings of more than £1,100 a year in fuel costs for each BEV driver in the UK. The analysis comes amid reports in UK media this week that the government is considering “watering down” its EV sales targets.
Spotlight
Oceans rising at UN climate talks
The state of the world’s oceans is inextricably linked to the changing climate – and many delegates at UN climate talks want to see more focus on this issue, reports Carbon Brief.
Oceans are often described as the world’s “greatest ally” against climate change – absorbing 30% of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and most of the heat generated by those emissions.
They are also the site of important climate solutions, such as huge offshore windfarms and the shipping industry’s transition to cleaner fuels.
At the same time, the oceans themselves present a growing danger to coastal communities and sea life due to sea level rise, marine heatwaves and ocean acidification.
These diverse issues have led to growing calls within the UN climate process for more focus on oceans. During climate negotiations this week in Bonn – known as SB64 – nations and civil society had a chance to air these views during an “ocean and climate change dialogue”.
‘Elevate action’
Oceans first entered UN climate outcomes in 2019, when the final COP25 negotiated text requested a new “dialogue” on “the ocean and climate change to consider how to strengthen mitigation and adaptation action”.
The following years saw this dialogue established as an annual event. However, the political weight of these discussions has been limited.
COP31 is being co-led by Turkey and Australia, but with Pacific islands playing a supporting role. These small islands sometimes self-identify as “large ocean states”, stressing the ocean’s centrality in their societies.
In Bonn, figures from across the presidency threw their weight behind this issue. Chris Bowen, an Australian minister and incoming COP31 “president of negotiations”, told attendees:
“Australia, Turkey and the Pacific see an important opportunity to elevate ocean-based climate action.”
Strategies and finance
The two-day dialogue in Bonn involved a series of panels, statements and breakout groups.
One of the main topics was how oceans are integrated into national climate plans under the Paris Agreement, known as “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs).
Three-quarters of the latest round of NDCs mention oceans, with conservation of “blue carbon” ecosystems the most frequently described action. (Landscapes such as mangroves can both absorb CO2 and protect coastal areas.)
Delegates also discussed alignment with the UN biodiversity process, as well as ocean finance, which currently makes up less than 1% of all climate finance.
(As discussions were taking place in Bonn, country officials also gathered in Mombasa, Kenya for the 11th Our Ocean Conference. Carbon Brief’s associate editor Giuliana Viglione attended the conference and will publish a full summary shortly.)
Developing countries were clear that many of the ocean-related actions in their NDCs would depend on receiving more financial support.
‘Political momentum’
With the backing of the COP31 presidency, delegates were hopeful about where this year’s dialogue could lead.
Charles Hamilton, an advisor for the Bahamas who spoke for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) in the dialogue, told Carbon Brief that island representatives “are not traveling thousands of miles to just talk and pat ourselves on the back”. He added:
“A dialogue that just remains a dialogue is just more talk – no action.”
Given that, he said “discussions in the dialogue must move into COP decisions and the decisions must be actioned”, noting the importance of finance.
Marina Corrêa, oceans lead at WWF-Brazil, pointed to an upcoming UN climate change Standing Committee on Finance forum as a space to ramp up pressure on ocean finance.
More broadly, she wanted to see the presidencies translate their support into a “leader-level ocean initiative” that could “mainstream” oceans across negotiations.
“We have a really interesting opportunity, in terms of political momentum,” Corrêa told Carbon Brief.
Watch, read, listen
‘HOTTER THAN HELL’: An episode of the BBC’s Rare Earth podcast titled “hotter than hell” considered the issue of extreme heat, with input from experts and “people facing up to the hottest temperatures on the planet”.
NOT BROKEN?: John Drake, a professor of ecology at the University of Georgia, wrote an essay for Aeon – also re-published as a Guardian “long read” – questioning the framing of ecosystems and climate systems “breaking down”.
ON COURSE: On his Volts podcast, US climate journalist David Roberts interviewed UK climate minister Katie White, quizzing her about whether the UK will “stay the course with its climate plans”.
Coming up
- 20-28 June: London climate action week
- 21 June: Colombia presidential runoff
- 24 June: UK Climate Change Committee progress in reducing emissions 2026 report to parliament
Pick of the jobs
- Mongabay, managing editor – Africa | Salary: Unknown. Location: Global
- Contexte, environment reporter – Brussels | Salary: €45,000-€60,000. Location: Brussels
- Climate 200, communications director | Salary: Unknown. Location: Australia
- Energy Tracker Asia, energy transition correspondent | Salary: $3,000-$4,000 per month. Location: South-east Asia (remote)
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 19 June 2026: Bonn talks end in ‘gridlock’ | Energy’s ‘new era’ | Oceans in climate negotiations appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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