There’s been a lot of chatter about Roadmaps in Belem. The WWF and Greenpeace have led a call for a roadmap to end deforestation. Currently, 45 countries have indicated support. More than 80 countries have called for a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels. Additionally, there are four other roadmaps on finance from developed to developing countries. Climate Action Network wonders, “Roadmap or mazes? Will those lead us somewhere, or will we be even more lost with so many of them?!”
Brazil’s TFFF plan has raised $5.5bn — far below even Brazil’s reduced target of $10bn by next year. Norway, Brazil, Indonesia, Portugal, France, and the Netherlands have all committed to pay into the fund, while Germany has said it will announce its contribution soon. The UK and China, on the other hand, do not plan to pay in.
Away from COP30 negotiations, talks continued over the COP31 host, with Türkiye and Australia striking a compromise: Türkiye will host the conference, and Australia’s climate change and energy Minister, Chris Bowen, as COP president, will chair the talks.
UN Secretary General, António Guterres, returned to Belém on Thursday to urge the world’s nations to find compromises in the final hours of COP30 and deliver a deal to accelerate climate action: “We are down to the wire and the world is watching… The world must pursue a just, orderly, and equitable transition away from fossil fuels.”
On Tuesday, COP30 hosts Brazil produced a first draft of an agreement between nations at the UN climate talks after negotiations on the sticking points stretched late into the night. The nine-page “Global Mutirao” document – a reference to an Indigenous concept of uniting toward a common goal – came after Brazil on Monday urged delegates to work day and night to produce an agreement by midweek.
Over the next few days, negotiations intensified. On Friday morning, the Presidency published its new mutirão text that contains no mention of a phase-out of fossil fuels. At least 29 nations threatened to block any draft without this phase-out and then rejected the text. The letter states, “We cannot support an outcome that does not include a roadmap [on fossil fuels].” Countries that signed the letter in favor of the fossil fuel phase-out include: Austria, Belgium, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Iceland, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, the Marshall Islands, Mexico, Monaco, the Netherlands, Panama, Palau, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and Vanuatu. Another bloc of around 80 countries, that includes Saudi Arabia, Russia and some other petrostates, as well as some countries dependent on consuming fossil fuels is negotiating against the fossil fuel phase out roadmap.
Colombia and the Netherlands also announced that they will co-host the First International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels in Santa Marta, Colombia, in April next year.
The climate talks are now likely to continue into the weekend. The European Union’s commissioner for climate, Wopke Hoekstra, warned there was a risk of no agreement being reached, and expressed dismay at the current text saying there was no science, no mention of a transition for fossil fuels, no global stocktake.
No UN climate conference has finished on time since 2003.
Aside from the fossil fuel debate, other issues also remain to be resolved, including a response to the fact that countries’ national climate plans are too weak to limit global heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels as set out in the 2015 Paris agreement, and questions of finance, trade and transparency, and how much cash developing countries will receive to help them adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis.
The issue of gender has become contentious and has been lifted by the COP30 Presidency from technical negotiations to a higher political level with ministers. Conservative nations — from the Vatican to Iran — are pushing to narrow the definition of gender at COP30 to exclude trans and non-binary people, which threatens to increase the difficulty of already torturous negotiations. The effort uses footnotes in key texts to attach country-specific interpretations. Paraguay, Argentina, Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia, as well as the Vatican have so far entered footnotes into the draft Gender Action Plan (GAP) meant to guide work for the next decade. Similar footnotes have also appeared in a text related to the “just transition” — the framework to shift to environmentally sustainable economies without leaving workers and communities behind.
Outside the negotiating rooms, civil society groups have complained about the “militarization” of the COP30 venue, which is now guarded by heavily armed officers in riot gear following UNFCCC chief Simon Stiell’s complaints earlier. Indigenous activists say they feel particularly targeted.
The Global Afro Descendants Climate Justice Collaborative is calling for Afro-Descendant peoples to be recognized as a formal constituency within the UNFCCC. Their petition states, “For generations, Afro-Descendant and African communities have been at the heart of global struggles for equity, justice, and renewal. We are the descendants of those who cultivated, resisted, and rebuilt. We have carried the wisdom of sustainable living, the memory of displacement, and the spirit of resilience that continues to sustain our planet.” Read the full letter here. Meanwhile, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Australia are explicitly opposing the inclusion of references to people of African descent in the Gender Action Plan, acting to silence and delegitimize legitimate and historically grounded demands.
“Simple message about COP30,” said Dr. Sam Grant, “This is a place of virulent anti-blackness.”
While a formal constituency is yet to be established, the Global Afrodescendant Climate Justice Collaborative announced Friday that for the first time, people of African descent appear in UNFCCC COP decisions and are referenced across multiple strands of negotiating texts. The texts are not finalized. “Nonetheless we are calling it a win to have people of African descent in the draft decisions,” said Mariama Williams of the GACJC.
Youth activists, more than 30,000 young people from over 100 countries, held a series of Youth-Led Forums and outlined calls for “full, fast, fair fossil phase-out,” institutionalizing intergenerational equity, moves toward peace, climate finance centered on justice, and adaptation “as a moral and political priority”.
The People’s Plenary was scheduled on Thursday, a space where civil society at COP comes together to make clear what their expectations and demands are of the negotiations, as we near the close. But a fire broke out in the Blue Zone, and the venue was evacuated. The fire has been contained with limited damage, and no serious injuries have been reported. Hosts report the fire was electrical.
There are more than 300 industrial agriculture lobbyists at COP30. According to DeSmog, the number of lobbyists representing the interests of industrial cattle farming, commodity grains, and pesticides is up 14 percent over last year’s summit in Baku — and is larger than the delegation of the world’s 10th largest economy, Canada, which brought 220 delegates to COP30 in Belém. Agriculture is responsible for 25 – 30% of global emissions.
We will continue to follow negotiations and hope to share the final agreements in our final window into COP30 Digest, scheduled to be released on December 3. Stay tuned.
Photo credit: Kiara Worth
The post Your Summary of Negotiations: Nov. 22 appeared first on Climate Generation.
Mae Buenaventura is the manager of the debt justice programme of the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development, a regional alliance of peoples’ movements, community organizations, coalitions, NGOs and networks
A potentially historic shift in public debt governance is set to unfold in Washington DC this week as Global South governments take a collective stand to stop a “silent killer” of development financing.
The first-ever UN-hosted borrowers’ forum will officially be launched on April 15 on the sidelines of the 2026 Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Led by five convening countries – Zambia, Egypt, Nepal, the Maldives and Pakistan – the initiative is one of the key wins of last year’s 4th Financing for Development Conference (FFD4) in Sevilla, Spain.
The forum’s mandate is to establish a platform for borrower countries, supported by a UN secretariat, “to discuss technical issues, share information and experiences in addressing debt challenges, increase access to technical assistance and capacity-building in debt management, coordinate approaches and strengthen borrower countries’ voices in the global debt architecture”.
Instead of facing lenders alone, these countries will now use a UN-backed platform to share technical expertise and coordinate their approach to a global debt system that is fundamentally broken.
Debt grips climate-vulnerable nations
The human cost of the current debt architecture is staggering. According to the UN trade and development agency, UNCTAD, more than 40% of the global population – roughly 3.4 billion people – live in countries where the government is forced to spend more on debt payments than on the health, education and social protection of its citizens.
In so-called low-income countries, governments spend an average of 7.5% of their total budgets on debt service, with interest payments consuming up to 20% of total government revenue in these regions.
The Philippines is a case study in this financial stranglehold. It is part of a global majority forced to watch its public services crumble and infrastructure lag while its wealth is siphoned off to satisfy foreign lenders.
The policy of automatic appropriations – a legacy of the rule of late former President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. – mandates that debt servicing takes precedence over any other public expenditure, effectively placing the demands of lenders above the needs of the Filipino people. Even as it faces a $1.5 trillion regional financing gap to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, its hands remain tied by a legal framework that values credit ratings over human lives.
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As a “middle-income country” (MIC), the Philippines is stuck in a frustrating purgatory. It is often deemed “too wealthy” for the G20’s debt-relief framework, yet too poor to absorb global economic shocks. Last year, Finance Undersecretary Joven Balbosa hit the nail on the head when he called for support that goes “beyond the simplistic income categorization” that ignores a country’s actual vulnerabilities.
Without an inclusive and equitable global debt architecture, nations including the Philippines are left to navigate catastrophic climate risks and economic shocks with zero fiscal breathing space.
No respite during climate disasters
The regional evidence of this systemic failure is everywhere. Take Pakistan, which in 2022 was hit by catastrophic flooding that submerged a third of the country and caused billions in losses. Despite this climate-driven disaster, World Bank data shows that Pakistan made payments in 2023 of $11.8 billion for public and publicly guaranteed (PPG) external debt, while its PPG external debt reached $93 billion that same year, surpassing pre-pandemic debt of $87 billion (2020).
Sri Lanka followed IMF prescriptions throughout 16 lending programs since 1991, only to become the first Asian country this century to default. Its MIC status prevents application for debt relief and restructuring measures. Today, the Sri Lankan people bear the brunt of harsh conditionalities, including raising VAT from 8% to 15%, slashing food and fuel subsidies, and the erosion of hard-earned worker pensions.
Currently, the global rules of lending and borrowing are set by a “creditors’ club” composed of the IMF, the World Bank and the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable it set up, and the Paris Club.
These institutions measure “debt sustainability” through a narrow lens of a country’s capacity to make timely repayments. They largely ignore internal economic inequalities, gender disparities and the existential threat of climate change.
Crises should trigger debt service cancellation
By organising the new borrowers’ forum, the Global South is signalling that the era of passive “standard-setting” by lenders is over.
The ultimate goal for global civil society and debt justice movements is the establishment of a UN Debt Convention; a democratic, binding and inclusive framework that governs both lenders and borrowers. This mechanism would ensure that debt restructuring and cancellation are sufficient to allow countries to fulfill their international human rights obligations and implement necessary climate actions.
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To be truly transformative, debt sustainability analyses must align with human rights and sustainable development needs. This means conducting impact assessments – both before and after loans are issued – to identify “illegitimate” debts that do not benefit the public.
Crucially, we need an automatic debt service cancellation mechanism that triggers during extreme climatic, environmental or health shocks. We also need a binding global debt registry to ensure that every loan is transparent and subject to public scrutiny.
Whether the borrowers’ forum becomes a true milestone depends on its courage to challenge the status quo. We can no longer allow debt to act as a “silent killer” of our future. It is time to demand a financial system that serves humanity, not just the balance sheets of the powerful.
The post Broken debt system must be fixed to confront future climate shocks appeared first on Climate Home News.
Broken debt system must be fixed to confront future climate shocks
Greenpeace and allies will be protesting outside Woodside’s Annual General Meeting to show the WA and federal governments strong community opposition to Woodside’s proposal to drill for gas at Scott Reef.
What: Protest outside Woodside Energy’s Annual General Meeting
When: 8am Thursday 23rd April 2026Where: Kagoshima Park (on the corner of Great Eastern Highway and Bolton Avenue)
What’s at stake
Scott Reef is a pristine ocean ecosystem off the north-west coast of Australia.
It is home to endangered and endemic species, including pygmy blue whales and the dusky sea snake, and a nesting ground for green sea turtles. Scott Reef is a place of extraordinary natural beauty, and a vital marine environment that supports a wide range of marine life.
What Woodside is proposing
Dirty fossil fuel corporation, Woodside Energy, is seeking approval to drill more than 50 gas wells underneath and around Scott Reef as part of its Browse project.
The gas would be extracted and transported to the Burrup Hub, the most polluting fossil fuel project in Australia. This proposal would industrialise the doorstep of Australia’s largest freestanding oceanic reef system – threatening the marine life that relies on it and the climate.
Why this can’t go ahead
The WA Environmental Protection Authority has already identified the risks of this project as “unacceptable”, issuing a preliminary rejection.
Serious concerns include:
- The risk of an oil spill
- Impacts on pygmy blue whales
- Damage to green sea turtle nesting grounds
These risks are severe, and potentially irreversible. But the decision hasn’t been made yet. The project is still being assessed.
The Federal Environment Minister is approaching a decision that will determine whether Scott Reef is protected – or vulnerable to decades of industrial gas destruction.
This is a defining moment.
Make opposition visible
Across Australia, people are speaking out to protect Scott Reef and oppose Woodside’s Browse project.
Showing that opposition is visible, coordinated and growing helps increase pressure on decision-makers ahead of this critical decision.
Join the protest
A protest outside Woodside’s AGM is a key public moment to demonstrate opposition and help protect Scott Reef.
Kagoshima Park (on the corner of Great Eastern Highway and Bolton Avenue)
8am, Thursday 23rd April 2026
Join the protest and help show how many people support protecting Scott Reef before the government makes its decision.
Join Greenpeace to save Scott Reef from Woodside’s dirty gas
As demand for whale meat declines at home, Norway exports it to Japan, markets it to tourists and sells it online as dog food.
Norway reopened its annual whale hunting season earlier this month, continuing a practice most countries abandoned decades ago.
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