U.N. summit ends without agreement on phasing out fossil fuels : NPR

This year's UN global climate conference in Brazil ended on Saturday with a formal agreement that failed to address the phase-out of fossil fuels, the main driver of global warming.

The United States was conspicuously absent from this year's negotiations, known as COP30, after the Trump administration refused send a delegation to Belem, Brazil.

In the end, the conference made only modest progress in international efforts to curb global warming and pay for the costs of adaptation to a hotter planet.

Earlier this week, more than 80 countries demanded negotiators agree on a road map to transition the global economy away from fossil fuels. The group included many developing countries hit hard by climate change, as well as Britain, Germany and oil producers such as Mexico and Brazil.

They said world leaders need to start developing concrete plans to achieve their goals. landmark commitment for 2023 reduce the use of oil, coal and natural gas.

However, major fossil fuel producers, including Russia and Saudi Arabia, against creating a process or schedule for phasing out these energy resources.

After all, the formal agreement made no mention of fossil fuels.

The president of this year's summit, Andre Aranha Correa do Lago of Brazil, acknowledged that many countries wanted a more ambitious agreement. Two dozen countries have said they will work with the UN in a new process aimed at moving away from fossil fuels.

In April, Colombia and the Netherlands I plan to accept The first international conference was devoted to this issue.

Ralph Regenvanu is the minister for climate change in Vanuatu, an island nation facing rising sea levels. He says the new conference is Belen's key achievement.

“The text is not very good, but at least we have a result,” says Regenvanu.

Here are the important takeaways from COP30.

No roadmap for transition to fossil fuels

The burning of fossil fuels remains the largest contributor to global warming. But climate negotiators have struggled for years to agree on how countries should address the world's dependence on these resources.

Two years ago in DubaiCountries called for a global transition away from fossil fuels for the first time.

This year, dozens of countries wanted world leaders to begin developing just such plans. But in the end such a deal did not happen.

Brazil's final agreement said countries understood the “urgent need for action” to cut greenhouse gas emissions “deeply, quickly and sustainably,” without making any specific mention of fossil fuels.

Many countries were disappointed.

“There is no [climate change] mitigation unless we can discuss the transition away from fossil fuels,” said Daniela Durán González, head of international relations at Colombia’s Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development.

Developing a road map to phase out fossil fuels will not be easy. The global economy is still largely powered by oil, coal and natural gas, although countries are adding huge amounts of renewable energy to their electricity grids.

The transition away from fossil fuels should not be forced on countries, especially developing countries, Nigeria's delegate told the conference.

Nigeria will not support climate plans “that will lead to our sudden economic decline and increased social instability”, the delegate said.

The planet will pass a critical temperature limit in the 2030s

COP30 has become an important temperature target out of reach. Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries agreed to try to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to temperatures in the late 1800s.

Scientists have found that risks for people and ecosystems accelerate with every tenth of a degree beyond this limit.

But recent UN report concluded that the planet is likely to rise above 1.5 degrees Celsius in the next decade.

However, it is still possible to limit this excess. If countries can halve overall greenhouse gas emissions by 2035, scientists say the planet will quickly return to lower levels of warming.

The world is currently not on track to achieve this goal. Under current policies, global emissions are expected to fall by only 12% by 2035.

According to scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this is not enough to avoid catastrophic warming.

“The science says we need five times more,” says Alden Meyer, senior fellow at E3G, a climate change think tank. “We need a 60% reduction in temperatures if we have any chance of getting anywhere near the 1.5C temperature target.”

Little progress on climate finance

As the world faces the worsening impacts of climate change, attention is increasingly focused on ways to help countries adapt. It means money.

The problem is particularly acute in poorer countries, which tend to suffer the worst effects of natural disasters but bear little responsibility for the pollution that causes global temperatures to rise.

At last year's climate summit in Azerbaijan, rich countries agreed to the deal provide developing countries with at least $300 billion a year in financing by 2035. This is three times more than was promised to poor countries under the previous commitment. The Azerbaijan deal also included a broader goal of increasing overall climate finance for developing countries, including from the private sector, to US$1.3 trillion a year for a decade.

But rich countries have been unreliable donors in the past. Developed countries were late in fulfilling earlier funding commitments. Funds set up to compensate countries for climate-related damage are still largely empty, according to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Meanwhile, developing countries face growing losses from extreme weather events.

A few weeks ago, for example, Hurricane Melissa The Category 5 storm hit Jamaica, causing damage estimated at $10 billion, equal to almost a third of the country's gross domestic product, according to Matthew Samuda, Jamaica's Minister of Economic Growth and Job Creation.

Negotiations in Brazil have provided little clarity on how additional funding will be provided. The final agreement “calls for efforts” to triple over a decade the amount of funding available to help countries adapt to a hotter world, such as improving flood protection and infrastructure built for more extreme weather conditions.

The agreement also states that countries have agreed to “take urgent action” to increase climate finance for developing countries.

China pays attention to trade problems

With the U.S. absent from this year's talks, attention has turned to China, which is both a major climate polluter and a world leader in clean technologies such as solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles.

China stepped up trade discussions at the conference, said Li Shuo, director of the China Center at the nonprofit Asia Society.

“They happen to be the country that produces the lion's share of environmentally friendly and low-carbon products. And now they have become champions of free trade in this particular respect,” he says. “They want the rest of the world to buy their products.”

New conference on fossil fuel phase-out

One of the key events of the conference was the announcement of a new conference dedicated to the global transition away from fossil fuels.

The conference will take place in Colombia, a fossil fuel producing country.The event was organized by the Netherlands, the homeland of the oil giant Shell.

Colombian Environment Minister Irene Vélez Torres told NPR that the new conference, being held in Santa Marta, Colombia, will complement the UN climate process.

“The idea of ​​the Santa Marta conference is to create the first space in which we are very clear that the phase-out [of fossil fuels] necessary,” says Torres.

Meyer says he's not surprised by this new conference. “I think this reflects the frustration of both countries and NGOs who have seen little action on this issue. [United Nations] process,” Meyer says.