As nations push for more ambition at climate talks, chairman says they may get it

BELEM, Brazil — As the United Nations climate negotiations approach, the Brazilian hosts were not expecting big end-of-session declarations on lofty goals. This conference was supposed to focus on the “implementation” of past promises that have not yet been fulfilled.

Throw that out the window.

The urgency of climate change has some negotiators calling for more comprehensive action — on weak plans to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases, on a lack of money to help countries hit by climate change, on the firmness of phasing out coal, oil and gas. Because of this pressure to do more – notably from Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – the diplomat presiding over the talks said Saturday he would consider an overall communiqué ending negotiations, sometimes called a decision or cover text.

“I think things have changed, which is a very good thing,” said Jean Su, a veteran observer at the Center for Biological Diversity. “So I think there’s momentum to get some sort of decision text, and we’re particularly hopeful that there will be some commitment on phasing out fossil fuels.”

“I would say the stakes now are probably higher than at the last COPs, because there is an ambition gap,” said Jasper Inventor, a former Philippine negotiator and international program director at Greenpeace International. “There are a lot of expectations, there is a lot of enthusiasm here, but there are also a lot of political signals sent by President Lula.”

“We’re in the middle of the COP, and it’s usually in the middle of the COP that the negotiators look each other eye to eye. It’s almost like a staring contest,” Inventor said. “But next week, this is where the negotiations must take place, where political decisions are taken by ministers.”

Because this process stems from the Paris Climate Agreement, which is largely voluntary, these final declarations grab headlines and set the tone globally, but have limited power. The latest final declarations from the COP made promises, still unfulfilled, for rich countries to give money to poor countries to deal with climate change and for the world to phase out fossil fuels.

Chief among those issues is the idea of ​​asking nations to go back to the drawing board on what experts consider inadequate in the climate plans submitted this year.

Under the 2015 Paris agreement, which marks its 10th anniversary here, nations are supposed to present plans every five years to combat climate change and reduce emissions. So far, 116 of 193 countries have applied this year, but what they have promised isn’t much. The United Nations and Climate Action Tracker, a group of scientists, calculate that these new commitments have barely reduced future projections of Earth warming.

Even if the world did everything it promises, Earth would be about seven-tenths of a degree Celsius (1.3 degrees Fahrenheit) above Paris’ goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, the groups estimated.

That’s why small island nations, led by Palau, have called for this conference to close the gap between what is planned in national commitments and what is needed to prevent the world from reaching the temperature danger zone.

This is not on the agenda for these negotiations. There are also no specific details on how to meet last year’s pledge by rich countries to provide $300 billion a year in climate finance aid.

So when nations wanted to address these issues early on, COP President André Corrêa do Lago, a veteran Brazilian diplomat, organized small, special conferences to try to decide whether the controversial topics should be discussed.

On Saturday, the conference put the question to the new ministers.

“The parties will decide how they want to proceed,” Do Lago said at a news conference Saturday evening. Given what countries are saying and past history, this generally means a final end-of-COP message to the world, several experts said.

In an informal exchange with a reporter about how the conference was going, COP President do Lago said: “Hey, it could be better, but not as bad as it could be. »

U.N. General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock, a former German foreign minister who participated in 10 of those sessions, told The Associated Press on Saturday morning, ahead of the evening session, that she had seen “new momentum” in Belem.

“We can only tackle the climate crisis together if we commit to a strong mitigation target,” she said. “It also means abandoning fossil fuels and investing in renewable energy. »

Two years ago, in Dubai, the world agreed to “move away from fossil fuels”, but last year there was no mention of it and no details on how and when to do it.

Baerbock hailed as crucial Lula’s call at last week’s Leaders’ Summit for a “roadmap for humanity to overcome, in a just and planned way, its dependence on fossil fuels, to reverse deforestation and to mobilize the resources needed to do so.”

“I think what we have before us are the ingredients of a potential set of big ambitions for the outcome of this conference,” said Iskander Erzini Vernoit, executive director of the Moroccan IMAL Initiative for Climate and Development.

Indigenous groups have raped and blocked the venue twice this week demanding greater inclusion in UN talks, despite promoting the conference as the “Indigenous Peoples’ COP.”

So far, the COP “testifies that unfortunately, for indigenous people to be heard, they actually have to be disruptive,” said Aya Khourshid, an Egyptian-Palestinian member of the Wisdom Keepers delegation, a group of indigenous people from around the world.

Indigenous people devote a lot of energy “to being in that space, but not necessarily having a platform or a voice at the decision-making table with ministers and those in power,” said Whaia, a wisdom keeper of Ngāti Kahungunu.

“There is an imbalance here at COP30,” she said. “There are the privileged and the less fortunate who have no say in what actually happens in their homes.”

___

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from several private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropic organizations, a list of supporters, and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

___

This article was produced as part of the 2025 Climate Change Media Partnership, a journalism fellowship hosted by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.