More than 80 countries have joined a call for a roadmap to phasing out fossil fuels, in a dramatic intervention into stuck negotiations at the UN Cop30 climate summit.
Countries from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific joined with EU member states and the UK to make an impassioned plea for the “transition away from fossil fuels” to be a central outcome of the talks, despite stiff opposition from petrostates and some other major economies.
Tina Stege, climate envoy for the Marshall Islands, flanked by ministers from 20 countries, told a packed press conference in Belém: “Let’s get behind the idea of a fossil fuel roadmap, let’s work together and make it a plan.”
Campaigners hailed the intervention. Jasper Inventor, deputy programme director at Greenpeace International, said: “This could be the turning point of Cop30. This was a strong signal coming from global south and global north countries on the need to phase out fossil fuels.
“They are following the call of 40,000 people on the streets of Belém and millions of people around the world. The presidency [of the Cop] and the rest of the parties have to heed this call. The climate needs it, the people demand it.”
A commitment to “transition away from fossil fuels” was the key outcome of Cop28, held in Dubai in 2023. But several countries, led by Saudi Arabia, subsequently started trying to unpick the resolution. At the climate talks in Baku last year, attempts to follow up and flesh out the resolution failed.
This year, the Brazilian hosts refused to put any mention of the “transition away from fossil fuels” on to the official agenda for the conference.
It was even excluded from “presidency consultations” that have been taking place behind the scenes on the four trickiest issues on the agenda, which are finance, trade, transparency and the fact that countries’ emissions-cutting plans – known as NDCs, for nationally determined contributions – are too feeble to limit temperature rises to 1.5C, the goal of the Paris agreement.
We are all saying very clearly that this issue must be at the heart of this conference
Ed Miliband
But the scores of countries that are in favour of a phase-out took a decision on Monday that they must make a stand. They believe there can be no response to the NDCs and no hope of maintaining the 1.5C goal without ending dependency on fossil fuels.
Ed Miliband, the UK’s energy secretary, told the Tuesday press conference: “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. We are all saying very clearly that this issue must be at the heart of this conference.”
Rachel Kyte, the UK climate envoy, said a roadmap was needed to move forward the resolution made at Cop28 and turn it into action.
“We agreed this at Cop28 but have not been able to find ways to implement it,” she said. “And this is an implementation Cop [the phrase used by the Brazilian hosts].”
On Tuesday morning, the Brazilian presidency of Cop30 came up with a draft text for a decision from the summit that – to the surprise of many – included mention of a roadmap to the phase-out of fossil fuels as an option. But for some countries this was too weak.
Ralph Regenvanu, the minister for climate change for the Pacific island of Vanuatu, told the Guardian: “It’s not strong enough, it needs to be more action-oriented, it needs measurable targets, there need to be elements showing what this roadmap is going to look like.”
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Supporters of the roadmap emphasised that it would require all countries to follow the same path, but would recognise that countries face different problems – some have large fossil fuel reserves, while others are dependent on fossil fuel imports; some countries want to use their reserves for development, and many developing countries will need financial help and access to low-carbon technology if they are to make any moves away from fossil fuels.
“This is not an imposition,” said Kyte. “Every country has a transition it needs to go through. These transitions are quite different, depending on your energy mix and other factors.”
Brazil is expected to revise the text after input and consultations with all the groupings of countries at the Cop30 talks. The US is the only major country absent from Belém.
There is likely to be stiff opposition to any restatement of the transition away from fossil fuels – from Saudi Arabia and perhaps Russia, Bolivia and other petrostates.
Those in favour of a phase-out believe they have a majority of countries at the Cop, if their supporters and neutral countries are included. But as the process works by consensus, even a handful of naysayers can prevent progress.
Brazil’s government has internal conflicts over the transition away from fossil fuels, the Guardian understands.
While Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – who may return to the conference as soon as Wednesday – made several mentions of the need to “move away from fossil fuel dependency” at the summit of world leaders that preceded Cop30, and at the official opening of the conference last week, there are sections of his government that are wedded to Brazil’s expansion of oil and gas drilling.
But Marina Silva, Brazil’s environment minister, told the Guardian that a roadmap was “an ethical answer” to the climate crisis and called on all countries to “have the courage” to consider it.
