All climate summits need a story and the one held in the Amazonian city of Belém (Brazil) did not have a clear one a couple of weeks ago, beyond the fact that this COP30 is being held at a truly complicated time for the international fight against climate change due to the advance of denialist populism, with Donald Trump at the helm. But the host of this COP30, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, opened a juicy melon at the beginning of this event: in Belém we must promote a roadmap to overcome dependence on fossil fuels. And support for this initiative is growing in the final week of this conference held under the auspices of the United Nations.
On Tuesday, around twenty ministers decided to demonstrate this support publicly, in a press conference. Representatives from Germany, the United Kingdom, Colombia, Kenya… Also present were the Spanish Minister for the Ecological Transition, Sara Aagesen. “I think we will do it,” he explained to the press after that conference. “Now is the time to overcome that turning point and have something concrete,” the Spaniard added regarding the need to promote this roadmap to leave fossil fuels behind.
For now, the draft distributed by the COP Presidency includes this mention of the roadmap or map of the way forward. The need to end public support for fossil fuels is also mentioned, another of the points on which Aagesen influenced.
“The roadmap is essential,” explained Colombia’s Environment Minister, Irene Vélez Torre. This country knows this well, because it is a producer of oil and coal, and is committed to putting an end to these extractions. A roadmap is not only a necessity to fight climate change – fossil fuels are the main cause of warming – but also to ensure that producing countries and whose economies depend on these exports can have a just transition.
For now, the fight is focused on getting a mandate from this summit to develop the roadmap in upcoming conferences. But just the mention of fossil fuels has set off alarm bells in climate change negotiations for more than three decades. Because ever since the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, on which these COPs and the Paris Agreement depend, was signed in 1992, legislation to end greenhouse gas emissions has been talked about and talked about. But its main causes, fuels and the need to move away from them, were not directly mentioned until the 2023 summit, which was held in Dubai. There the countries agreed, to the surprise of many, on a statement that advocated leaving them behind.
At last year’s event, in Baku, it was not possible to recover that mention. Indeed, the host, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, described the fuel as “a gift from God” just a year ago at the opening of COP29 in Baku.
Now, in Brazil, Lula has launched the challenge, which more than 20 countries have publicly taken up in an initiative promoted by the Marchall Islands. It is expected that other nations will join in the next few hours. Some analysts put the support at more than six dozen.
But the key is not in those who subscribe to it, but in those who reject it. In previous nominations, oil-producing countries, led by Saudi Arabia, have blocked references to oil, gas and coal, arguing that they should only talk about emissions. For now they remain silent. But Aagesen insisted this Tuesday that what they intend to do now at COP30 is to give continuity to something already agreed at the Dubai summit: how to leave behind the fossil fuels that are at the origin of the climate crisis.
