Ministers from around the world were preparing for the final tense days of negotiations at the UN climate summit, trying to secure a deal that demonstrates global resolve amid the growing assertiveness of developing nations.
The task will not be easy. Countries are now grappling with some of the most difficult issues — many of which have been left off the formal agenda to ensure that negotiations continue even if an issue gets stuck.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is also expected to arrive on Wednesday to help build consensus among parties at the summit in the Amazon city of Belém, ahead of the final session scheduled for Friday.
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The new dynamic of climate diplomacy has seen China, India and other developing nations showing more strength this year, while the European Union has been rocked by weakening domestic support and the once-dominant United States has not participated.
Asked if there was any issue dominating the negotiations, the president of COP30, André Corrêa do Lago, replied: ‘Everything, everything. It’s very complicated’.
Brazil’s main goal for COP30 is to reach an agreement that reaffirms the 2015 Paris Agreement, while recognizing its shortcomings, establishing clear plans for future climate action.
The summit’s work is ‘dry, complicated, harrowing, tiring — and absolutely necessary,’ said UK Energy Minister Ed Miliband.
Pay attention to differences
Over the past week, negotiators have had the opportunity to air their differences on three key issues: climate finance, unilateral trade measures and planned emissions cuts that fall far short of what is needed.
The central objective of the Paris treaty, to prevent warming beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, will not be achieved.
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Current emissions trends have the world warming by at least 2.3 degrees Celsius, which the Norwegian climate minister said the parties agreed would need to be addressed.
‘It is essential to be able to talk about how to close the gap from now on’, minister Andreas Bjelland Eriksen told Reuters.
A bloc of developing countries is also seeking a payment schedule to ensure rich countries meet pledges made at last year’s COP29 to deliver $300 billion in climate finance annually by 2035. The US — absent from COP30 — has failed to meet previous commitments.
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Clean technology negotiations
China’s increasing role in UN climate talks comes after decades in which Beijing represented the interests of developing countries in negotiations while expanding its own green technology sector.
‘It’s not that China has launched into a brilliant new strategy; it just happened,’ said Li Xing, a professor at the Guangdong Institute for International Strategies.
‘With the US pulling back — Trump is not interested in this sector at all — China sees an opening and says, ‘We’re interested; we are willing to go,” Li told Reuters in Beijing.
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Another sensitive issue is that some developing countries are complaining about carbon taxes or tariffs imposed by some countries on green products made in China, given the urgent need for the world to accelerate its transition to clean energy.
