A growing group of countries wants COP30 to kick off the process of crafting a roadmap for the world to transition away from fossil fuels, which are by far the largest driver of planetary heating.
More than 80 countries on Tuesday issued a call for the “Mutirão” decision – expected to be the main political outcome of the Belém summit – to include a commitment to develop a blueprint that builds on the landmark COP28 agreement in Dubai, which for the first time signalled a global shift away from oil, coal and gas.
The call’s supporters include industrialised nations like the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, as well as large developing countries such as Colombia and Kenya, and low-lying Pacific island states.
“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,” UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband told a press conference on Tuesday. “We have an opportunity to make COP30 the moment we take forward what we agreed at COP28,” he added.
Since all governments agreed for the first time at the UN climate conference in Dubai to explicitly reference fossil fuels in an official climate summit outcome, major fossil fuel-producing countries – led vocally by Gulf states like Saudi Arabia – have pushed back against efforts to build on that landmark decision.
But calls for the creation of a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels have been gathering momentum in Belém since Brazilian President Lula da Silva mentioned the idea at the leaders’ summit nearly two weeks ago.
“Key for 1.5C”
Rapid developments over the past ten days in the Amazon city have caught many countries off guard. The European Union has yet to form a joint position on the roadmap, for instance, even though the bloc supports the implementation of the Dubai agreement.
Tina Stege, climate envoy for the low-lying Marshall Islands, said a global shift away from fossil fuels is “key for keeping the door open on 1.5C and limiting the scale and duration of any overshoot”. UN Secretary General António Guterres conceded last month that the global average temperature will breach, at least temporarily, the key threshold set in the Paris Agreement.
Stege added that the current reference to a fossil fuel roadmap in the draft outcome decision presented by Brazil’s COP presidency on Tuesday morning was “weak and presented as an option”, while “it must be strengthened and it must be adopted”.
COP30 Bulletin Day 8: Draft decision draws battle lines on fossil fuel transition, finance and trade
The draft “Mutirão” decision – which the COP30 hosts hope to land by the end of Wednesday – mentions the transition away from fossil fuels among a wide sweep of options for how to find agreement on the thorniest issues being discussed in Belém.
One option would encourage governments to convene a roundtable aimed at supporting countries to develop “just, orderly and equitable transition roadmaps”, including for reducing dependency on fuels and stopping deforestation. However, that appears to refer to domestic blueprints and stops short of advocating for a global roadmap that over 80 countries are calling for.
Backlash expected from oil producers
Irene Vélez, Colombia’s Environment Minister, said such a roadmap “must be the legacy of COP30”.
“I wish that we won’t have to tell the world that the dozens of countries that are here have let them down – not only to those who mobilised today but to future generations,” she added. “We must rise to the occasion”.
Antonio Hill, a COP veteran from the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), told Climate Home it is not surprising that strong calls for a fossil fuel transition blueprint are coming from Brazil and Colombia.
“They are relatively high-cost producers [of oil and gas], they have relatively short horizons in terms of their reserves, and they’re facing structural decline,” he added. “They actually don’t have the luxury of waiting it out.”
But their push for the inclusion of a fossil fuel roadmap in the COP30 outcome is all but guaranteed to prompt a strong backlash from several other large nations heavily dependent on fossil fuel exports and consumption.
Petrostates within the Arab group, led by Saudi Arabia, are expected to mount the strongest opposition. And while renewable energy-rich Kenya has endorsed Tuesday’s call, many other African countries remain wary of committing to a fossil-fuel phase-out.
Fair and funded transition
Richard Muyungi, the chair of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN), told Climate Home News last Friday that African countries had yet to coordinate their views on the issue, which he described as “very important”.
“But… generally as a continent, we are the least responsible for the [climate] problem, and this is the continent which chooses to harness all the available energy sources to develop,” he said, adding that Africa should not be forced or pushed towards a trajectory that threatens to undermine its development agenda.
Former German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan said countries pushing for a roadmap need to reassure their counterparts that this will not be a “top-down” exercise.
“We are talking about a nationally-driven, fair and inclusive process that would also bring in the finance [element],” she told Climate Home News. “For big fossil fuel producers, it is an opportunity to have a dialogue with consumers so that it can be just, orderly and equitable.”
