The EU dropped fossil-fuel language after Saudi Arabia and others opposed any mention of a transition
COP30 President Andre Correa do Lago talks with people before the plenary session during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP30), in Belem, Brazil, November 22, 2025. PHOTO: REUTERS
World governments agreed on Saturday to a compromise climate deal at the COP30 conference in Brazil that would boost finance for poor nations coping with global warming but omit any mention of the fossil fuels driving it.
In securing the accord, countries attempted to demonstrate global unity in addressing climate change impacts even after the world’s biggest historic emitter, the United States, declined to send an official delegation.
But the agreement, which landed in overtime after two weeks of contentious negotiations in the Amazon city of Belem, also exposed rifts between wealthy and developing nations, as well as between those governments with opposing views on oil, gas and coal. After gaveling the deal through, COP30 President Andre Correa do Lago acknowledged the talks had been tough.
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“We know some of you had greater ambitions for some of the issues at hand,” he said.
The European Union had been the main holdout for language on a transition away from fossil fuels, but ultimately agreed to drop it after a coalition of countries including top oil exporter Saudi Arabia said it was off-limits.
“We should support (the deal) because at least it is going in the right direction,” the European Union’s climate commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, told reporters before the deal was gaveled through.
Some countries had harsher words.
“A climate decision that cannot even say fossil fuels is not neutrality, it is complicity. And what is happening here transcends incompetence,” said Panama’s climate negotiator Juan Carlos Monterrey.
Finance boost
The deal launches a voluntary initiative to speed up climate action to help nations meet their existing pledges to reduce emissions, and calls for rich nations to at least triple the amount of money they provide to help developing countries adapt to a warming world by 2035.
Brazil’s COP30 President Andre Correa do Lago and Executive Director Ana Toni attend a plenary session during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP30), in Belem, Brazil, November 21, 2025.PHOTO: REUTERS
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Scientists have said existing national commitments to cut emissions have cut projected warming significantly, but are not enough to keep world temperatures from breaching 1.5C above industrial levels, a threshold that could unleash the worst impacts of climate change.
Developing countries have argued in the meantime that they urgently need funds to adapt to impacts that are already hitting, like rising sea levels and worsening heat waves, droughts, floods, and storms.
Avinash Persaud, Special Advisor to the President of the Inter-American Development Bank, a multilateral lender focused on Latin America and the Caribbean, said the accord’s focus on finance was important as climate impacts mount.
“But I fear the world still fell short on more rapid-release grants for developing countries responding to loss and damage. That goal is as urgent as it is hard,” he said.
Fossil Fuel side text
The impasse between the European Union and the Arab Group of nations over fossil fuels had pushed the talks past a Friday deadline, triggering all-night negotiations before a compromise could be reached.
