Belem – The outcome of Brazil's Cop30 climate summit is hanging in the balance, with the European Union and others refusing to accept a draft deal that omits any call to phase out fossil fuels.
The United Nations climate talks went into extra time on Friday evening, with negotiators deeply divided over a new draft agreement unveiled by Cop30 host Brazil that made no reference to phasing out fossil fuels – the main driver of climate change.
European Union climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said the text was "unacceptable" and that the summit risked ending without an agreement.
"I am saying it with a heavy heart, but what is now on the table is clearly no deal," Hoekstra told reporters as negotiators huddled again in efforts to reach a compromise.
"This cannot be an agenda that divides us," Cop30 President André Corrêa do Lago told delegates in a public plenary session before releasing them for further negotiations. "We must reach an agreement between us."
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Consensus needed
The rifts over fossil fuels, but also financing the transition away from them, has highlighted the difficulty of reaching a consensus at the annual conference – a perennial test of global resolve to avert the worst impacts of global warming.
Nearly 200 nations are negotiating at Cop30, which this year is taking place without the United States as President Donald Trump shunned the event.
The draft deal had dropped a range of fossil fuels options after scores of countries, including major oil and gas producer nations, had opposed them.
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France's ecological transition minister, Monique Barbut, told AFP that oil-rich Russia and Saudi Arabia, along with coal producer India and "many" emerging countries, were blocking a deal on fossil fuels.
But Arunabha Ghosh, a special envoy for South Asia at the talks, defended the exclusion of the fossil fuel phaseout roadmap, arguing developing countries needed to ensure energy security for their countries and a transition for workers dependent on the sector.
Burning fossil fuels emits greenhouse gases that are by far the largest contributors to global warming.
(with newswires)
