The host of the COP30 climate summit in Brazil has urged countries to unite for a deal as a showdown loomed in the summit’s final hours over whether the accord should set the world on a clearer path away from fossil fuels.
“This cannot be an agenda that divides us,” COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago told delegates in a public plenary session at the conference before releasing them for further negotiations.
“We must reach an agreement between us.”
The rift over the future of oil, gas and coal underscored the difficulties of landing a consensus agreement at the annual conference, which serves as a perennial test of global resolve to avert the worst effects of global warming.
A draft text for a deal that was released by summit host Brazil before dawn contained no reference to fossil fuels, dropping entirely a range of options on the subject that had been included in an earlier version.
Scores of countries, including major oil and gas producer countries, had called the options unacceptable while 80 governments had come out in support of them.
Panama negotiator Juan Carlos Monterrey told a press conference before the plenary on Friday morning that leaving fossil fuels out of the COP30 deal risked turning the talks into a “clown show”.
“Failing to name the causes of the climate crisis is not compromise. It is denial,” he said.
The two-week conference in the Amazon city of Belem is scheduled to end on Friday evening.
Previous COP summits have blown past their deadlines before eventually reaching a compromise.
A deal text would need approval by consensus among the nearly 200 countries present in order to be adopted.
The United States has declined to send an official delegation this year under President Donald Trump, who has called global warming a hoax.
Corrêa do Lago said the exit of the world’s largest economy meant uniting around COP30 was crucial to ensure the multilateral process survives: “The world is watching.”
For days, countries have wrangled over the future of fossil fuels, whose burning emits greenhouse gases that scientists say are by far the largest contributors to climate change.
Dozens of members have been pushing hard for a “roadmap” laying out how countries should follow through with a promise made at COP28 two years ago to move away from oil, gas and coal.
The European Union’s commissioner for climate Wopke Hoekstra said in a statement delivered during consultations on Friday that the issue was important to building on past commitments to slash emissions.
“We need to make sure that the shift from fossil fuels to clean energy is real and in the text,” he said.
Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing countries are opposing this, negotiators at COP30 told Reuters.
A Brazilian negotiator told Reuters the fossil fuel language was unlikely to be reintroduced, and that the summit presidency was pressing for only small adjustments to the existing draft.
Other negotiators indicated that compromises to strengthen the deal’s commitments to step up emissions-cutting action were possible, particularly if wealthy countries could commit to provide more finance to help developing countries with a green transition.