BELEM, Brazil — United Nations climate talks in Brazil reached a limited agreement Saturday to deliver more money to countries hit hardest by climate change to help them adapt to extreme weather’s wrath. But the deal doesn’t include an explicit detailed map to phase out fossil fuels or strengthen inadequate emissions-cutting plans.
The Brazilian hosts of the conference said they’d eventually come up with a road map to get away from fossil fuels, working with hard-line Colombia, but it won’t have the same force as something approved at the United Nations conference, called COP30.
The deal was approved Saturday after negotiators blew past a deadline to wrap up the previous day. It was crafted after more than 12 hours of late-night and early morning meetings in COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago’s office.
Looking ahead, Do Lago said tough discussions started in Belem would continue under Brazil’s leadership until the next annual conference “even if they are not reflected in this text we just approved.”
Do Lago has said a fossil fuel transition plan will be in a separate proposal issued later by his team that won’t carry the same weight as a deal accepted by nations at the conference.
Critics complained about the agreement struck Saturday.
“It’s a weak outcome,” said former Philippine negotiator Jasper Inventor, now at Greenpeace International.
Many called it inadequate, with Panama negotiator Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez railing against it.
“A climate decision that cannot even say ‘fossil fuels’ is not neutrality, it is complicity. And what is happening here transcends incompetence,” Monterrey Gomez said. “Science has been deleted from COP30 because it offends the polluters.”
Borenstein, Walling and Delgado write for the Associated Press.
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