Belém, Brazil — The mood in Belém is still positive despite the fact that it’s Day 4 of the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP30, and we don’t have a finalized agenda. Negotiators will continue with consultations until Saturday. The sticking points are still climate finance, trade, emissions reporting, and the funding gap for national climate plans — formally called nationally determined contributions. But many were happy to hear Brazil explicitly say yesterday that the world needs to find a path to “guide us away from our dependency on fossil fuels.”
“Countries talking openly about fossil fuels at COP is, oddly, a very rare thing indeed,” said Leo Roberts, program lead of global clean power diplomacy at E3G, in a message to journalists this morning. “So it's pretty groundbreaking to see a group so overtly supporting President [Luiz Inácio] Lula [da Silva]'s messaging on the need for this COP to kick off a process by which countries can discuss pathways to transition away from fossil fuels.”
The question of how to turn this ambition into action — the central theme of COP30 — remains unanswered.
About the authors
Jesse Chase-Lubitz
Jesse Chase-Lubitz covers climate change and multilateral development banks for Devex. She previously worked at Nature Magazine, where she received a Pulitzer grant for an investigation into land reclamation. She has written for outlets such as Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and The Japan Times, among others. Jesse holds a master’s degree in Environmental Policy and Regulation from the London School of Economics.
Ayenat Mersie
Ayenat Mersie is a Global Development Reporter for Devex. Previously, she worked as a freelance journalist for publications such as National Geographic and Foreign Policy and as an East Africa correspondent for Reuters.
