In the final days of the conference pressure for a roadmap away from fossil fuels is growing as delegates discuss possible outcomes
My colleague Fiona Harvey, a Cop veteran, has just filed this post on host Brazil’s unorthodox approach to these talks and their hopes of wrapping up on time [“vanishingly unlikely” is Fiona’s verdict].
Brazil’s running of Cop30 has been unorthodox from the start, with an insistence that effectively there was little to negotiate at this “conference of the parties” and that some of the biggest items – the roadmap to climate finance, the transition away from fossil fuels, and above all a response to the national climate plans that were supposed to be submitted ahead of this Cop – were not even to be on the agenda.
The hosts have continued with their unusual approach: the Cop president has let it be known he wants to wrap up the most difficult issues at a ministerial meeting on Wednesday, gavel through the deal, and then allow the less contentious issues to be processed on Thursday and Friday.
This would be the opposite of the usual Cop format, in which routine issues are dispensed with first and the final hours are an almost fisticuffs affair when ministers wrangle over their intractable differences – usually over money and responsibility for emissions cuts - late into the night.
