Ministers join together for the Mutirão call for a fossil fuel roadmap
So many ministers gathered today, to join the Mutirão call for a fossil fuel roadmap, that there were challenges fitting them all behind a podium. During a press conference to unite in support of a just, orderly, and equitable transition away from fossil fuels representatives from around the world spoke about the urgent need for a plan for a phase out.
“Today we bring today many diverse interests who all support the call for a roadmap,” Tina Stege, of the Marshall Islands said, flanked by dozens standing behind her. “The best chance of landing an agreement at this COP is in the Mutirão package,” she said. “The current reference in the text is weak and is presented as an option – it must be strengthened and it must be adopted. That is why you see all these countries here today.”
The group included representatives from Sierra Leone and Kenya. The German representative said nearly all of Europe was behind it. Marcele Oliveira, a youth champion, took the mic to loud applause.
“We need to do this now,” she said. “This is the most important mobilization around climate justice for our generation – so let’s make this happen.”
The UK’s Secretary of State for Energy Ed Miliband, a stalwart of Cop conferences, was also at the podium, speaking in support of the roadmap. “This is an issue that must not be ignored, cannot be ignored, and we are saying very very clearly must be at the heart of Cop.”
Key events
Who will host next year’s Cop? The tussle between Australia and Turkey continues with little clarity for delegates eager to beat the queues and book hotels before prices soar.
Last night, Anthony Albanese, the Australian prime minister, said Australia would not stand in the way of Turkey hosting next year’s Cop31 climate summit to avoid the hosting rights defaulting to Germany – which could be seen as a sign of disunity holding back climate action.
But a government spokesperson later clarified his comments, noting that Turkey had not been chosen as host and that Australia had the overwhelming support of countries.
“Turkey shouldn’t block us, just as we wouldn’t block them if the situation were reversed,” the spokesperson said.
“But of course we will continue to negotiate with Turkey in good faith for an outcome in the best interests of the Pacific and our national interest.”
Nina Lakhani
My colleague Nina Lakhani with responses to the crackdowns on indigenous protests this week:
A group of UN experts has issued a statement expressing “deep concern” about the UN climate chief’s request to beef up state security forces at the Cop30 venue – in response to peaceful protests by Indigenous protesters last week.
In a strongly worded letter, five special rapporteurs reminded the UNFCCC and Brazilian Cop30 hosts of their duty under international law to protect all human rights, including the rights to freedom of expression, assembly and association, and the right to participate in multilateral spaces like the UN climate summit.
“The protection of Indigenous Peoples’ human rights is essential, as they are facing widespread violations not only because of the continued expansion of fossil fuels in their territories, but also just transition projects, mining and carbon credits that do not respect their rights or harm biodiversity, water, food and health. Indigenous Peoples seek to be heard and ask that solutions affecting them are co-developed with them. Critically, these solutions also benefit everyone’s human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, including a safe climate.”
“According to information received, for now none of the protesters has been harmed or criminalized. We hope that there will be no attempts to press charges or legal reprisals for participation in these mobilizations. Both the host state and the UNFCCC Secretariat must ensure the respect of international standards protecting the right to protest.
“We express deep concern about requests to increase security, which have been met by a visible increase in armed security presence at COP30. First, this is not warranted by the circumstances of the protests that happened at COP30. And, second, this securitization contributes to creating a chilling effect and feeling of insecurity for all participants. Third, it represents a form of stigmatization of environmental human rights defenders, and Indigenous Peoples in particular. Rather, their actions should be understood in the context of global trends of increasing and increasingly vicious attacks to defenders and their support organizations, as well as illegitimate limitations to the resources and support systems they can rely upon and generally shrinking of civic space.”
The statement is signed by the UN special rapporteurs on human rights and climate change (Elisa Morgera), the rights of Indigenous Peoples (Albert K. Barume), clean, healthy and sustainable environment (Astrid Puentes Riañ); freedom of peaceful assembly and association (Gina Romero), and human rights defenders (Mary Lawlor).
The UNFCCC secretariat is expected to issue a response soon.
The experts also point to the paradox of excluding civil society while fossil fuel industry participants continue to be given access, reiterating their call made on the opening day of Cop30 “to curb the presence of fossil fuel lobbyists and ensure transparency, public participation, and meaningful dialogue with civil society.”
They are calling for greater openness within the negotiating rooms, and in the letter slammed the new UNFCCC rule increasing access for observers yet only allowing them to speak only at the end of each meeting.
“Changing dominating practices of closed-door negotiations and ineffective inclusion of civil society, other observers and scientists in the climate negotiations is overdue.”
The call to establish a global phaseout of fossil fuels is supported by scores of countries but still remains as a key issue of contention at Cop30. Building on the resolution to “transition away” from fossil fuels made two years ago in Dubai has proved to be a challenge – but one many ministers see as a vital part of an agreement this year.
The press conference offered not only urgent calls to action but a visual display of how widespread support for a phaseout.
‘Let’s do a global Mutirão to free ourselves from fossil fuels,” Carsten Schneider, Minister of the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety of Germany said. We want an outcome of this COP which addresses the transition away from fossil fuels in a just and inclusive way.” Schneider called on the COP30 Presidency to include this in the text, adding, “this is what we need to close the gap to 1.5 degrees”.
Irene Velez Torres, Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development, Colombia, spoke about her country’s phaseout as producers, with no new oil exploration contracts nor oil mining grants issued. “Colombia is the first government in the Amazon to take the decision of establishing the ‘ Amazon free of mining and hydrocarbons’,” she said. “We have led a declaration to announce an outcome, ‘una hoja de ruta’, to phase out fossil fuels. Together with our colleagues from Brazil we said this ‘mapa do camino’ is essential.”
Ministers join together for the Mutirão call for a fossil fuel roadmap
So many ministers gathered today, to join the Mutirão call for a fossil fuel roadmap, that there were challenges fitting them all behind a podium. During a press conference to unite in support of a just, orderly, and equitable transition away from fossil fuels representatives from around the world spoke about the urgent need for a plan for a phase out.
“Today we bring today many diverse interests who all support the call for a roadmap,” Tina Stege, of the Marshall Islands said, flanked by dozens standing behind her. “The best chance of landing an agreement at this COP is in the Mutirão package,” she said. “The current reference in the text is weak and is presented as an option – it must be strengthened and it must be adopted. That is why you see all these countries here today.”
The group included representatives from Sierra Leone and Kenya. The German representative said nearly all of Europe was behind it. Marcele Oliveira, a youth champion, took the mic to loud applause.
“We need to do this now,” she said. “This is the most important mobilization around climate justice for our generation – so let’s make this happen.”
The UK’s Secretary of State for Energy Ed Miliband, a stalwart of Cop conferences, was also at the podium, speaking in support of the roadmap. “This is an issue that must not be ignored, cannot be ignored, and we are saying very very clearly must be at the heart of Cop.”
Jonathan Watts
‘Trump is such a nasty man. An obvious malignant narcissist.’
Kim Stanley Robinson on the future present
The year is 2025. Against a backdrop of deadly climate disasters, mass extinctions, horrifying pandemics and narcissistic billionaires, the United Nation Cop30 climate conference decides to take a radical step to tackle the world’s problems: the creation of a powerful new organisation charged with defending all living creatures, both now and in the future.
This is the outline of The Ministry of the Future, a novel that was classed as science fiction when it was published five years ago. Today, it has proved so eerily prescient and inspiring that it reads more like a much-need action plan to shift humanity off the path to dystopia.
While there is no prospect of a global super ministry being created in the real Cop30, the author Kim Stanley Robinson, who is visiting Belém, said the best hope for life on Earth remained international negotiations, even if the process of haggling over conference texts can often seem agonisingly slow and technical.
He quoted a line from his book: “If you give up on words and sentences, you end up in a world of gangsters and thieves.”
Back in 2019, when he wrote the novel, he had yet to visit a climate conference. It was not until two years later at COP26 in Glasgow that he immersed himself in the process. It has given him new insights and reason for sympathy for those wrestling with the multilateral network.
“It’s more than any one person can take in. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed. And then you have to realize you’re just one node in a network, that the network is always going to be bigger than any node, and you just hold on to your part and not try to take it all on,” he told The Guardian. “In fact, I say this to all of you, pace yourselves for the long haul. You’re going to be in this work for the rest of your lives, and it’s easy to burn out, and sometimes by caring too much.”
The description of a starkly opposite response to biological collapse is among the most chilling sections of the novel: “Some who feel the end is near work to hasten it or worsen it. Their position seems to be that if they’re going to die, then the world must die with them. This is clearly a manifestation of narcissism,” he writes. “Narcissism is generally regarded as a result of a stunted imagination and a form of fear. For the narcissist, the other is too fearful to register. And thus, the individual death of the narcissist represents the end of everything real.
As a result, death for the narcissist becomes even more fearful and disastrous than it is for people who accept the reality of the other and the continuance of the world beyond their individual end. Even the night sky frightens the narcissist as presenting impossible to deny evidence of a world exterior to the self. Narcissists therefore tend to stay indoors, live in ideas and demand compliance and assent from everyone they come in contact with who are all regarded as servants or ghosts. And as death approaches, they do their best to destroy as much of the world as they can. Narcissism is a form of cowardice.”
In comments later he makes the reference explicit: “I read that because Trump is such a nasty man. An obvious malignant narcissist. He’s like a living example of how bad it can get. And I’m astonished at how terrible his judgment is. On each one of these big questions, he’s emphatically on the wrong side. And climate’s one of them, and it’s quite bad for the world.
But how can somebody have judgment that terrible? It boggles the mind. And I think narcissism, not that psychology is much of a help, but if you wanted to try to explain him and you were doing rational actor theory, he doesn’t believe in the existence of anybody else. And so he’s rational only within that irrational understanding. He’s locked in his own mind.”
Robinson is a leftist who believes in communal action and the benefit of having a global commons. He said he was delighted when Lula won back power in Brazil as it showed the far right could be defeated.
The Ministry of the Future, which starts with a gut-wrenchingly horrendous depiction of climate disaster, ends on a more hopeful, even utopian note. Following that arc in the real world is a whole lot tougher. Robinson acknowledges politicians are reluctant to cede any of the interests of the present to the future. But he remains a firm believer in the strong ethical argument that is at the heart of the book: that what is good for the biosphere is what is good. And remains a strong supporter of the idea that nature has rights.
The paradigm shift, he said, came when he learned that around half the DNA in a human body is not human. “Once you know that you yourself are an ecology, a forest – and you can get grossly sick if some of your fellow citizens happen to revolt in your gut or somewhere else – it explains a lot. And then what you have to admit is the rest of the planet is your extended body. And you are like a jellyfish in the ocean. And so the world is just pouring into you and pouring out of you,” he said. “Then the rest of the world’s health is your health. And you can’t say, I’m going to cut down this forest unless you’re going to say, I’m going to cut off my right leg. And in that sense of identification, the rights of nature just becomes a matter of ‘best take care of your limbs.’
Reactions to the first round of draft text are starting to roll in with an unsurprising mix of disappointment and hope.
“The draft text may contain the right ingredients, but it’s been assembled in a way that leaves a bitter aftertaste,” Andreas Sieber, Associate Director of Policy and Campaigns for 350.org said in a statement that emphasized the need for credible fossil fuel phase-out. “The COP30 Presidency must heed the many Parties, including President Lula, calling for a clear transition pathway and put it where it belongs: at the centre of the 1.5°C response, balanced with adequate finance,” Sieber added. “Without this, the overall effort will fall short.”
Romain Ioualalen, Global Policy lead at Oil Change International, called the options presented on fossil fuels “wildly unacceptable”.
“What we need is a clear collective direction of travel on how countries intend to phase out fossil fuels based on equity, and how rich Global North countries will provide finance and support to the countries that need it,” Ioualalen said. “Ministers must fix this mess and deliver the progress that we need to make the fair and funded transition away from fossil fuels they promised in Dubai a reality.”
“Options presented on fossil fuels in this new text are wildly unacceptable and a blatant dereliction of duty while the world burns. We don’t need a COP decision to convene a workshop or ministerial round table on fossil fuels.
Kaysie Brown, E3G Associate Director, had a different take, calling the draft “a credible package capable of delivering meaningful COP30 outcomes and propelling the Paris Agreement into its age of implementation”.
Li Shuo, a climate analyst at the Asia Society Policy Institute, championed how quickly some initial framework had come together: “It represents a steady progression from the previous iteration and is likely one of the earliest releases of such a clean text in recent COP history.”
There’s still a ways to go.
As my colleague Fiona pointed out, nations are still far from resolving discussions on the big four issues – finance; transparency; trade; and a response to the fact that current national climate plans (NDCs) are too weak to keep the 1.5C heating limit.
Gabrielle Canon here, taking over from from my colleague Ajit to bring you the rest of day 8 as the sprint to bag a deal continues to unfold in Belém.
The lack of money that rich polluters have provided for adaptation to climate breakdown has frustrated delegates and observers from poorer countries that are struggling with violent weather – while negotiators are divided on how to measure adaptation progress. Writing in Climate Home News yesterday, Mohamed Adow, director of nonprofit Power Shift Africa, argues that the much-awaited Cop30 Global Goal on Adaptation must be paired with predictable grants.
The UN’s latest adaptation gap report could not be clearer. Needs are skyrocketing. Finance is collapsing. And yet the global community continues to debate how to measure progress, rather than how to enable it. They act as if weighing a cow will make it fatter, rather than giving it any food.
This contradiction exposes the heart of the climate crisis: adaptation is not merely a technical challenge; it is a political and moral one. Every finance gap is a justice gap. Behind every unmet target are farmers who cannot plant, families who cannot rebuild, and communities forced into displacement because “resilience” was promised but never delivered.
Adaptation is the difference between dignity and despair. It determines whether societies can endure rising temperatures, intensifying floods, or prolonged droughts — or whether they are pushed beyond the limits of survival.
Yet, as negotiators haggle over the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) and its indicators, the foundations needed to achieve these goals are crumbling. How do we talk about climate-resilient development when the means to achieve it are drying up? How do we measure resilience while draining the very resources that make resilience possible?
Read the full story here.
Dharna Noor
Take a minute to wrap your head around the latest piece of climate summit jargon. My colleague Dharna Noor has written a helpful explainer on Bam, a proposal for states to drive action on a just transition towards a low-carbon economy. A few key points follow below.
What is a just transition?
The concept of the just transition originated from the US labour movement, specifically from energy and chemical workers who said employees of polluting sectors should be supported and compensated as they move into more environmentally friendly jobs.
It has since been taken up by civil society organisations and expanded to include all people affected by sectors that are shifting as climate policies are enacted. That includes workers in the booming transition minerals sector, as well as people living near mineral extraction sites. It also encompasses people affected by attempts to clean up the agriculture sector.
When did the just transition become a consideration in Cop negotiations?
The preamble to the 2015 Paris agreement mentioned the framework, when parties agreed to “taking into account the imperatives of a just transition of the workforce and the creation of decent work and quality jobs in accordance with nationally defined development priorities”. It acknowledged that without planning, the shift to a low-carbon economy could leave workers and communities behind. But preamble text does not lead to implementation.
During the 2018 climate talks in Katowice, the just transition concept entered the sphere of negotiations when a committee of experts convened by Cop officials considered it. Three years later, at Cop27 in Egypt, parties created the “just transition work programme”, which was intended to help countries design fair pathways and mitigate unintended harms of climate action.
The following year in Dubai, officials fleshed out the programme some more, including by agreeing to hold regular dialogues for parties focused on the just transition. But none of those agreements included requirements for parties. Bam supporters say they have a plan to fix that.
What would the Bam do?
Bam proponents say a new mechanism is needed to require countries to take concrete steps toward a just transition. Right now, global just transition efforts are fragmented and inconsistent.
“No one is even tracking progress on this,” said Teresa Anderson, the global climate justice lead at the NGO ActionAid. “Bam would fix that.”
Bam would also require countries to coordinate their work supporting a just transition, ensuring everyone knows what is happening globally and who it is affecting. It also aims to develop ways for countries to share best practices on a just transition and to support the implementation of such policies, especially in low-income countries with limited state capacity.
And though it would not mandate any new spending on climate finance, it would prioritise non-debt-inducing finance and ensure technology is shared with developing countries – values that states agreed to uphold in the Paris agreement.
Nina Lakhani
The Guardian environment team is not known for its good news content, but a crucial vote in Ecuador on Sunday delivered a win for the climate, biodiversity and democracy.
Ecuadorians overwhelmingly voted down four proposals that included rewriting the constitution that recognises the rights of nature – a unique protection that has empowered Indigenous peoples and other civil society groups to defend the Amazon, Galapagos islands, Andean highlands, and other vital ecosystems. Ecuador, which straddles the equator, is among the most biodiverse places on the planet, with the Amazon rainforest covering almost half of the country’s land area.
President Daniel Noboa, the 37-year-old right wing leader, banana magnate and close ally of Donald Trump, has proposed a $47bn oil expansion plan in the Amazon and building housing and hotel complexes on the Galápagos Islands, a Unesco world heritage site and biosphere reserve. Sunday’s vote was a clear rebuke of Naboa’s authoritarian tilt, with voters also rejecting the return of foreign military bases to the country, and against proposals to curtail party funding and reduce the number of parliamentarians.
Voting in Ecuador is compulsory. Over 80% of eligible voters took part in the referendum, according to the National Electoral Council (CNE).
In the run up to Sunday’s vote, Indigenous and environmental leaders told the Guardian that they were facing a wave of state intimidation tactics including having bank accounts frozen. In September, an Indigenous land defender, Efraín Fueres, was shot and killed by the army during a protest against the high cost of living, a lack of medicine in hospitals, the deterioration of schools and growing social insecurity.
