COP30 in Belém Opens Amid Calls for Fossil Fuel Phaseout
COP30 opened in Belém, Brazil, with activists staging symbolic actions to highlight the 'death of fossil fuels'. Despite high-profile protests, the formal COP30 agenda did not include a binding item on transitioning away from fossil fuels. Instead, extensive discussions are expected through the action agenda and parallel sessions.
The backdrop includes the 2023 COP28 in Dubai, where paragraph 28 of the global stocktake committed to a transition away from fossil fuels—a pledge that has yet to be realized and faced opposition from some oil and gas producers at COP29 in Azerbaijan.
Notably, the United States did not attend COP30 but remains a signatory to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), despite its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.
Approximately 60 countries—including the UK, many EU states, Colombia, Chile, Kenya, and Nigeria—support the idea of a transition, while around 40 oppose it. Proposals at COP30 include Colombia-led declarations, the fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty signed by over a dozen countries, and calls for a nonbinding roadmap to phase out fossil fuels.
Brazil has argued there is insufficient international support to place a formal transition agenda item on the table; thus, discussions are anticipated to proceed mainly through informal channels. Past efforts to formalize such an agenda, like at COP29, were unsuccessful.
If enough countries endorse a roadmap, COP30 could establish a forum for ongoing discussions aiming to develop a non-binding phaseout roadmap by COP31 or COP32. In the meantime, the original COP28 pledge remains the binding reference under the UNFCCC framework.
