That’s about it for our live coverage of the so-called final day of the Cop30 climate summit in Belem, Brazil.
We say “so-called” because there is still no final agreement. It looks like we’re heading for at least one extra day of talks.
Here’s a quick recap on what happened today.
Countries appear to be still far apart on any agreement to draw up a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels. As the clock approached 11pm in Belem, talks were ongoing.
Negotiating texts released early on Friday in Belem did not include the roadmap concept.
The architect of the Paris climate deal, Laurence Tubiana, said countries should not fear pursuing a deal on a roadmap.
Turkey and Australia has agreed to the details on hosting next year’s Cop31 summit, that will be held in Turkey. Turkey will take on the Cop31 presidency and an Australian – energy minister Chris Bowen – will be appointed vice-president and “president of negotiations”
Africa was still pushing for a tripling of the finance available from rich countries to help the poor world adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis.
Thanks a lot for staying with us. The climate summit in Belem is on a knife edge.
Join us again tomorrow, Belem time, as we follow what could be the actual final day.
In the meantime, you can follow all our coverage from Cop30 here.
Paris deal architect says don’t fear fossil fuel exit roadmap
Countries should not fear drawing up a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels, one of the architects of the Paris agreement has declared, because they will be able to set their own path, according to their own national circumstances.
Laurence Tubiana, chief executive of the European Climate Foundation, who has served as one of the special envoys appointed by Brazil for Cop30, told the Guardian that all of the important decisions would be for national governments to make, and they would not be coerced into any measures. She told the Guardian:
We want more renewable energy and less fossil fuel, but every country has to imagine for itself what policies they want, what role they have to play, and what ambition they have.
Countries demanding more finance from developed countries to help them adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis – a major concern for developing nations, particularly the poorest and most vulnerable, at the Cop30 talks – should be particularly in favour of a phase out, because the sooner the world shifts away from fossil fuels, the less adaptation they will require, she added.
It is just impossible to try to say, we want adaptation finance, but we don’t want a transition away from fossil fuels. Clearly, if you want adaptation, you should support the phase out.
She warned countries must also be prepared to rethink their national climate plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), given that the current crop are inadequate to limit global temperatures to 1.5C, the goal set out in the Paris agreement.
Some countries at the Cop30 talks, now in their final stages, have argued that discussions of the NDCs should be put off for three years, as technically the Paris agreement does not require them to be reviewed until then. Tubiana dismissed this argument. She asked:
What is the point of meeting for a Cop if you do not want to think about NDCs?
What is the point of the Paris agreement if you don’t address this? They are being irrational.
It was easier than ever for countries to make the shift to a low-carbon economy, she added, as in the decade since the Paris agreement was signed, the costs of renewable energy and clean technology had plummeted.
It’s now the witching-hour outside the Cop30 negotiating rooms
It’s passed 10pm in Belem on what should be the final day of negotiations. But it probably won’t be.
Negotiators are locked away in rooms pouring over texts.
Outside, it can be difficult to know what to do. Except wait, sleep, rush for a flight, go back to your bed or something else.
Our correspondents have been trying to capture this witching-hour vibe. They will be familiar scenes to anyone who has been to a Cop.
Delegates at Cop30 climate conference wait for news late on the final scheduled day. Photograph: Damian Carrington/The Guardian
A man sleeps on a sofa in the Cop30 conference centre in Belém, Brazil, as attendees at the UN climate talks wait for a new draft text, on Friday 21 November 2025. Photograph: Damien Gayle/The Guardian
UN climate summit attendees drag their bags around in the Cop30 conference centre in Belém, Brazil, as they wait for a new draft text, on Friday 21 November 2025. Photograph: Damien Gayle/The Guardian
A game of football has also broken out. It is Brazil, after all (and yes, there is a football in this picture if you look closely).
Delegates have a game of football at Cop30 climate talks in Belem. Photograph: Fiona Harvey/The Guardian
Will Cop30 be able to close the gap to 1.5C or be “deadliest talk show ever”?
Also at stake at Cop30 is the question of how countries respond to the fact that current national climate plans, known as nationally determined contributions, would lead to about 2.5C of heating above preindustrial levels, far above the 1.5C limit target set by the Paris agreement.
Harjeet Singh, from the Satat Sampada Climate Foundation, warned if there was not progress in the final hours, the meeting would “go down as the deadliest talk show ever produced”. He said:
Negotiators spend days discussing what to discuss and inventing new dialogues solely to avoid the actions that matter: committing to a just transition away from fossil fuels and putting money on the table.
How do you stop 50,000 climate conference delegates from overheating? Ask Olmo.
A chill is passing through the Cop30 negotiating halls as night falls on the scheduled final day of the climate conference in Belém.
It is neither a shiver of dread that the Paris Agreement may be breaking down, nor, sadly, a frisson of excitement that an important breakthrough might be imminent.
No, this cold sensation - felt by many shivering participants - derives from the venue’s vast air conditioning system, which has struggled for the past three weeks with the challenge of providing a tolerable temperature for the 50,000 attendees.
Climate conferences are often accused of being full of hot air, but that’s rarely been as literally true as at Cop30 where engineers have had to deal with equatorial heat outside the tent and the fluctuating energy generated inside by the throngs of people passing through the halls.
The target temperature is 24C, according to the host country agreement that Brazil signed with the United Nations, but it has sometimes proven hard to hit, particularly in the pavilion era, where barriers block the flow of air in one of the most crowded parts of the venue.
Tim Lenton, a planetary scientist who was visiting Belém to warn negotiators of dangerous tipping points in the climate system, kindly offered a back of the envelope calculation about the challenge. He said:
“A sitting human has 100 Watts power output. A running human would be around 300 Watts or more. Walking, around 200 Watts."
With tens of thousands of delegates in the centre at any one time, that can add megawatts of energy, much of it in the form of heat.
Then there is the tropical sun, which can heat the most exposed parts of the tent to 50C at the hottest part of the day.
Countering this, the organisers have deployed 200 giant air conditioning units - the relentless drone of which has provided the dystopian soundtrack to this conference, sometimes making it difficult to hear what people are saying.
Even so, the system can sometimes struggle. Staff at the help desk say roughly four in ten of the complaints they hear every day are about the heat.
Then there is the cold.
When sensible people leave at the end of the day - like now - their radiant heat goes with them, leaving the giant venue so excessively cooled that many people have to put on extra layers or coats.
The head of Brazilian organising committee’s Olmo Xavier, told The Guardian there is no giant thermostat that can regulate the entire 160,000 square meters of Blue Zone - which is bigger than any conference centre in Brazil - so it requires constant adjustment and daily consultations with the United Nations to get as close to the 24C target in as wide an area as possible.
“We have succeeded in the vast majority of this challenge,” he said, though acknowledges “there were some points where we had more difficulty.”
Temperatures, he said had ranged from a high of 28.2 degrees, down to 17.3 degrees.
Then there are the thunderstorms that have shaken the conference centre most afternoons, and brought torrents of rain, some of which has leaked through the roof.
The Yanomami Shaman Davi Kopenawa Yanomami said he called these deluges onto the venue to remind people inside this artificial negotiating bubble of the power of nature.
That lesson should be well heeded.
Humanity’s struggle to comfortably control the temperature in this space-ship-like COP structure throws into relief how much harder it is for us to manage the warmth on the 3 billion times bigger surface of the Earth.
Nature, of course, had been doing that very effectively for eons.
Olmo Xavier, head of Brazil's Cop30 organising committee Photograph: Jonathan Watts/The Guardian
Turkey and Australia agree details for Cop31 talks
Pulling up from the deep divisions at Cop30 for a moment: Turkey and Australia have reached a deal in the protracted fight over hosting arrangements for Cop31. They are unusual, to say the least.
As previously reported, Turkey will host the event in the Mediterranean resort city of Antalya after Australia effectively dropped its bid to co-host with Pacific island nations.
Australia conceded despite having overwhelming support in the Western Europe and Others Group of countries, known as Weog, that had responsibility for deciding next year’s host.
Under UN rules, the decision needed to be made by consensus, Turkey refused to withdraw and some senior members of the Australian government had grown cold on bringing the conference to the South Australian capital of Adelaide.
Turkey will take on the Cop31 presidency and an Australian will be appointed vice-president of the Cop and “president of negotiations”.
According to the agreement, the Australian in that role - already flagged to be the country’s climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen - will have “exclusive authority in relation to the negotiations” .
It says if there is a difference of views between the two countries “consultations will take place until the difference is resolved to mutual satisfaction”.
Turkey will have responsibility for all operational and logistical responsibilities, be responsible for the action agenda and appoint a high-level climate champion. It will appoint a youth champion proposed by Australia.
Australia will take responsibility from the end of Cop30 for convening negotiations and meetings through the year, selecting ministerial and other co-facilitators, producing draft texts at Cop31 and being the focal point for engagement with the UNFCCC on the negotiations.
It will also preside over a Pre-Cop31 meeting in a yet-to-be-decided Pacific island country. The agreement says this “will be an opportunity for a number of leaders and others to see Pacific climate impacts and responses first hand, hear voices and solutions from the region, and support Pacific-led initiatives”.
The arrangement has been backed by Weog nations but still needs to be formally signed off in the plenary.
Chris Bowen, minister for climate change and energy of Australia, speaks at the COP30 climate summit in Belem. Photograph: Fernando Llano/AP
Call for fossil fuel exit roadmap remains divisive at Cop30
More than 80 countries - developed and developing – have backed the call for a roadmap to “transition away from fossil fuels” in Belem, but scores of countries are against it.
The Arab Group, of which Saudi Arabia is the most prominent member, has led the opposition, but Russia, Bolivia, some African countries and some countries that are heavy consumers of fossil fuels have also rejected the wording.
The EU was also urging countries behind the scenes to come out publicly in favour of the transition away from fossil fuels.
Climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra earlier on Friday called the text without the commitment “unacceptable”. He said
“Given that we’re so far away from where we should be, it’s unfortunate to say, but we’re really facing a no-deal situation.”
A few developing countries with fossil fuel interests, including Nigeria and Sierra Leone, have backed a potential roadmap.
But some developing countries have been angered by the insistence on a fossil fuel phase-out.
Richard Muyung, envoy to the president of Tanzania, and current chair of the African Group of Nations, accused rich countries including the EU of holding the poor to ransom on the issue.
He claimed they were opposing Africa’s call for a tripling of the finance available to poor countries to help them adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis, to about $120bn a year, because some African countries would not back the fossil fuel roadmap. He said:
The phase-out of fossil fuels is not an African issue. We emit only 4% of total global emissions, and we have never discussed a phase-out. We have been discussing a phase down.
Why are we being held to ransom? It’s like you are trading our lives with something we never caused. So they were saying, ‘If you do not accept phase out, we cannot give you the triple of adaptation.’ We said, ‘We cannot accept that.’”
We already compromised a lot. But we cannot compromise on the tripling of adaptation finance.
Juan Carlos Monterrey, Panama’s special representative for climate change, had a different view.
What we have also seen is the EU are willing to engage constructively on adaptation finance. I have had direct conversations with them and the UK. But I also understand that we need more ambition [on cutting fossil fuel emissions] in the text for them to open up the chequebook a little bit more. The two go together.
The Guardian understands from various countries’ delegates that China is not among the countries blocking a fossil fuel phase-out roadmap, while India has taken a harder line by insisting developed countries bear responsibility for past greenhouse gas emissions.
UK energy secretary says “one way or another” Cop30 summit will have fossil fuel transition roadmap
Fiona Harvey
Supporters of a global phase-out of fossil fuels must find “creative” ways to keep the proposal alive, including making it voluntary rather than binding, the UK energy secretary Ed Miliband has said during the closing stages of the UN climate talks.
As the Cop30 summit in Brazil carried on past the Friday night deadline, the prospect of countries agreeing on the need for a roadmap to a global “transition away from fossil fuels” looked increasingly dim.
A first draft of the potential outcome text from the summit had contained the formulation, but the updated draft text produced on Friday by the Brazilian presidency excised the pledge.
Miliband told the Guardian that “one way or another” there would be an outcome from the two-week summit that contained the pledge, but that it might be in an altered form, or could be a voluntary initiative rather than a binding commitment. He said:
We are fighting for the roadmap for the transition away from fossil fuels, and we’ve determined that one way or another we won’t lose the momentum [towards that outcome] that we’ve built at this Cop. There’s a big coalition that wants this, of developing and developed countries.
We need to to think creatively about the possible ways in which we could get this roadmap process going.
What matters to me is the outcome, that this roadmap gets launched, the countries can engage in it, and it gets to be considered by a Cop in the future. We’ve got a critical mass of countries that want that to happen. But there’s different ways of doing it. We’re looking at all of the creative ways in which that can happen.
Britain's Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Ed Miliband during climate talks in Belem, Brazil. Photograph: Adriano Machado/Reuters
Observers on the prospects of a weak deal in Belem
Here are a few comments that have come through from observers at Cop30 on the negotiations over the final text which continue into the evening in Belem.
They are not particularly positive.
Director of the International Climate Politics Hub Cat Abreu warns countries are not being allowed to work up plans on key issues.
The clock is ticking down on COP30 and the level of ambition is heading down the drain. Brazil have been fantastic hosts in Belem but at this late hour the Presidency is throttling this process and not allowing countries to work up a credible plan to cut fossil fuels, end deforestation, deliver climate finance and adapt to climate impacts.
If we leave here with a few words but no clear action this summit will have failed to live up to expectations on the tenth anniversary of the Paris Agreement.
Joab Okanda, a climate, energy and diplomacy expert, says Africa “can’t afford to leave Belem with a weak deal.”
As Kenya’s envoy and Sierra Leone’s Minister of Environment stressed, Africa also needs support to invest in its energy transition and deliver renewable energy access for all. A credible roadmap that delivers both would be a truly positive outcome for Africa at COP30.
Dr Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director for the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, says the latest texts are weaker than earlier versions and “disappointing across the board.”
The COP Presidency must intensify its efforts to bridge differences, including in open and transparent plenaries in these final hours, to secure an ambitious outcome at COP30.
Fossil fuels are the root cause of the climate crisis and there is no credible pathway to meet science-based climate goals without a fast, fair, funded phaseout of fossil fuels.
Lower income nations cannot make this transition rapidly, nor can they close the vast energy poverty gap that millions suffer from today, without funding from richer countries. Public finance is essential.
“Simply catastrophic,” says Panama of current climate text at Belem.
The Guardian’s Damian Carrington has been speaking to Juan Carlos Monterrey, Panama’s special representative for climate change.
Normally a fluent, firebrand speaker, Monterrey said:
I’m honestly at a loss of words.
There is not much movement. We’re still negotiating with a text that for Panama is just simply catastrophic - a text that fails to mention fossil fuels or deforestation, the most important drivers of the climate crisis, a text that favours the very same [fossil fuel] industries that are causing this destruction to the detriment of everybody else.
What’s sickening is the fact that some groups of countries are accepting these texts.
We’re counting on the EU and the block of Latin American progressive nations that we belong to continue pushing for ambition. But we we feel lonely sometimes.
The EU and other developed nations have been criticised for not strengthening their commitment to providing climate finance to developing countries, especially for adaptation, i.e. protecting people against extreme weather supercharged by global heating.
Monterrey said that was fair to a point:
But what we have also seen is the EU are willing to engage constructively on adaptation finance. I have had direct conversations with them and the UK. But I also understand that we need more ambition [on cutting fossil fuel emissions] in the text for them to open up the chequebook a little bit more. The two go together.
“Wins for nature still feel distant” says major US conservation group
Some words here from Clare Shakya, the global managing director of climate at The Nature Conservancy, as Cop30 waits for an expected new draft of a final text. It’s 7.30pm in Belem now.
Whatever the final outcome, Brazil deserves real credit for pulling many of the toughest climate issues into the open in Belém.
Nature is back in the heart of talks, from deforestation and finance to Indigenous rights and adaptation, making this the most wide-ranging COP agenda since Paris. However, landmark wins for nature still feel distant at this time.
Shakya says parties at the conference “will need to show a hell of a lot more ambition in the final text for it to be considered a success.”
Thanks to Oliver Milman for that sterling effort steering the blog. This is Graham Readfearn in Brisbane taking over.
We are still at it in Belem on the final day of this fractious 30th Conference of the Parties – or Cop30 for short. And Friday is almost never the final day at UN climate talks.
Rich countries not doing enough on finance says Pakistan
Aisha Humaira, the head of delegation for Pakistan, has said that laying the blame on developing countries for lack of progress towards a transition away from fossil fuels is unfair while developed countries refuse to provide the finance needed for it to take place fairly.
“It is an issue of climate justice, the burden that developed countries carry for the climate chance happening now that needs to be fulfilled,” she told the Guardian. “It is part of the Paris Agreement that they have to pay developing countries to make the transition. That’s why article 9 is very important – and tripling the adaptation fund is not a huge demand.”:
Humaira said that adaptation was crucial for her country, which was facing intense impacts from climate change, including devastating floods and sweltering heatwaves. But she said that it was unfair for developed countries to expect countries like hers which still have widespread poverty to sacrifice economic growth. Countries like Pakistan and their peers needed technology, finance and support from the global north in order to make the transition.
And she pointed out the hypocrisy of developed countries asking the developing work to make a transition to clean energy they have not yet achieved.
She said: “Countries that have used all sources of energy in the last 200 years and have achieved the pinnacle of industrial growth and yet not stopped using all those sources of energy are telling us “stop growing”. The right to growth and security is fundamental for every country.
“That is the issue. Every individual is important. If a citizen in a developed country wants to live a high quality of life then the same right also exists in a developing country.”
Africa is still pushing for a tripling of the finance available from rich countries to help the poor world adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis. “We already compromised a lot,” said Richard Muyungi, Tanzania’s presidential envoy and current chair of the African Group of Nations. “But we cannot compromise on the means of implementation, the tripling of adaptation finance.”
He said developed countries demanded the group’s support for a roadmap to “transition away from fossil fuels” as the price of any support for an increase in adaptation finance.
Muyungi argued: “The phase-out of fossil fuels is not an African issue. We emit only 4% of total global emissions, and we have never discussed a phase-out. We have been discussing a phase down.”
He asked: “Why are we being held to ransom? It’s like you are trading our lives with something we never caused. So they were saying, ‘If you do not accept phase out, we cannot give you the triple of adaptation.’ We said, ‘We cannot accept that.’”
He said the group had been put under pressure to accept the removal of language calling for an increase in adaptation finance from the draft text of an outcome. But he replied: “Adaptation is a just request for the continent, and has nothing to do with the discussions on phasing out.”
This would require about $120bn a year in finance for adaptation. Developing countries can gain access to finance from the private sector for the technology they need to cut greenhouse gases and shift to a low-carbon economy, such as wind and solar power. But getting the private sector to invest in adaptation projects – such as defences against flooding, or changing the crops that farmers grow – is almost impossible.
Developing countries want more of the finance for adaptation to be delivered in the form of grants, not loans. However, developed countries have insisted on arduous “indicators” showing how the money is spent, which has been another bone of contention at these talks.
On the transition away from fossil fuels, Muyungi previously told the Guardian that Africa should be allowed to exploit its fossil fuel reserves, as rich countries had exploited theirs. Tanzania has large gas reserves, which it is planning to exploit in partnership with Saudi Arabia.
“Cop30 still has a choice – to protect people and life or the fossil fuel industry.” That was the message delivered directly to President Lula by eminent climate scientists here at Cop30 in Belém, led by Prof Johan Rockström, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. The scientists laid out the simple scientific reality.
“The global curve of greenhouse gas emissions needs to bend next year, 2026, not sometime in the future,” they told him. “We need to start, now, to reduce CO2 emissions from fossil-fuels, by at least 5% per year. This must happen in order to have a chance to avoid unmanageable and extremely costly climate impacts affecting all people in the world.”
To phase out fossil fuels quickly, the scientists said finance from rich countries to developing countries was imperative: “Without scaling and reforming climate finance, developing countries cannot plan, cannot invest and cannot deliver the transitions needed for a shared survival.”
“The global carbon budget, calculated by science, forms the backbone to guide the pace of emission reductions [needed],” the scientists said. “The remaining carbon budget [for 1.5C] is now essentially consumed, down to 130 billion tons of CO2, equivalent to 3-4 years of global emissions at current rate.
“This scientific budget provides the basis for all serious climate policy. It is our accounting tool away from danger. Removing the carbon budget from the text, means removing reality from the Cop.”
Our Kids’ Climate, a campaign group of parents, released a short film on Friday of the Global Climate March on the streets of Belém - it captures the colour and energy of the march.
Their message to the countries negotiating at Cop30 is simple: “Parents are watching. Our kids deserve a fighting chance of a safe, thriving future. Look at the energy and passion on the streets of Belém. We need a fair, fast shift from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy to protect what we love: our kids and our planet.”
Arab countries reject fossil fuel phase out as EU warns of Cop deal collapse
Jonathan Watts
The Arab group of nations at COP30 has insisted its energy industry is off limits and any mention of the subject would lead to a collapse of the climate talks, according to NGO observers.
The European Union has meanwhile warned that Cop30 could finish without any deal because the countries are so far apart.
At a “multirao” meeting of delegates that aims to close the gulf in positions, the bloc of 22 middle-eastern oil-producing countries reportedly said it would not accept any language relating to roadmaps for a fossil fuels transition.
It gained the support of the African group (AGN), which said it represented 54 countries, the observers said. The Africa group opposed any attempt to put conditions (reducing fossil fuels) on implementation (adaptation funding).
The claims by the AGN to speak for all of Africa were disputed by other countries which pointed out that several African nations had expressed public support for a phaseout roadmap, and insiders claimed that several others were also on board but not yet saying so publicly.
The current chair of the AGN group is Tanzania, which has significant gas reserves that it is seeking to exploit with partners including Saudi Arabia. “It is clearly untrue to claim they speak for all of Africa,” said one person involved in the talks.
A contrary view was put forward by the European Union, which warned there was a clear risk that COP30 would not reach an agreement, according to NGO observers. The EU was also critical of the negotiating process, saying that it now doubted the Brazilian host’s promise that this would be “the Cop of truth.”
The European Union’s commissioner for climate, Wopke Hoekstra reportedly expressed dismay at the current text saying there was no science, no mention of a transition for fossil fuels, no global stocktake. Instead, he complained there was only weakness and a clear breach of last year’s agreement on climate finance goals. He told the session that there were no circumstances under which the EU would accept what was on the table.
He is said to have proposed new language to recognise the need for annual follow-ups of each government’s climate plans, known as NDCs (nationally determined contributions) and emphasised the need to keep the 1.5C warming target alive in practice and implementation.
The top priority, he reportedly said, was to transition away from fossil fuels - and if countries delivered on mitigation together then they could ask the EU to move out of its comfort zone on adaptation financing.
The Latin America group is said to have joined Europe in saying the current package of texts was unacceptable, criticising its lack of ambition, failure to respond to the UN’s top climate science body and lack of linkages between climate and nature.
The least developed countries and small island states, which are most threatened by the climate crisis, demanded language to keep the target of 1.5C alive.
The Coalition of Rainforest Nations said reducing deforestation had been relegated to a preamble in the text, even though it was essential for the 1.5C target, according to observers from the Rainforest Foundation Norway.
The UK said the package was not ambitious enough and re-iterated the EU stance that there could be more flexibility on finance if countries were more ambitious on limiting warming emissions.
The Brazilian presidency was then said to have indicated that a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels was off the table. Although Colombia said more than 80 countries supported the idea, Saudi Arabia had said this issue was a red flag. The president therefore suggested it was impossible to have a debate on something that cannot get consensus.
The hosts then reportedly suggested countries formed huddles to debate contentious issues, to which Russia was opposed, while Saudi Arabia said it would not huddle on any roadmaps.
