BELEM, Brazil (AP) — The arrival of Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva at UN climate talks on Wednesday was hoped to spur nations to meet a self-imposed early deadline for progress on tough issues. For now, it hasn't worked.
In a news conference late Wednesday, Lula skipped over any update on the status of talks. Instead, he renewed his earlier calls for action, making the case to delegates that the world must reduce its use of fossil fuels
like oil, gas and coal.
"We haven’t found another place to live,” Lula, flanked by Brazilian negotiators and his wife, said.
Lula and several other leaders are pushing to create a road map toward transition to renewable energies. But in his remarks Wednesday, he was careful to say there's no intention to “impose anything on anybody,” that countries could transition at their own pace and count on financial help to do so.
Lula's return to the talks, along with the presence of U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, had stirred some optimism that COP30, as the talks are known, would move forward more quickly ahead of Friday's scheduled wrap up. Host Brazil had pushed for progress on some key issues Wednesday, but it's routine for negotiators at these talks to miss deadlines.
COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago had given negotiators a Wednesday deadline for a decision on four interconnected issues that were initially excluded from the official agenda: whether countries should be told to toughen their new climate plans; details on handing out $300 billion in pledged climate aid; dealing with trade barriers over climate and improving reporting on transparency and climate progress.
Scores of countries, rich and poor, are also pushing for a detailed road map on how to phase out fossil fuels. And that's key to toughening new climate plans for a shot at limiting future warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), the global goal set in 2015's Paris Agreement.
In 2023, after days of contentious debate, climate talks agreed to language calling for a transition away from fossil fuels — coal, oil and natural gas. But little has been done since to clarify or amplify on that one sentence. Protesters inside and outside the conference venue kept pushing for a phaseout.
A group of scientists Wednesday criticized current proposals for a fossil fuel phaseout road map as inadequate, particularly to reach the goal of zero fossil fuel emissions by 2045 at the latest.
“A road map is not a workshop or a ministerial meeting. A road map is a real workplan that needs to show us the way from where we are to where we need to be, and how to get there,” said a letter from seven prominent scientists, including some who are advising the COP30 presidency.
Lula, in talking to leaders earlier in Belem, boosted the efforts of clarifying how to wean the world from the fuels that emit heat-trapping gases, the chief cause of climate change.
The Brazilian president has also been pushing for more participation in a new multibillion international fund financed by interest-bearing debt instead of donations, called the Tropical Forests Forever Facility. It seeks to make it more lucrative for governments to keep their trees rather than cut them down.
Iskander Erzini Vernoit, director of the IMAL Initiative for Climate and Development, an independent think-tank based in Morocco, said it won't be easy for Guterres and Lula to find common ground among negotiators.
“Various apparent impasses still remain, and chief among these from an African point of view is the unwillingness of the EU and other rich countries to engage on their obligation to provide climate finance," Erzini Vernoit said.
Going into this two-week conference, Brazilian leaders emphasized the importance of focusing on implementation, starting action on agreements, targets and pledges already made, over new deals.
If nations met the goals set at past climate talks of tripling renewables, doubling energy efficiency and cutting methane by 2030, the rate of global warming could be cut by a third within a decade and a half by 2040, according to a new report by Climate Analytics.
Neil Grant, a climate policy analysis expert and lead author of the report, said this could rescue the goal set a decade ago in the Paris Agreement.
While climate leaders have conceded that the world is on track to overshoot this climate goal, Grant said: “We have the tools to transition away from fossil fuels. Although the hour is dark, we still have agency.”
High-level climate liaisons met Wednesday to celebrate the creation or acceleration of more than 110 climate action plans on agreements and goals from past conferences.
These may not get the big headlines, but it's what makes all these efforts work in the real world, said Dan Ioschpe, the COP30 climate champion, who acts as a liaison between governments and civil society at the talks.
“We need to make sure that we reach the targets of the agreement, of the Paris Agreement. And for that we need to implement technologies, solutions, processes,” Ioschpe told The Associated Press, mentioning aviation, maritime and agriculture as key industries to target.
Among the new efforts launched at COP30 is to get an agreement by businesses and governments to spend $1 trillion to improve the world's electricity grid and renewable energy storage and quadruple biofuels, Ioschpe said.
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This story was produced as part of the 2025 Climate Change Media Partnership, a journalism fellowship organized by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.
