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The countries that went to the United Nations climate conference in Brazil agreed on something. They pledged to triple the money available to help adapt to a hotter planet. The countries also failed to agree on something. NPR's Julia Simon reports.
JULIA SIMON, BYLINE: Many countries came to this COP30 conference with a clear agenda item.
RALPH REGENVANU: I very much want COP30 to ensure that we have a roadmap for transitioning away from fossil fuels.
SIMON: Ralph Regenvanu is climate minister of Vanuatu, an island nation already seeing rising sea levels.
REGENVANU: Because we desperately need to have this multilateral pathway of saying we are getting off fossil fuels.
SIMON: In the end, the final agreement had no mention of fossil fuels, even though burning oil, gas and coal drive about 70% of emissions heating the planet. Kaveh Guilanpour is at the nonprofit Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. He says, while the U.K. and many countries in the European Union and Latin America supported a roadmap away from fossil fuels, states like Saudi Arabia and Russia were not on board.
KAVEH GUILANPOUR: And the issue we had is that the negotiations were split about 50/50. So you had roughly 80 or so countries that were in favor of having a roadmap on fossil fuels and 80 that were completely against it.
SIMON: But even though the agreement didn't mention fossil fuels, Regenvanu and other countries still left COP30 excited about this. As the conference neared its end, Colombia's environment minister, Irene Velez Torres, got on stage, flanked by ministers from about a dozen countries and said this.
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IRENE VELEZ TORRES: The government of Colombia, in alliance with the government of the Netherlands, announces today the First International Conference on Just Transition Away From Fossil Fuels.
SIMON: Colombia is an oil, gas and coal producer, and the co-host, the Netherlands, is the birthplace of Shell Oil. Torres told NPR this conference in Santa Marta, Colombia, next spring will be explicitly dedicated to phasing out fossil fuels.
TORRES: The idea of the Santa Marta conference is to have this - first, the space in which we are completely clear that the phasing out is necessary because it's not easy. No one is saying that it is easy. But if we don't face the problems, we cannot build the solutions.
SIMON: One of the goals of this new conference is to start work on a legally binding agreement to stop expanding fossil fuel production. Alden Meyer is at the climate change think tank E3G. He isn't surprised that this new endeavor has emerged, given the way countries, including Saudi Arabia, have blocked climate ambition at COPs.
ALDEN MEYER: But I think it reflects the frustration of both countries and NGOs who have seen very little action in this process.
SIMON: And action matters. Scientists say if countries can cut overall greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2035, the planet would return to lower levels of warming.
Julia Simon, NPR News Belem, Brazil. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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