COP30 digs into toughest issues as climate talks enter final week

BELEM — Ministers from around the world were preparing for a final few fraught days of talks at the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP30, as they bid to secure a deal that demonstrates global resolve amid increasing assertiveness from developing nations.

The job will not be easy. Countries are now digging into some of the toughest issues, many of which have been left off the formal agenda to ensure the talks keep moving even if one issue gets hung up.

"The time for performative diplomacy has now passed. Now is the time to roll up our sleeves, come together and get the job done," UN climate chief Simon Stiell told delegations in a speech opening the second week of the conference.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is expected to arrive on Wednesday to help rally consensus among parties at the summit in the Amazonian city of Belem ahead of Friday's final scheduled session.

Asked if there was any one issue dominating the talks, COP30 President Andre Aranha Correa do Lago replied: "Everything, everything. It's very complicated."

New dynamics in climate diplomacy have seen China, India and other developing nations show more ambition this year, while the European Union is hobbled by weakening support back home and the once-dominant United States has skipped out altogether.

Brazil's top goal for COP30 is to deliver an agreement that reaffirms the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aimed at limiting global warming, while acknowledging its shortcomings by laying out clear plans for future climate action.

Over the last week, negotiators had a chance to air their differences on three key issues: climate finance, unilateral trade measures, and planned emissions cuts that do not go nearly far enough.

Seeking a schedule

The Paris treaty's central goal, to prevent warming beyond 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, will be missed.

The current emissions trends have the world warming by at least 2.3 degrees, which Norway's climate minister said parties agreed would need to be addressed.

"It is a must-have to be able to talk about how we close the gap going forward," the minister, Andreas Bjelland Eriksen, said.

A bloc of developing countries is also seeking a payment schedule to ensure wealthy countries follow through on promises made at last year's COP29 to annually deliver $300 billion in climate finance by 2035. The US — absent from COP30 — has reneged on past commitments.

Denmark, which produces a majority of its electricity from wind, announced a new binding target to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 82 percent by 2035, compared with 1990 levels.

"We think this is the highest, most ambitious number of any country in the developed world," Danish Climate, Energy and Utilities Minister Lars Aagaard said.

Denmark's target is substantially more ambitious than the EU's overall commitment to a 66.25 percent to 72.5 percent emissions cut by 2035.

South Korea, which operates the world's seventh-largest fleet of coal-fired power stations, announced it would stop building new coal plants and phase out nearly two-thirds of existing ones by 2040. The rest would also be phased out, though the timeline was not specified.

However, the transition away from fossil fuels in developing countries remains a vexed issue.

Indonesia's plan to retire 6.7 gigawatts of coal-fired power plant capacity by 2030 is at risk of failure due to stalled disbursal of funding from rich countries.

"If there is no one really willing to jump in to finance the coal phaseout, then we will have to think about whether phase-out is actually the best option," Paul Butarbutar, head of the Indonesia Secretariat of the Just Energy Transition Partnership program, said.

Agencies Via Xinhua