With barely two days to go until the scheduled close of the United Nations’ COP30 climate conference, the Brazilian presidency is pushing hard for countries to agree on everything – the provision of climate finance, adaptation indicators and national plans, trade-related measures and more.
At the time of writing, it is an order as tall as COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago himself. Negotiations have dragged past 9:00pm since last Friday. On Tuesday evening, the presidency reportedly asked parties to stay back until midnight to work on the wording of what Brazil wants to be an ambitious international climate agreement.
Do Lago has turned up the heat, urging parties to deliver a draft package of outcomes by mid-week. But negotiators had barely a day to review and respond to current drafts, with a slew of 10 new draft texts and multiple notes published on Tuesday morning.
The topics covered include carbon market rules (known as Article 6), loss and damage funding, as well as COP30’s most hotly contested agenda item, the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA).
The GGA hinges on a set of 100 indicators to measure how well countries are adapting to climate impacts, which experts and countries have spent years whittling down. But developing countries say that consensus on these indicators is “melting” in Belém’s tropical heat as they repeated demands for developed nations to deliver three times more adaptation finance than previously agreed.
“Indicators can show where countries like Sudan or Senegal are struggling, but they don’t rebuild flooded villages or restore failed harvests,” argued Sudan’s Lina Yassin, an adaptation negotiator representing the bloc of Least Developed Countries.
Without a tripling of adaptation finance by 2030, the GGA indicators will deliver “no real benefits for countries”, especially those most vulnerable to the extreme impacts of climate change, she told reporters. “Without a meaningful package and the finances to act, indicators will mean nothing.”
Laurence Tubiana (right), chief executive officer of the European Climate Foundation, said that countries should not use the demand for developed countries to provide more climate finance to developing ones as a reason to block negotiations. Image: Samantha Ho/ Eco-Business
Developed countries have tried to steer discussions away from a commitment to providing finance. Paris Agreement architect Laurence Tubiana, who is now chief of the European Climate Foundation, said that countries should not cling to Article 9.1 – a section under the Paris Agreement that calls on developed countries to provide climate finance to developing ones – as a non-negotiable bargaining chip, since it could block potential agreement on other topics.
“If we think only about trade-offs and the different problems we have to face [surrounding Article 9.1], it’s not good,” she told reporters on Monday. “But I think this can be solved now - I think it’s totally possible to find an agreement on that.”
Singapore gets creative…but is it creative enough?
Still, hopes on breaking the deadlock have risen with the arrival of higher-level ministers at COP30 this week, largely representing climate and environment ministries. Talks in the first week had been driven by technical negotiators.
Among the new arrivals was Singapore’s sustainability and environment minister, Grace Fu, who told reporters that countries should have come to an agreement on the indicators by now.
“I’m a bit worried that we’re still discussing details at this stage – we were hoping we could converge a lot more by now,” she said on Tuesday.
When asked about the adaptation financing impasse, Fu suggested that countries could look at how adaptation solutions could be integrated into commercially viable projects to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon credits. For instance, reforestation projects to generate carbon credits could integrate measures to improve how much water the soil could absorb, reducing the risk of mudslides.
Singapore has also already voluntarily pledged 5 per cent of its income from carbon credits towards the adaptation funds of host countries. It has signed agreements to buy carbon credits from 10 such hosts.
“With more countries pledging that like Singapore, I think there will be a source of finance for the adaptation measures of [carbon credit] host countries,” she said.
Singapore’s Minister of Sustainability and Environment Grace Fu told reporters at COP30 that countries must come to an agreement on indicators related to climate adaption. Image: Samantha Ho/ Eco-Business
Another “creative” solution Singapore is considering is using the adaptive activity of land reclamation to build a body of freshwater that could reap commercial returns, said Fu.
But these proposals might not move the needle for official negotiations on the GGA indicators and beyond that, national adaptation plans, something Singapore plans to develop within the next five years.
“The key issue is that if there’s no money [specifically for the GGA], it’s all for nothing,” said Demet Intepe, climate adaptation and resilience expert at the global development charity Practical Action.
If countries cannot afford to set up standardised methods of collecting data for the GGA, any decision on the subject risks becoming an empty exercise, she explained. “Developing countries need technical support, but they especially need financial support. If countries don’t have the means of implementation, what’s the use?”
The same question is stalling agreements on national adaptation plans, something Singapore plans to develop within the next five years and which neighbouring Malaysia has already scheduled to publish in 2026.
The latest draft text on these plans, issued on Tuesday evening, showed that the only remaining disagreements were pegged to the provision and reporting of finance.
Early win against fossil fuels
Elsewhere, progress was made outside the formal COP30 negotiating process on the transition away from fossil fuels.
Despite not being a topic countries had asked to include on the official agenda, the phrase has wormed its way multiple times onto the a draft text of the Mutirão decision (Mutirão means “collective efforts” in the language of Brazil’s indigenous Tupi-Guarani people), which was the Brazilian presidency’s answer to countries asking for national climate emission targets, trade measures and finance to be discussed at COP30.
On Tuesday, 82 countries including the Marshall Islands, United Kingdom, Germany and Colombia united in a call for a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, currently presented as an option in the Mutirão draft. This follows the earlier commitments by South Korea and Bahrain to phase out coal, as well as Cambodia joining the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.
“The best chance of landing an agreement is in a Mutirão package [but] the current reference in the text is weak and is presented as an option – it must be strengthened and adopted,” said Tina Stege, climate envoy of the Marshall Islands.
The United Kingdom and Germany touted the economic and climate benefits of the transition to cleaner energy.
“We prioritise this issue not because it is easy, but because it is hard,” said Edward Miliband, UK’s secretary of state for energy and climate change. As the UK is a “price taker, and not a price maker” of fossil fuels, “the more secure option for us is cheap, clean renewables,” he said.
Carsten Schneider, Germany’s minister of the environment, nature conservation and nuclear safety called on the Brazilian COP30 presidency to include stronger commitments to phase out fossil fuels in the official agreement, saying that this is what the world needs to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C.
It was a call echoed by Brazil’s COP30 youth champion Marcele Oliveria, to thunderous applause in the packed press conference room.
“I came here to say that the children and the youth around the world count on COP30 to advance this roadmap. We need a deal now.”
Ministers from the Marshall Islands, United Kingdom, Germany and more listen to Brazil’s COP30 youth champion Marcele Oliveria call for an end to fossil fuels. Image: Beatriz Araujo/ Terra
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.
