World governments agreed Saturday to a compromise climate deal at the COP30 conference in Brazil that would increase financing for poor nations facing global warming, but omits any mention of the fossil fuels that drive it.
In securing the agreement, the countries sought to demonstrate global unity to address the impacts of climate change even after the world’s largest historical emitter, the United States, refused to send an official delegation.
“We should support it because at least it is going in the right direction,” European Union climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra told reporters before the deal was approved.
The Belem agreement launches a voluntary initiative to accelerate climate action to help nations meet their existing pledges to reduce emissions, and calls for rich nations to at least triple the amount of money they provide to help developing countries adapt to a warming world by 2035.
Scientists have said existing national commitments to reduce emissions have significantly reduced projected warming, but are not enough to prevent global temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius above industrial levels, a threshold that could trigger the worst impacts of climate change.
Meanwhile, developing countries have argued that they urgently need funds to adapt to impacts that are already affecting them, such as rising sea levels and worsening heat waves, droughts, floods and storms.
The agreement also begins a process for climate bodies to review how to align international trade with climate action, according to the agreement’s text, amid concerns that rising trade barriers are limiting the adoption of clean technology.
Avinash Persaud, special adviser to the president of the Inter-American Development Bank, a multilateral lender focused on Latin America and the Caribbean, said the deal’s focus on finance was important as climate impacts mount.
“But I fear the world still lacks more rapid-release grants for developing countries to respond to loss and damage. That goal is as urgent as it is difficult,” he said.
The European Union had been pushing for the official agreement to include language on abandoning fossil fuels, but had run into strong resistance from the Arab Group of nations, including top oil exporter Saudi Arabia.
That impasse was resolved after all-night negotiations on Friday led to an agreement that the issue could be left out of the agreement and included in a parallel text presented by COP30 host Brazil.
G20 summit in South Africa adopts declaration despite boycott and opposition from the United States
Separately, a summit of Group of 20 leaders in South Africa adopted a declaration addressing the climate crisis and other global challenges after it was drafted without U.S. involvement in a move one White House official called “shameful.”
The statement, which uses language that Washington has opposed, “cannot be renegotiated,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s spokesman told reporters, reflecting tensions between Pretoria and the Trump administration over the event.
“We’ve been working all year to get this adoption done and last week was pretty intense,” said spokesman Vincent Magwenya.
Ramaphosa, host of this weekend’s Group of 20 leaders’ meeting in Johannesburg, had previously said there was an “overwhelming consensus” for a summit declaration.
But at the last minute, Argentina, whose far-right president Javier Milei is a close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, abandoned negotiations just before envoys were about to adopt the draft text, South African officials said.
“Argentina, although it cannot support the declaration… remains fully committed to the spirit of cooperation that has defined the G20 since its inception,” its Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno said at the summit. Ramaphosa realized this, but went ahead anyway.
In explanation, Quirno said Argentina was concerned about how the document referred to geopolitical issues.
“Specifically, it addresses the long-running Middle East conflict in a way that fails to capture its full complexity,” he said. The document mentions the conflict once and says that “the members agree to work towards a just, comprehensive and lasting peace in… the occupied Palestinian territory.”
Envoys from the G20, which brings together the world’s major economies, drafted a leaders’ statement on Friday without U.S. participation, four sources familiar with the matter said.
“It is a long-standing tradition of the G20 to issue only consensus results, and it is shameful that the South African government is now seeking to depart from this standard practice,” a senior Trump administration official said on Friday.
The statement used the kind of language that the US administration has long disliked: emphasizing the seriousness of climate change and the need to better adapt to it, praising ambitious goals to boost renewable energy and pointing out the severe levels of debt service suffered by poor countries.
The mention of climate change was a snub for Trump, who doubts the scientific consensus that global warming is caused by human activities. US officials had indicated they would oppose any reference to it in the statement.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In his opening remarks at the summit, Ramaphosa said: “We must not allow anything to diminish the value, stature and impact of the first African G20 presidency.”
His bold tone contrasted strikingly with his modest decorum during his visit to the white house in May, in which he endured Trump repeating a false claim that there was a genocide of white farmers in South Africa, brushing aside Ramaphosa’s efforts to correct his facts.
Trump said U.S. officials would not attend the summit because of widely debunked accusations that the host country’s black-majority government persecutes its white minority.
The summit came at a time of intense tensions between world powers over Russia’s war in Ukraine and tense climate negotiations at COP30 in Brazil.
“While the G20’s diversity sometimes presents challenges, it also underscores the importance of finding common ground,” said Japan’s Cabinet Secretary for Public Affairs Maki Kobayashi. Reuters.
Commenting on Argentina’s absence at the final meeting of envoys to agree on the text, Magwenya said: “Argentina [had] “I’ve been participating quite significantly … in all the deliberations,” but he never appeared to endorse the statement on Friday. And he added: “We have what we call sufficient consensus.”
The US president had also rejected the host country’s agenda of promoting solidarity and helping developing nations adapt to climate disasters, transition to clean energy and reduce their excessive debt costs.
“This G20 is not about the United States,” South African Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola told the public broadcaster. SABC. “We are all equal members of the G20. What it means is that we need to make a decision. Those of us who are here have decided that the world must go here.”
But in a sign of the many geopolitical fissures underlying the agreed text, EU Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen warned in a speech about “the militarization of dependencies,” which she says “only creates losers.”
This was an apparent veiled reference to restrictions on China’s rare earth exports, vital to the global energy transition, as well as digital and defense technology.
The United States will host the G20 in 2026 and Ramaphosa said he would have to hand over the rotating presidency to an “empty chair”.
The South African presidency reiterated on Saturday its rejection of the US offer to send the US charge d’affaires for the transfer of power of the G20.
“The president will not hand over the G20 presidency to a junior embassy official. It is a violation of protocol that will not be accepted,” Magwenya said.
Lamola later said South Africa would assign a diplomat of the same rank as chargé d’affaires to hand over the G20 presidency to the foreign affairs department.
