A diluted COP: Climate divisions hardened at Belem amid global warming

The many hopes invested in the 30th edition of the Conference of Parties (COP30), the United Nations’ (UN’s) annual climate conference held in Belem, Brazil, were comprehensively belied in an agreement that is unlikely to reverse the trajectory of global warming, even as it hardened divisions and power alignments over the climate-change agenda.

 

The headline omission in the agreement is the critical road map for the phaseout of fossil fuels. The European Union (EU), the richest group of nations still in the climate talks, had been pushing for this road map, and developing nations led