Contentious issues on climate change on the margins

“Mutirao,” a Portuguese word of indigenous origin meaning ‘collective effort’, has caught everyone's imagination at the world’s biggest climate summit in Belem, Brazil, bordering the Amazon rainforest.

- S DINAKAR

But as COP 30 careens towards a close this weekend, the fissures are glaring.

So much so that there was a rare statement from the Vatican by Pope Leo XIV, the first papal head from the US who is sitting out the conference. “The creation is crying out in floods, droughts, storms and relentless heat. There is still time to keep the rise in global temperature below 1.5°C, but the window is closing,” the Pope said.

“The transition is moving at half the pace needed to meet Paris-aligned targets,” said global consultant McKinsey’s Mekala Krishnan in a note.

However, the most contentious issues affecting climate change and India do not find a place in the COP 30’s agenda. Instead, they have been reduced to footnotes, the kind you look up to for reference when you read the text of a book.

André Aranha Corréa do Lago, president of COP 30, told delegates on Tuesday from over 190 nations to come together for a midweek resolution on the issues at stake — finance, trade, transparency, a fossil fuel phaseout and country climate pledges — all outside the formal agenda.

“There are two categories, very favourable or very negative, a red line,” do Lago said in a briefing. He was referring to a deep chasm among groups of nations, especially over a road map to phase out oil, gas and coal.

Due to a lack of willingness on part of developed nations to open their purses, ambitions have turned to phasing out fossil fuels — in order to keep global warming below 1.5°C over pre-industrial levels.