Published: 12:46 AM, 24 November 2025
Climate summit in Brazil ends with weak outcomes
United Nations climate talks appeared to be nearing a conclusion after spilling into overtime Saturday, with a result likely to disappoint countries and advocates for stronger action to wean the world from the coal, oil and gas that is heating the planet.
Several observers told reporters that the general framework of a deal is formed, but some sticking points still remain. The conference’s leaders had a late morning meeting with all nations to approve the deal. That’s a place where some nations could try to scuttle it if they prefer no deal to what they consider a feeble agreement.
“The deal informally is there from what we know,” said former Philippines negotiator Jasper Inventor, now at Greenpeace International. “It’s a weak outcome.”
COP30 President André Corrêa Do Lago told Amazonia Vox on Saturday morning that there is a deal that will take a while to explain because so much is in it. But a proposal for a road map to transition away from fossil fuels — which more than 80 countries called for, as did Brazil’s president — will not be in there. Instead, a fossil fuel transition plan will be in a separate proposal issued later by Do Lago’s team that won’t carry the same weight as a deal accepted by nations at United Nations conference.
The annual talks are this year being held in Belem, a Brazilian city on the edge of the Amazon rainforest. They were scheduled to wrap up on Friday, but negotiators blew past that deadline and worked through the night.
Some of the biggest issues negotiators have worked on include how to distribute $300 billion a year — a sum previously agreed upon — in financial aid for vulnerable countries hit hardest by climate change, getting countries to toughen up their national plans to reduce Earth-warming emissions and dealing with climate trade barriers. Poorer nations have requested a tripling of financial aid for adapting to extreme weather and other climate change harms, and observers said a version of that appears to be in the deal.
The UN and host Brazil have also floated dozens of “action plans” to make progress on past deals. COP30 took place at a time when global climate targets were under significant strain.
In Paris in 2015, nearly 200 countries agreed to try to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C above "pre-industrial" levels and to keep them "well below" 2C.
There is very strong scientific evidence that the impacts of climate change - from extreme heat to sea-level rise - would be far greater at 2C than at 1.5C. Next year this summit is supposed to be held in Turkey.
