Brazil publishes first global roadmap for phasing out fossil fuels
Brazil, host of last year’s Cop30 summit in Belém in the Amazon, on Tuesday issued the world’s first global roadmaps for phasing out fossil fuels and for stopping deforestation, arguing that countries can start breaking their link with coal, oil and gas now — without waiting for new technologies or economic change — while still growing their economies and lifting people out of poverty. Cop30 president André Corrêa do Lago said the papers are documents of implementation, meant to shift annual UN climate meetings from negotiating new deals to carrying out targets already agreed, with Cop31 due this month in Antalya, Turkey. He wants finance, transport, energy and infrastructure ministries to take them up, because those who negotiate are not the same people who must put the work into practice.
The two roadmaps were a compromise after a bitter fight in Belém last November over whether Cop30’s final resolutions should include fossil-fuel pledges. They are not binding, contain no deadlines or milestones, and leave each country to diagnose its own dependence and pick policy levers at its own rhythm. Joeri Rogelj, a professor of climate science and policy at Imperial College London, called them valuable but said the missing timelines and benchmarks still leave unclear what is needed to meet the Paris agreement’s aim of holding warming well below 2C, and preferably to 1.5C.
Brazil’s suggested steps include urgently cutting flaring and venting of gas at extraction sites — methane is about 80 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide — reducing fossil-fuel subsidies, and building up renewable generation. The deforestation roadmap notes that about $300bn a year is likely to be needed by 2030 for forests in poorer countries, including the Amazon, the Congo rainforests and south-east Asian tropical forests under pressure from fires and palm oil. These global papers are separate from more specific national plans that followed an April conference in Santa Marta, Colombia, where nearly 60 countries formed a “coalition of the willing” outside the Cop process; Germany, France and the Netherlands have since produced their own roadmaps.
Continue in the app — vote & join in ➔