‘It’s like arguing with robots’: negotiators on the state of Cop30 talks

Three representatives of developing countries speak candidly about meetings behind closed doors in Belém

In the negotiating rooms at the Cop30 climate conference, representatives from vulnerable countries work to get the best deal they can. Here, three of them reveal what happens behind closed doors.

‘They don’t listen. They don’t want to listen’

We need to keep the 1.5C goal – it is a lifeline for the planet. We agreed it in Paris 10 years ago. If we don’t stick to it, we face devastating impacts, all over the world, but especially for low-lying areas. They are the first to feel the sea-level rises, but there are many more impacts – cyclones, storms, extreme weather that we are already seeing.

And yet there are countries here who want to ignore this. They do not want to keep to the Paris agreement goal of 1.5C [above preindustrial levels]. In the negotiating rooms, they argue against the measures and commitments that would enable 1.5C.

We need to be guided by the science, and the science is very clear, but some of them argue against the science. The IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN-convened body of the world’s leading climate experts] has made it very clear that 1.5C is critical. But you hear in the negotiating rooms people opposing the science, saying: “Oh, there is other science besides the IPCC,” that the IPCC is not “the best available science”.

This is really distressing, to hear them say that. It hurts me. We keep defending it, but they don’t listen. They don’t want to listen.

Or they say: “Oh, 1.5C is in the past; we are already through 1.5C; don’t talk about 1.5C.” But that’s not true either. There has been a year when [global temperatures] were over 1.5C, the hottest year ever, but that does not mean the end of the story. The Paris agreement does not depend on one year, or two years; it needs to be measured over a longer period.

Sometimes I feel that this process has lost its humanity. Sometimes it’s like we are arguing with robots.

The countries that are most opposed to 1.5C and the actions we need to take for it are the “like-minded developing countries” group, people like the Arab group, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China, India. For these countries, I think, it’s about power.

They are called developing countries and they talk about solidarity among developing countries, but where is their feeling for the vulnerable? Where is their humanity?

Maybe it’s because the impacts of climate change are not happening to them, or not so much yet, or they ignore it. Just because we do not have money, does not mean we should not be listened to.

Maybe they can never feel what we feel. I think it could be different if they were to live in our reality, just for a short while. If they could feel what our people feel. If they could see what is happening to us.

Climate change will affect everybody. Just because you’re a big country or have money doesn’t mean you are safe. Don’t forget that.

‘I get very frustrated with the developed countries’ positions’

For my people, adaptation is not just a word that is bandied around at a Cop. It means survival. It means the difference between putting food on the table and lining up for humanitarian relief. It means whether crops fail or not. It means whether livestock live or die for lack of water.

We are suffering the worst drought in 40 years in my region – we need help to adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis now. I see places in my country where there was once plenty, and now they have nothing.

The developed countries we are negotiating with know this, but I don’t think they really understand it. I don’t think they feel it, in the way that we feel it passionately because we experience it.

When we are in the negotiating rooms, I get very frustrated with the developed countries’ positions. We want a tripling of adaptation finance, from $40bn (£31bn) to $120bn. Developed countries agreed, last year at Cop29 in Baku, to $300bn by 2035 in climate finance, but that is for everything. It includes adaptation, mitigation [helping countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions], and loss and damage funding [for the rescue and rehabilitation of countries and communities affected by climate disaster]. A lot more of it should be for adaptation.

We know that the needs for adaptation are huge and growing – about $210bn to $360bn a year is estimated.

You can get private sector money for things that make a profit, like clean energy; the banks will give you money for that because they make the investment back. No private sector company will invest in the things we need for adaptation, like ways to store water from the rains, or helping farmers to grow different crops.

Developed countries don’t want to give us the money, but they are supposed to. Under the Paris agreement, they agreed in article 9.1 to pay us. We know that we did not create this crisis – they did – but we are the ones who are suffering.

In the negotiations, we are discussing the adaptation indicators. These are the rules, metrics and standards that the developed countries want us to follow when we do our adaptation projects. But there are more than 100 of them. Some of them are not too bad, but others are. We want to slim them down. We are trying to draw up a red list, of ones that we do not want or do not think we can meet, and a green list of ones that are OK.

Some of these indicators are very intrusive. Like they want to know our domestic budget for food security and how we spend it. Countries don’t like indicators like this; they infringe on our national sovereignty. It’s like we are being told how to run our governments, what policies we should have.

When it comes to adaptation, finance is key and the developed countries don’t even want to talk about that. They say that these are the adaptation rooms, where we talk about adaptation, and we only talk about finance in the finance rooms. But that should not be how it works. It can’t work like that – how can you not discuss finance when you’re talking about how you can adapt to what’s happening with the climate?

‘Some are saying: “Why even come to Cop?”’

Article 9.1 – the legal obligation of developed countries to provide climate finance for developing countries – is proving to be one of the crucial issues of this Cop.

Provision under 9.1 is a cornerstone of the Paris agreement. It’s a matter of legal obligation. Without a big scale-up of provision of public finance, the goals of the Paris agreement cannot be met.

And yet we have the European Union, the UK, and other rich historical polluter countries who have been resisting the calls from across the global south to have a dedicated space to discuss article 9.1.

These countries are saying to fold this discussion into a wider discussion on all of finance, but we know from bitter experience that this doesn’t work. When we try to talk about everything, we end up talking of nothing. Rich countries talk about what is convenient for them.

Rich historical polluters are saying that we don’t need to discuss provision because supposedly it was addressed last year in Baku under the new $300bn goal [pledged by rich countries]. This is very ironic because the amount of the $300bn that is public finance provision is totally not clear or specified, and these rich historic polluters are the reason this is the case.

Some of the most senior global south negotiators are saying: “Without a space to discuss provision, why even come to Cop?”

Because we know we will not be able to deliver the global goal on adaptation without increased provision of grants and concessional public finance. Because we know the loss and damage fund will remain an empty shell without a course correction on provision of public finance in grants. Because we know we cannot achieve the Paris agreement without much greater provision, solidarity, and ambition on finance from the global north.

Cover photo:  More than 50,000 people registered to attend this year’s climate conference in Belém, Brazil. Photograph: Fernando Llano/AP