The Environment Minister said that the roadmap for abandoning fossil fuels will not be forgotten and will be worked on again.
“There is a promise from the Brazilian presidency itself – which told us that it had to be neutral here, because it was the presidency – to promote international meetings next year on the fossil fuel and forest roadmap, so this will not fall through,” Maria da Graça Carvalho told journalists after leaving a meeting of European Union delegations at the Belém climate conference, COP30, in which it was agreed to accept the final text of the Brazilian presidency.
The roadmap, or road map, as the Brazilian presidency of COP30 calls it, was a theme launched by the President of Brazil himself, Lula da Silva, at the leaders’ summit that preceded the Belém conference, and was defended by more than 80 countries.
Despite the absence of reference to fossil fuels in the document, all groups at COP30, except the European Union, had already agreed to approve it on Friday night.
“Our red lines are all there. (…) and at the last minute we reached an agreement, which is very good”, Maria da Graça Carvalho told Portuguese journalists after a long group meeting to reach an agreement on how to vote on the Brazilian presidency proposal.
This Saturday the EU ended up accepting it too, after managing to introduce a reference to what was agreed in Dubai – the objective of working towards a progressive abandonment of fossil fuels – by including the “United Arab Emirates consensus” in the text.
The minister said it was strange that at the end of COP30 the European Union had been isolated in the negotiations, stressing that this had never happened.
“I think the European Union now has to prepare for the next COP. There is no reason for us not to get here with the African countries, with the AOSIS”, said the minister.
He regretted that “this tradition of working with developing countries” had been lost, warning that “others are doing it”, such as China.
And he added that Portugal can build this bridge within the EU because it has “very good relations with these countries”, namely African ones and small island states.