My Biggest Take Away from Belém is the Very Issue COP30 Overlooked: Fossil Fuels

By Clare Lagan, 2025 Global Voices COP30 Fellow

This year’s climate talks in Belém marked a shift from the preceding Conferences of the Parties (COPs), following three years of hosting by petrostates – Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan. Brazil committed early in its presidency to welcoming the involvement of civil society at COP30. Yet, while the People’s March, not seen since COP26 in Glasgow, brought a crowd of 50,000 protesters to the streets of the Amazonian city, Indigenous peoples’ still found themselves excluded from participating in meaningful ways, and even attending at all, with one group denied passes seen breaching the security checkpoint during the first week of negotiations. 

This exclusion comes despite the significance of Indigenous peoples’ role in the climate response, as they possess a wealth of ecological knowledge essential for recognising and combatting climate change, from which they suffer disproportionate harms. Additionally, traditional lands have often been reduced to sites of extraction, with Indigenous peoples leading the resistance against the fossil fuel industry, as the biggest contributor to the climate crisis. 

In my five days at COP30, what was abundantly clear was the focus of Indigenous peoples’ and civil society at large, on the issue of fossil fuels. From Climate Action Network’s daily ‘Fossil of the Day’ award to the speeches I heard at People’s COP and the side events I attended, the call to phase out fossil fuels was widespread, gaining in momentum over the course of the conference. Midway through Global Voices’ time at COP30, a report was released by Global Witness revealing that, alongside the increased civil society participation,1600 fossil fuel lobbyists had registered to attend the conference, granting them access to the country negotiators, Climate Ministers, even Heads of State, who were present. This is clear conflict of interest for an international process that was established, ultimately, to prevent ‘dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system’ (Article 2, UNFCCC) of which, the burning of fossil fuels is the number one contributor. 

It therefore came as a shock to learn that the term ‘fossil fuels’ was not included in a COP’s outcome document until 2023. 30 years of climate negotiations, and only one reference? The influence of the fossil fuel industry should not be understated. Yet, at the end of COP30, despite the efforts of the Brazilian presidency, the term was once again missing from the text agreed upon by the Parties in attendance.

On my final day at COP30 something happened that left me feeling hopeful, however.  I attended the High-Level Action Agenda for a Fossil Fuel Treaty, hosted by the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative (FFNPTI). There, I watched Cambodia pledge to phase out fossil fuels, joining 17 other countries including Vanuatu, Tuvalu and Antigua & Barbuda. An international conference was also announced, to facilitate strategic dialogues between States on the just transition away from coal, oil and gas. Additionally, after I had departed Brazil, a Road Map to Phase Out Fossil Fuels (the ‘Belém Agreement’) was adopted by 80 countries, including Australia. Having worked on climate advocacy in the context of Western Australia’s gas industry, I was pleasantly surprised by this announcement. However, Albanese quickly rejected the suggestion that Australia should therefore stop developing new gas fields, making it impossible to determine what Australia’s proposed timeline for such a phase out would be. 

Australia’s Parliament faces similar scrutiny over the influence of the fossil fuel industry. Companies like Santos and the Mineral Council of Australia, for example, donated  $110,090 and $84,700, respectively, to the Labor Party in the 2022/2023 financial year. Meanwhile, reports suggest more than 2000 lobbyists, hundreds of which represent the interests of coal and gas companies, have been granted parliamentary access badges, allowing them to knock on MPs’ doors whenever they like. With numerous countries around the world facing similar claims of ‘State Capture’, the leadership of the 18 States signed on to the FFNPTI and their willingness to tackle our reliance on fossil fuels has been a welcome proposal, and a reason for hope. 

The First International Conference for the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels is to be hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands next April. Only time will reveal the effectiveness of addressing the matter of fossil fuels outside of the UNFCCC, among a coalition of the willing, and beyond the influence of fossil fuel companies. However, its success may just hammer another nail into the coffin of UNFCCC climate negotiations, demonstrating its limitations by comparison.  With calls to reform the COP process growing louder every year, a vital first step for renewing confidence is preventing access to fossil fuel lobbyists. Instead, more meaningful participation should be encouraged from Indigenous and other frontline communities, whose voices both inspire us, and warn us of the consequences of losing sight of our ultimate goal – keeping anthropogenic warming from reaching above 1.5 degrees. 

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The views and opinions expressed by Global Voices Fellows do not necessarily reflect those of the organisation or its staff.