By: James Wilt (Policy Development Manager for Climate Action Team Manitoba)
Another UN Climate Change Conference has come and gone without a global agreement to rapidly transition away from fossil fuel production and consumption. But out of the frustration with a stagnating COP process emerged a new coalition of countries committed to taking real action. Where were Canada and Manitoba in all this?
What happened at COP30?
The eventual consensus agreement struck at the 30th annual Conference of the Parties (COP30) in Belém, Brazil, ended up removing any explicit mention of fossil fuels due to sustained pressure from Saudi Arabia, Russia, and other major fossil fuel producers; the U.S. unsurprisingly didn’t attend but has still been described as part of the “axis of obstruction” that sabotaged this COP process. Goals to develop roadmaps to phase-out fossil fuels and deforestation, which had been explicitly supported ahead of the gathering by Brazil’s president Lula, were blocked. In the end, the need for a fossil fuel phase-out was only indirectly alluded to in the agreement by invoking the “UAE consensus,” referring to the COP two years ago that first acknowledged the need for a transition away from fossil fuels in a “just, orderly and equitable manner.”
All up, there weren’t many big wins in the COP30 final text; fairly modest highlights included establishing a “just transition mechanism,” new provisions that better address Africa’s specific needs, and a tripling in adaptation funding by 2035 (although this has been criticized for representing a further delay from the timeline proposed by vulnerable countries). Autopsies of the process have critiqued its consensus-based approach that allows major fossil fuel exporters to veto any real progress, with the New Scientist concluding that “the UN climate summits are no longer fit for purpose” and activists calling for development of alternative processes. The failure of the COP approach has only been further exposed with the devastating flooding in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand that has killed more than 1,000 people.
Amidst a stagnating COP process, a new coalition of the willing emerged
By far the most significant development in Belém took place outside of the formal COP30 process itself—and it’s something that Manitobans and Canadians should pay close attention to. First, more than 80 countries including Germany, the UK, and France came out in support of developing a roadmap to transition off fossil fuels. UK energy secretary Ed Miliband described it as “a global coalition, with global north and global south countries coming together and saying with one voice: this is an issue which cannot be swept under the carpet.” This was followed with the issuing of the Belém Declaration on the Transition Away from Fossil Fuels, which was signed by two-dozen countries including Mexico, Kenya, Colombia, Spain, Nepal, and Australia.
Crucially, this text clearly stated that “the projected CO₂ emissions from continued fossil fuel production, licensing, and subsidies are incompatible with limiting the temperature rise to 1.5°C” and highlighted the recent International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion on potential legal and financial consequences for major emitters. Breaking from the stagnation of the COP process, these countries committed to independently developing a fossil fuel transition roadmap, starting at the First International Conference for the Phase-Out of Fossil Fuels that will be hosted in Santa Marta, Colombia, in April 2026 and co-hosted by the Netherlands; this will be followed by another gathering led by Pacific Island states, with the likes of Vanuatu, Tuvalu, and the Marshall Islands long serving as global leaders in this struggle.
Irene Vélez Torres, Colombia’s environment and sustainable development minister, said about this upcoming gathering: “We invite all willing countries, subnational actors, campesinos, afros, indigenous, NGOs to join us in Santa Marta. This will be a broad intergovernmental, multisectoral platform complementary to the UNFCCC designed to identify legal, economic, and social pathways that are necessary to make the phasing out of fossil fuels.”
There are many unknowns about this process, such as the surprising involvement of Australia, a major exporter of coal and LNG, and the future of Colombia’s leadership if a right-wing party takes power in next year’s presidential election. However, experts have noted that the Belém Declaration and upcoming conference in Colombia could well be a “gamechanger” that coheres demands for a fossil fuel phaseout ahead of COP31 and raises the possibility of establishing a “trading bloc that could begin to sanction nations–and banks–that refuse to wind down fossil fuels.”
Where were Manitoba and Canada in all this?
Canada was effectively absent in COP30, taking no position whatsoever on the fossil fuel phaseout issue; Environmental Defence described the country as “sitting on its hands.” While the leaders of Germany, the UK, and France attended, Prime Minister Mark Carney stayed home. In fact, Canada’s ministerial representation at the conference ended when they had to fly back to Ottawa to vote for the federal budget (which expanded fossil fuel subsidies and rolled back anti-greenwashing legislation).
As COP30 was ongoing, Carney referred another LNG export terminal to the Major Projects Office and Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew announced a new $3 billion fossil gas-fired power plant. In the final days of COP, climate activists shamed Canada with the “Fossil of the Day” designation for “the dismantling of progress, the disregard for Indigenous rights, the silence on finance, the absence of leadership, and the growing gap between rhetoric and reality.” The BC Assembly of First Nations also slammed Canada’s actions at COP30, with delegation leader Chief Donald Sam of ʔAkisq̓nuk First Nation stating: “With great sadness and frustration, we observed Canada align itself with states that continue to downplay the climate crisis and its growing threats to economic and social stability.”
Since then, Carney has further devastated Canada’s climate policy landscape with the farcical Canada-Alberta Memorandum of Understanding that cheerled another oilsands pipeline to the West Coast, backed the ludicrously expensive Pathways carbon capture project, cancelled the oilsands emissions cap, suspended the Clean Electricity Regulations in Alberta, and pledged an “appropriate adjustment” to the West Coast tanker ban to allow for oilsands exports. Canada is rapidly moving in the wrong direction when it comes to emissions reductions.
This is especially true when compared with the courageous leadership of the 24 countries that signed the Belém Declaration on the Transition Away from Fossil Fuels. Rather than using Trump’s unprecedented economic aggression and retaliation as an excuse to retreat from necessary climate action, these countries are responding by recommitting to the transition away from fossil fuels as a way to increase national and global resilience. Canadian governments have a clear choice: align with the climate-denying obstructionism of the US, Saudi Arabia, and Russia, or pivot to allying with the growing global movement for rapid emissions reductions and a livable future.