No consensus could be reached on the follow-up to the historic agreement on the transition away from fossil fuels that was reached last year, during the closing plenary meeting at the UN climate summit COP29 in the Azerbaijani capital Baku.
COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev decided to postpone the decision to the interim climate talks in Bonn next year, with the intention of drawing up a text that can then be approved at COP30 in Brazil.
The text did not contain an explicit reference to the transition away from fossil fuels and did not make any progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions (mitigation).
'Reaffirmed' global stocktake
The present text only "reaffirmed" the outcome of the very first global stocktake. Furthermore, the text also referred back to paragraph 28, which includes the transition away from fossil fuels.
The European Union, among others, had strongly advocated an explicit mention, but Saudi Arabia and the Arab group had previously made it clear that they would not accept any text that mentioned fossil fuels.
Several countries, including Chile, Switzerland and the Maldives, raised their objections during the discussion of the agenda item, forcing the Presidency to postpone the decision until next year.
