Brazil publishes the fossil fuel roadmap COP30 could not agree, six days before COP31 opens

Six days before the next UN climate summit opens in Antalya, Turkey, Brazil's COP30 presidency published the document that last year's summit could not agree on: a global roadmap for moving away from fossil fuels. The roughly 180-page report, titled "Implementing the Global Stocktake of the Paris Agreement: COP30 Presidency Roadmap for Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in Energy Systems, in a Just, Orderly and Equitable Manner," went out on November 3 together with a second roadmap on ending deforestation, per Climate Home News and Agence Europe. It is voluntary. It names no country, sets no date for any producer to stop pumping, and creates no new commitment. Its authors say that is the point. Its critics say that is the problem.

"We don't need more negotiations. What we need is for governments to start taking action," COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago said at the launch, per Reuters as carried by KFGO. This story explains what the roadmap says, why it exists outside the formal UN process, who backs it and who does not, and what Brazil itself is doing about its own oil.

What the roadmap says

We opened the roadmap document linked by Agence Europe. It describes itself as a "Presidency contribution," not a negotiated outcome, meant to help countries move from diagnosis to implementation of the Global Stocktake agreed at COP28 in Dubai in 2023, which called for "transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems." It opens with the numbers that frame the task: warming of 1.37 degrees Celsius in 2025 and, by its reading of the science, a 75 percent chance that the 2026 to 2030 average exceeds 1.5 degrees.

The method is what the authors call the "Belém Readiness Approach." Rather than one timetable for everyone, it sorts countries into "archetypes" on two axes, how exposed they are to fossil fuels and how much capacity they have to change, and offers each group a set of first steps. On the demand side, for example, the four archetypes run from "Demand Transition Constrained" (high exposure, low capacity) to "Demand-side Frontrunners" (low exposure, high capacity). Three "pillars" organize the work: cutting fossil fuel demand in transport, industry and buildings; reducing fossil fuel supply while building low-emissions systems; and changing the economic incentives around both.

The timetable runs to 2033 in three stages, per Climate Home News and Reuters.

Officials said they stopped at 2033 on purpose. "The 2033 horizon reflects the urgency for near-term action," COP30 chief executive Ana Toni said, per Climate Home News. The document also warns that cutting supply before demand falls could raise prices and erode public support for the transition.

It leans on targets already agreed or pledged elsewhere: tripling renewable capacity and doubling the rate of efficiency improvement by 2030 from the Dubai stocktake; a "Belém 4X" pledge to quadruple sustainable fuel use by 2035, endorsed by 32 countries; and a "35-by-35" electrification pledge for COP31 to lift electricity from just over 20 percent of final energy use to 35 percent by 2035. It notes that about 655 million people lack electricity and about 2 billion cook with polluting fuels, and that universal clean cooking in Africa would cost about $2 billion a year. A companion finance document calls for at least $1.3 trillion a year for developing countries by 2035.

Why it is outside the UN text

The roadmap exists because the formal process rejected it. At COP30 in Belém in November 2025, more than 80 countries pushed to begin a fossil fuel roadmap inside the negotiations, per E3G and S&P Global. Named supporters included the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Denmark, Mexico, Kenya, Colombia and Brazil itself. Oil-producing states, led in the accounts of Brazilian outlet InfoAmazonia by Saudi Arabia, Russia and India, argued the issue was not on the agenda. Nigeria said "the energy transition cannot be imposed" and must respect "national economic realities." India, speaking for the BASIC group of Brazil, South Africa, India and China, rejected reopening the fossil fuel debate. Toni put the split at roughly 85 countries for and 80 against, far from the consensus the UN process requires. A group of 29 countries threatened to withhold their signatures from the final agreement but relented, and the roadmap was dropped from the text.

Corrêa do Lago then promised to produce it anyway as a presidency initiative. "Since there is no consensus, the Brazilian presidency proposed creating the roadmap this year," he told Agência Brasil in March. A public call for contributions ran to March 31. Colombia hosted the first International Conference on the Phase-Out of Fossil Fuels in Santa Marta in April with 57 nations, per Agence Europe, and Ireland and Tuvalu will co-chair the next one in 2027.

1. 2023-12COP28 in Dubai agrees the Global Stocktake call to transition away from fossil fuels
2. 2025-11COP30 in Belém: 80-plus countries back a roadmap; producers block it; presidency promises one
3. 2025-12-08Lula orders Brazilian ministries to draft national roadmap guidelines within 60 days
4. 2026-03-31COP30 presidency's call for contributions closes
5. 2026-04Santa Marta conference on phasing out fossil fuels, 57 nations
6. 2026-11-03COP30 presidency publishes the global roadmap and a deforestation roadmap
7. 2026-11-09COP31 opens in Antalya, Turkey, with Australia presiding over negotiations

Twenty-four countries had signed on before the document was finalized, nine of them European: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain and Slovenia, per Agence Europe. The Netherlands, France and Germany each adopted national roadmaps during 2026. The European Union has asked that both Brazilian roadmaps be discussed at COP31. Whether Turkey, the host, and Australia, which will preside over the negotiations, take the work forward is not yet stated, Climate Home News reports. European governments are meanwhile arguing among themselves about the cost of the transition, from Germany's first auction for backup gas plants to the fight among EU energy ministers over whether electricity may be taxed more heavily than gas.

The forest roadmap and the money gap

The second document addresses deforestation, which was also kept out of the Belém agreement over disagreements on finance. It cites UN Environment Programme figures that annual forest funding was $84.5 billion in 2023 and must rise above $300 billion by 2030, per Reuters. National governments provide 88.3 percent of that money; international public finance provides 3.4 percent. Brazil's Tropical Forests Forever Facility, a fund that would pay countries for standing forest out of investment returns, has raised $7.6 billion toward a $10 billion target. The roadmap proposes expanding carbon markets, giving Indigenous peoples and local communities direct access to funds, and using debt relief.

"Public financing from developed countries is absolutely essential," Corrêa do Lago said, while also pointing to "a much more sophisticated and diversified way" of financing, per Reuters. "It is not an easy task, and it is not just about financing."

What supporters and critics say

Reactions split less on whether the roadmap is useful than on whether it is fast enough. Romain Ioualalen of Oil Change International called it "a valuable blueprint" that "recognizes there is no one-size-fits-all pathway," but said letting supply cuts wait until the 2030s "would be a grave mistake, and a guarantee to further lock in fossil fuels and for a chaotic transition," per the group's statement. He also said the finance tools it favors, such as debt swaps and derisking, have "a track record of failing."

Carolina Pasquali of Greenpeace Brazil called it "a crucial step" that "stops short of setting clear fossil fuel phaseout targets," per Common Dreams. Joeri Rogelj of Imperial College London said the roadmaps "are valuable but fall short of clearly indicating the pace of change needed." Fanny Petitbon of 350.org warned that "the roadmap must not end up as just another report gathering dust on a shelf." Kat Paterson of the think tank E3G said it puts the transition at the center of global cooperation and that the COP31 presidency must carry it forward, per Climate Home News.

Corrêa do Lago's answer is that a presidency document cannot bind anyone and should not pretend to. The roadmap is "food for thought," he said. "Everything is around implementation, around institutions and processes in place that already exist," per Climate Home News. Pedro Brancante of Brazil's foreign ministry said it was meant to organize the debate without getting stuck on definitions or on which country owes what.

We could find no statement from Saudi Arabia, Russia or OPEC on the November 3 document. Their positions from Belém, that fossil fuel supply is a sovereign economic matter and not an agreed negotiating item, are the most recent on record, and we have described them above as the outlets reported them.

Brazil's own oil

The roadmap's author is also one of the world's larger oil producers, and that tension runs through the reactions. Brazil is the eighth-largest producer and aims to be fourth by 2030, Natalie Unterstell of the Talanoa Institute told Climate Home News in December. On November 17, 2025, days before COP30 ended, Brazil's oil regulator approved 275 new exploration blocks, some in the Amazon region, and the government has authorized drilling off the Amazon coast, per InfoAmazonia. ExxonMobil and Chevron were the main winners of the last auction there.

On December 8, 2025, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who won a fourth term in October's runoff, ordered the finance, energy and environment ministries to draft guidelines for a national roadmap within 60 days, with a "gradual reduction of the country's dependence on fossil fuels" and an Energy Transition Fund financed from oil and gas revenue, per Climate Home News. As of November 3, that national roadmap had not been published and was awaiting Lula's approval, the same outlet reports. Lula has backed oil and gas expansion, including drilling along the northern coast, which he has called "a passport to the country's future," per Climate Home News. Cláudio Angelo of Observatório do Clima put the stakes this way in December: if Brazil acts on its own commitments, "it becomes harder for other countries to allege difficulties."

The gap between the global document and the national one is the sharpest test of the roadmap's logic. InfoAmazonia reported that a study cited by the COP30 presidency rated Brazil's own potential to adapt as "moderate," which it read as implying continued exploration for several more years. The global roadmap's timetable puts production cuts in 2031 to 2033. Whether Brasília's plan, when it appears, matches that is unknown.

COP31 and what to watch

COP31 runs from November 9 to 20 in Antalya. Turkey holds the presidency and Australia leads the negotiations. Turkish Environment Minister Murat Kurum, the incoming COP president, said the agenda would focus on implementation rather than new pledges, and would rest on dialog, consensus and action, per Reuters. Turkey has its own energy choices in view, having just signed a nuclear financing memorandum with South Korea for the Sinop plant.

Three things will show whether the roadmap has traction. First, whether the EU's request to discuss it at COP31 produces a formal agenda item or only side events. Second, whether the 24 signatories grow, and whether any major producer joins. Third, whether the national transition plans the roadmap asks for by 2028 begin to appear, starting with Brazil's.

What people are saying online

This desk sets out to sample reactions on X and Reddit for each story and to verify every quoted post against its live permalink. On November 4, our tools could not open X or Reddit, and we could not verify any post. We have therefore quoted no social posts here. The reactions above are from named organizations and officials as reported by the linked outlets. We make no claim about how the public in Brazil, Turkey or elsewhere views the roadmap; we found no representative poll on it.

What remains unknown

The full list of 24 signatories was not in the sources we could open. Whether Turkey and Australia will adopt the roadmap as COP31 presidency business is unstated. The finance figures are targets and estimates, not commitments: the $1.3 trillion goal is for 2035, and the $300 billion forest figure is a UNEP estimate of need, not pledged money. Brazil's national roadmap is unpublished. And the roadmap's central empirical claim, that supply can safely fall in the 2030s if demand is cut first, is the point its critics dispute and the document itself flags as a risk in both directions.

Sources and method

We opened the roadmap document as linked by Agence Europe and relied on it for the title, structure, archetypes and headline figures; the appendices were not fully read. Reporting on the launch comes from Climate Home News, Reuters via KFGO, Agence Europe, Common Dreams and Oil Change International's statement. Belém context comes from E3G, S&P Global and InfoAmazonia. Brazilian domestic context comes from Climate Home News and Agência Brasil. The Japan Times and Guardian accounts could not be opened. X and Reddit could not be reached. Translations from Portuguese are the cited outlets'. See our methodology for how we treat voluntary pledges, attributed claims and online reactions.

Differing perspectives

How should the world act on the Dubai pledge to transition away from fossil fuels: a voluntary roadmap, binding supply cuts, or national discretion?

Each position is summarized as its supporters make it, with equal weight and in alphabetical order. A summary is not an endorsement; the evidence for each is weighed in the story above.

• Adopt the roadmap but cut fossil fuel supply this decade

  Who holds it: Oil Change International, Greenpeace Brazil, 350.org and allied climate groups; scientists including Joeri Rogelj

  Campaigners say the roadmap is a valuable blueprint and right to insist on equity and finance, but wrong to let global action on fossil fuel supply wait until the 2030s. They point to existing extraction projects that, by their count, would use nearly seven times the remaining carbon budget for 1.5 degrees, and argue that delaying supply cuts locks in new fields and sets up a disorderly transition later. They want clear phase-out targets, no new exploration licenses, and finance that does not rely on debt swaps and derisking tools they say have failed, with the 2028 Global Stocktake as the deadline to turn the plan into commitments.

  In their words: Oil Change International (statement on the roadmap) ↗

• Keep fossil fuel supply a national decision, off the negotiating agenda

  Who holds it: Oil- and gas-producing states including Saudi Arabia, Russia and Nigeria, and India speaking for the BASIC group at COP30

  Producing countries argued at Belém that a fossil fuel roadmap was never on the agreed agenda and that reopening the Dubai language would unravel a hard-won compromise. Nigeria said "the energy transition cannot be imposed" and must respect "national economic realities." India, for Brazil, South Africa, India and China, said the debate should not be reopened. They say each country's energy mix and development path is its own to decide, that developing producers depend on hydrocarbon revenue for basic services, and that developed countries which grew rich on fossil fuels should finance the transition rather than dictate timetables for others.

  In their words: InfoAmazonia (reporting Nigeria's and India's statements at COP30) ↗

• Start now with a voluntary, country-led roadmap

  Who holds it: The Brazilian COP30 presidency (André Corrêa do Lago, Ana Toni), the European Union and the 24 early signatory countries

  The presidency argues that the UN process cannot reach consensus on fossil fuels, so waiting for a negotiated text means waiting indefinitely. A voluntary roadmap lets willing countries start planning now, sorted by how exposed they are and how much capacity they have, with first steps that fit each. It builds on what was already agreed in Dubai rather than reopening it, and it says demand must fall before supply so that prices do not spike and public support does not collapse. Corrêa do Lago says the job is implementation: "We don't need more negotiations. What we need is for governments to start taking action."

  In their words: Reuters via KFGO (COP30 presidency launch remarks) ↗