Fire disrupts UN climate talks just as negotiators reach critical final days

Fire dis­rupt­ed Unit­ed Na­tions cli­mate talks in Brazil on Thurs­day, forc­ing evac­u­a­tions of sev­er­al build­ings and de­lay­ing al­ready slug­gish ne­go­ti­a­tions by most of a day with no ma­jor agree­ments even close. Of­fi­cials said 13 peo­ple were treat­ed for smoke in­hala­tion.

The fire erupt­ed in an area of pavil­ions where side­line events are held dur­ing the an­nu­al talks, known this year as COP30. The fire was quick­ly brought un­der con­trol, but fire of­fi­cials or­dered the en­tire site evac­u­at­ed for safe­ty checks and it wasn’t clear when con­fer­ence busi­ness would re­sume.

The fire could cost sig­nif­i­cant time if the talks don’t re­sume un­til Fri­day’s sched­uled fi­nal day. The pres­i­den­cy of the talks had planned to have min­is­ters and diplo­mats work late Thurs­day.

It was al­so pos­si­ble that on­ly top ne­go­tia­tors would be al­lowed back at night for a slimmed-down ses­sion.

The fire came at a crit­i­cal time. The COP30 pres­i­den­cy had been work­ing on what was hoped to be a next-to-last draft of an agree­ment on four con­tentious top­ics in­volv­ing mon­ey, cut­ting fos­sil fu­el emis­sions and trade. Lead­ers had orig­i­nal­ly want­ed a deal on this tough in­ter­con­nect­ed pack­age by Wednes­day, while Brazil’s pres­i­dent and the Unit­ed Na­tions sec­re­tary-gen­er­al were on site, but it didn’t come to­geth­er.

“It def­i­nite­ly puts a hold on ne­go­ti­a­tions for a pe­ri­od of time,” said vet­er­an cli­mate ne­go­ti­a­tions ob­serv­er Alden Mey­er of the Eu­ro­pean think-tank E3G. He said they could still get back on track but end­ing Fri­day, as sched­uled, doesn’t look like­ly.

“It means there is a lot to do with very lit­tle time. There were al­ready huge gulfs to bridge and this won’t help,” said Tere­sa An­der­son, cli­mate jus­tice lead at Ac­tion­Aid.

Mo­hamed Ad­ow, an­oth­er COP vet­er­an and di­rec­tor of Pow­er­Shift Africa, chose to see some pos­i­tive in peo­ple help­ing each oth­er when the fire erupt­ed.

“That spir­it is pre­cise­ly what cli­mate ac­tion de­mands,” Ad­ow said. “If we can re­spond to the plan­et’s emer­gen­cies with the same uni­ty shown in that tense mo­ment, COP30 might yet be re­mem­bered not for an in­ci­dent, but for a turn­ing point.”

Mey­er wasn’t con­vinced.

‘’Peo­ple tend to feel a lit­tle clos­er dur­ing an emer­gency like this,” Mey­er said. “But there are pret­ty deep fun­da­men­tal in­ter­ests at play.’’

Mey­er wor­ried that with lim­it­ed time and lack of agree­ment so far, the Brazil­ian lead­er­ship might opt for the low­est com­mon de­nom­i­na­tor and “you could get some­thing that’s so weak that no one wants it.’’

UN’s sec­re­tary-gen­er­al says com­pro­mise is OK

A few hours be­fore the fire, U.N. Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­tónio Guter­res urged coun­tries to com­pro­mise and “show will­ing­ness and flex­i­bil­i­ty to de­liv­er re­sults,” even if they fall short of the strongest mea­sures some na­tions want.

“We are down to the wire and the world is watch­ing Belem,” Guter­res said, ask­ing ne­go­tia­tors to en­gage in good faith in the last two sched­uled days of talks, which al­ready missed a self-im­posed dead­line Wednes­day for progress on a few key is­sues. The con­fer­ence, with this year’s edi­tion known as COP30, fre­quent­ly runs longer than its sched­uled two weeks.

“Com­mu­ni­ties on the front lines are watch­ing, too — count­ing flood­ed homes, failed har­vests, lost liveli­hoods — and ask­ing, ‘how much more must we suf­fer?’” Guter­res said. “They’ve heard enough ex­cus­es and de­mand re­sults.”

On con­tentious is­sues in­volv­ing more de­tailed plans to phase out fos­sil fu­els and fi­nan­cial aid to poor­er coun­tries, Guter­res said he was “per­fect­ly con­vinced” that com­pro­mise was pos­si­ble and dis­missed the idea that not adopt­ing the strongest mea­sures would be a fail­ure.

Guter­res was more force­ful in what he want­ed rich coun­tries to do for poor coun­tries, es­pe­cial­ly those in need of tens of bil­lions of dol­lars to adapt to the floods, droughts, storms and heat waves trig­gered by wors­en­ing cli­mate change. He con­tin­ued calls to triple adap­ta­tion fi­nance from $40 bil­lion a year to $120 bil­lion a year.

Of­fi­cials from na­tions bat­tered by nat­ur­al dis­as­ters gave emo­tion­al tes­ti­mo­ny ear­li­er this week im­plor­ing the world to stop talk­ing and start act­ing.

De­liv­er­ing over­all fi­nan­cial aid — with an agreed goal of $300 bil­lion a year — is one of four in­ter­con­nect­ed is­sues that were ini­tial­ly ex­clud­ed from the of­fi­cial agen­da. The oth­er three are: whether coun­tries should be told to tough­en their new cli­mate plans; deal­ing with trade bar­ri­ers over cli­mate and im­prov­ing re­port­ing on trans­paren­cy and cli­mate progress.

More than 80 coun­tries have pushed for a de­tailed “road map” on how to tran­si­tion away from fos­sil fu­els, like coal, oil and nat­ur­al gas, which are the chief cause of warm­ing. That was a gen­er­al but vague agree­ment two years ago at the COP in Dubai.

Guter­res kept re­fer­ring to it as al­ready be­ing agreed to in Dubai, but did not com­mit to a de­tailed plan, which Brazil­ian Pres­i­dent Luiz In­á­cio Lu­la da Sil­va pushed for ear­li­er in a speech.

BELEM, Brazil (AP)