Latin American countries at the UN Cop 30 climate summit showed more unity than in previous years, potentially setting the region up for more progress in future climate discussions, delegates said.
Countries often negotiate as blocs during Cop summits, but that has not always been the case for Latin America.
"Definitely, Africa and other blocs have been much more coordinated [at Cops] in the past and Latin America has been more divided," Guatemala's vice-minister of natural resources and climate change Edwin Castellanos said.
But Latin American nations held two preparatory meetings prior to Cop 30 — in Mexico and Peru — which helped boost collaboration, he added.
Latin American countries are finding more points in common than before, Chile's environment minister Maisa Rojas said. "Our countries are paying the same price for climate change and biodiversity losses," she said.
So seeking to increase funding for adaptation, or adapting to climate change as possible, has united them, she added.
The region's countries joined in a call for "clear, measurable, and appropriate indicators" to evaluate progress toward the global adaptation goal, Costa Rica's foreign affairs ministry Giovanna Stark said.
The countries would not leave the summit, held in Belem, Brazil, without adaptation indicators, Uruguay's environment minister Edgardo Silva said.
Cop 30 did end with 59 adaptation indicators — down from earlier plans for 100 — to help measure progress in implementing the global goal on adaptation. But there are still pending issues, especially regarding financing and on how to turn these indicators into binding commitments.
Panama's special envoy for climate change Juan Carlos Gomez also noticed greater unity among Latin American countries, citing specific collaborations with Uruguay, the Dominican Republic and Mexico.
A goal for the next two years is to advance common Latin American priorities so that the bloc "can once and for all have a more united voice" at climate summits, he said.
But there are still some points of division, especially "political visions on how to achieve solutions", Castellanos said.
Colombia pushes fossil fuel shift
Colombia's stance to try to transition away from fossil fuels continued at Cop 30, as President Gustavo Petro has been a constant voice on the topic.
At this Cop, Colombia spearheaded an initiative calling for a global alliance to accelerate the move away from fossil fuels that over 80 countries backed.
Colombia's biggest win this time was having oil producing countries in Latin America — such as Guyana and Mexico — join in the declaration, Ana Carolina Espinosa, senior director at the Natural Resources Governance Institute said.
The phase-out "is not only necessary but inevitable", Colombia's environment minister Irena Velez-Torres said.
The transition away from fossil fuels became one of the main topics at Cop 30 from the beginning. During a leaders' climate summit only days before Cop 30, the president of Brazil — also a major oil producer — Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called on world leaders to draw a roadmap to "overcome dependence on fossil fuels".
Although the summit ended without a deal on the matter, the Cop 30 presidency promised to oversee the creation of a roadmap. Colombia is organizing talks on it for April.
But Colombia's presidential elections in May-June are looming over the topic, Espinosa said.
Although Colombia has been advocating for the phase out of fossil fuels since before Petro, administrations have failed to draw out concrete, far-reaching public policies on the matter, she added.
Additionally, Colombia — which heavily relies on natural gas — is facing a gas deficit, which has forced it to import gas this year. And Petro's low approval ratings leaves a window for his opposition to call for the resumption of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and exploration contracts, Espinosa said.
Fewer than 35pc of voters approve of Petro's presidency, according to an August poll conducted by AltlasIntel and Bloomberg.
