November 21, 2025

Avril De Torres, Deputy Executive Director, Center for Energy, Ecology, and Development (CEED)

As with many COPs before, this year’s climate conference opened as super typhoons once again devastated millions of Filipinos back home. Like clockwork, these storms remind us of the unyielding imperative to come together to confront the climate crisis—what this Presidency has described as a Global Mutirão. 

But the second draft of the Mutirão Text, released today, puts into question this COP’s commitment to deliver the necessary ambition and implementation the world’s most vulnerable nations need – a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels in an orderly, just, and equitable manner. From what had been weak, yet welcome signals of intent to rekindle momentum and action that was stalled since the historic COP28 decision to transition away from fossil fuels, this text now totally refuses to not only name the single biggest driver of the climate crisis, but to also establish the necessary institutional arrangements to transition. Any “Global Implementation Accelerator” and “Belém Mission to 1.5” will remain vague, and the gap in national and global ambitions to keep the 1.5C Paris Agreement goal alive will only keep growing for as long as we pretend that the world can afford to keep burning fossil fuels. This is a lie that sends the world’s most vulnerable peoples to our graves.

With the Colombia-led high-ambition declaration for the phase out of fossil fuels, there are now nearly a hundred countries backing a COP decision that commits the development of a global roadmap for the transition away from fossil fuels. These delegations bring with them the plight of their citizens and communities—millions and millions of voices that will not be silenced in fighting for a fossil-free future.

We find hope in the recognition of the urgent need to address the interlinked global crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and land and ocean degradation, as well as the vital importance of protecting, conserving, restoring and sustainably using and managing nature and terrestrial and marine ecosystems for effective and sustainable climate action. But all this will be undermined if burning fossil fuels remains the order of the day, as biodiversity hotspots are doubly threatened by extractive and polluting activities and intensifying climate impacts.

As we count the hours remaining for COP30, the Presidency and parties need to step up and deliver a pact that carves a path to a fossil-free future and keeps the 1.5°C goal alive, and obligates developed countries to stop blocking progress and to pay up their climate debts, and deliver the adequate means of implementation and the provision of finance, primarily needed by the Global South to transition. We cannot afford to walk away from Belem with anything less. 

In these critical hours, we are also disappointed by the deafening silence of the Philippine delegation on the growing call for such a roadmap. Our climate realities demand that the Philippine government champion not only compensations for loss and damages, but also the formulation of a global roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels as a matter of survival. Nations from the Global North and South have stepped forward to support this demand. It is disheartening that the representatives of one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable peoples remain noticeably, and frustratingly, absent from this collective push.
The Philippines must honor the lives already lost to climate disasters and live up to its immense responsibility to fight for a stable climate for Filipinos today and for generations to come. And when the delegation returns home, the Philippine government must be true to this cause—by implementing a full coal moratorium with no exceptions, phasing-out coal by 2035, averting a fossil gas and liquified natural gas detour, and advancing renewable energy that builds truly climate-resilient communities.