One week of climate negotiations has lapsed in Belém, and to call the atmosphere charged would be an understatement. In windowless rooms reeking of instant coffee and anxiety, negotiators who speak in trillions now argue texts and commas over the largest wealth transfer in modern history.
Last Thursday, the number that stopped conversations dropped: $1.3 trillion annually by 2035. This is what developing nations collectively demand to survive climate chaos and abandon fossil fuels. The amount is deliberately astronomical, meant to shock wealthier countries into recognising what physics requires. At that moment, the EU delegation blinked first, then nodded, barely. China said nothing and simply slid revised pages across tables that moved the goalpost another hundred billion northward while striking "loan" wherever it appeared. India smiled the thin, patient smile of someone who has waited thirty years for this moment.
For Oman, this negotiation cuts both ways. We need transition funds to diversify our economy and protect our natural heritage from climate impacts. Yet, we also are what many want to "phase out." Oil revenues have long funded schools and hospitals and held the country together. Oil has been both benefactor and catalyst, and Saudi negotiators understand this existential edge. Whenever text or language threatens fossil revenues, they call for a 90-minute "comfort break," not to rest but to work the corridors and guard a shared economic lifeline, a dichotomy in itself, to join the transition while keeping the social contract intact.
Saturday brought moral clarity through disruption. Indigenous Munduruku people occupied the main pavilion, faces painted with urucum, the colour of fresh blood, singing in languages the UN has never translated. When security moved, Sonia Guajajara, Brazil's Minister of Indigenous Peoples, blocked them and said, "Let them finish." The Munduruku's message shamed every suited negotiator: indigenous territories protect more carbon than any invented technology. "Give us land rights, and you get to save the planet," they said.
By Monday, the implications sharpened. South Korea announced the closure of all coal plants by 2040 following a similar pledge by Japan. These are Oman's customers receding, but they are also our openings. These nations will need hydrogen, ammonia, and renewable energy. The question isn't whether to mourn oil markets but whether to become tomorrow's energy supplier today. Transform or fossilise: there is no middle path.
Meanwhile, countries are competing to host future COPs. Australia and Türkiye are in a diplomatic contest over COP31, each knowing that whoever holds the pen as desperation peaks helps script the world’s energy story. Ethiopia has secured COP32 for 2027, positioning Addis Ababa as a voice for the Global South when the bills come due.
On Tuesday, the week’s effort appeared as 43 pages of text thick with brackets, each bracket meaning a disagreement. Developed countries want loans to count as climate finance. Developing countries demand grants exclusively. Germany pledged 60 million euros for adaptation, less than the diesel required to keep Belém’s negotiation rooms lit. A negotiator friend from the Barbados delegation expressing frustration told me, “We are negotiating with physics, and physics does not compromise.”
By the time you read this, COP30 will be counting its final hours. Will talks spill into overtime as they did in Dubai and Glasgow, with ministers trading commas for survival at three in the morning? Or will Brazil achieve what others could not: consensus before the gavel falls? We are about to learn whether the world found the courage to pay what physics demands or whether we have purchased another year of comfortable indecision with borrowed time.
Follow her on LinkedIn: @RumaithaAlBusaidi
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