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Brazil’s environment minister, Marina Silva, has urged all nations to demonstrate the courage needed to address the imperative of a global fossil fuel phaseout, describing the development of a roadmap as an “moral” response to the global warming emergency.

She emphasized, however, that participation in this endeavor would be optional and “independently decided” for interested nations.

The topic stands as one of the most debated matters at the UN climate summit in Brazil, with nations split over whether and how such a roadmap can be discussed. Hosting the event, Brazil has maintained a balanced position on what can be included on the formal schedule.

Silva voiced support for the possibility of a plan, without explicitly pledging Brazil to it. The minister stated: “When we have a terrain that is very challenging, it is helpful that we have a guide. But the guide does not compel us to proceed, or to climb.”

In an interview, the minister noted: “The roadmap is an answer to our scientific understanding [of the climate emergency]. It is an ethical response.”

Scores of countries meeting in Belém for the UN climate summit, which is entering its second week, are seeking to determine how a worldwide transition of fossil fuels could work. They aim to advance a historic resolution reached two years ago at a previous UN summit to “move away from fossil fuels.”

The pledge lacked a timetable or specifics on the way it could be achieved, and although it was passed unanimously, several countries have since tried to disavow the pledge. Attempts last year to elaborate on its practical meaning were blocked by resistance from petrostates at another UN summit.

As a result, there was no mention of the transition away from carbon fuels in the final agreement of COP29.

For these reasons, the host has been wary of calls by some nations to include the phaseout on the agenda for COP30. But the minister has strived in private to ensure the topic could be talked about at the conference outside the formal agenda.

The minister won over Brazil’s president, and he made mention repeatedly to the need to “shift from reliance on traditional energy” at the summit of world leaders that came before COP30, and at the start of the summit.

“The issue is something that we know at some point had to be put forward, because it is the only way to address the issue from the source,” the minister explained. “We acknowledge that it is challenging, and we must not offer false hopes. Raising the subject is brave, and I wish [to see] this courage from everyone, from producing nations and using countries.”

The nation had not initiated the call for a phaseout, she said, because that had been initiated at the earlier summit. Rather, it was enabling the discussions to take place in line with what some nations wished. “We understand these subjects are sensitive. We will provide the chance to discuss it,” she said.

Time is insufficient at the summit to create a detailed plan, a task Silva said could take several years because numerous nations confronted complicated challenges around dependence on carbon-based energy, or aimed to use the proceeds from selling oil and gas to finance their economic growth.

“Brazil raises the subject, because it is simultaneously a producing nation and user,” she said. “But Brazil is unique, because Brazil, if it chooses to, does not have to rely on non-renewables. We have to recognise that there are some that rely on fossil fuels in their economic systems and lack easy alternatives, and others where oil and gas are the foundation of their economy.

“To be just is to be just to everyone, but the fundamental, basic fairness is to avoid being unjust to the Earth, because it is our home.”

Should the pledge gains sufficient support, COP30 could set up a platform in which the process of creating a strategy to the transition could start.

The endeavor would involve discussions with all participating nations to the UN framework convention on climate change and criteria for how the process would proceed, the minister said. “After we have criteria, a management framework can be developed; once we have a strategy, and create protections to be able to build confidence in the system, I believe that with these components we can turn positive concepts into actions that are more defined, and more tangible.”

There is no guarantee that a proposal to start developing a plan would be accepted at COP30, even if it may not need the official consent of the summit, which operates by consensus and can be hijacked by particular groups. Climate experts have indicated they think there could be backing for such a idea from about sixty nations, but there are thought to be at least 40 opposed. A total of 195 countries participating at the negotiations.

“Despite being the primary source of global warming, carbon-based energy are about the most divisive subject there is within the UN negotiations, so to see a chunky group of nations publicly backing a route to achieving global transition is in itself highly significant.”

“Put simply, there’s no route to a planet where warming stays below 1.5 degrees in which countries aren’t able to discuss fossil fuel phaseout.”

“We require this wording for real in this conversation. It’s highly illogical that we talk about all topics but then when the main issue are the actual challenge.”

Discussions carried on on Saturday on four unresolved topics that have not yet been incorporated into the official schedule: commerce, openness, finance and how to address the gap between the carbon reduction countries have proposed and those needed to keep to the 1.5-degree warming limit.

The summit president promised a “document” that would address these issues, after consultations – which have been going on since the start of the week – were inconclusive. He urged nations to embrace the “mutirão” attitude, meaning one of cooperation and constructive dialogue.

Work on other substantive issues – such as adaptation to the effects of the climate emergency, the just transition for those impacted by the move to a low-carbon economic system and how to build institutional capacity in developing countries – carried on constructively, the presidency reported.

The host nation's chief negotiator stated the detailed phase of the COP proceedings was approaching completion, and the political phase – when ministers who have the power to alter their countries’ stances join – was beginning.