COP30 Deep Dive: The Demands of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and what they mean for the EU

Introduction

The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) is a coalition of 39 low-lying coastal and small island developing states that share similar development and environmental concerns related to climate change, most notably sea level rise. They are constituted by the nations listed below:

Caribbean: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago

Pacific: Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu

Africa, Indian Ocean, and South China Sea: Cabo Verde, Comoros, Guinea-Bissau, Maldives, Mauritius, São Tomé and Príncipe, Seychelles, Singapore

This article will discuss the positions of the AOSIS in the COP30 negotiations, their strategies, and what they mean for the EU. Despite AOSIS’s perceived lack of relevance to the union ,given that none of its members are a part of AOSIS, this article will argue that the group’s strategies are worth paying attention to. Along with other advocates, the AOSIS’s push for lowered dependency on fossil fuels, if successful, has implications for what the EU’s climate agenda could develop into.

AOSIS’s Core Demands and Evolution through COP Negotiations

This section will first dive into what the AOSIS has historically and consistently been asking for at the COP negotiations, including important developments, to provide some background context for COP30.

Temperature Limit of 1.5°C

Historically, AOSIS’s negotiating position centres on several interconnected priorities that reflect the unique vulnerabilities of small island states. AOSIS has consistently pushed for the most ambitious temperature targets. This is in recognition of the fact that small increases in global warming mean catastrophic impacts for low-lying islands due to consequent rising sea levels, coral reef destruction, saltwater intrusion into freshwater resources, and increased intensity of tropical storms (Duvat, ?). The problem is intensified for developing small island countries (Climate Ambition Support Alliance, 2020).

Therefore, AOSIS has consistently advocated for a global temperature increase limit of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. This position was initially considered unrealistic by many larger economies but AOSIS’s stance was later vindicated by climate science. While it is unlikely for us to stay within the 1.5°C limit, climate negotiations still circle around this as it is seen as a marker of political ambition, as shown by the Paris Agreement (Hare et. al, 2025)

Financial Mechanisms on Adaptation, Loss & Damage

Beyond temperature limits, AOSIS has fought for robust climate financial mechanisms that recognize the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. Island states require substantial financial support for both adaptation measures, such as coastal defences, water management systems, and climate-resilient infrastructure, and increasingly for loss and damage (Alliance of Small Island States, 2004).

Phasing Out of Fossil Fuels

More recently, AOSIS has mentioned fossil fuels much more explicitly in its agenda. While early climate negotiations focused on emissions reductions without explicitly naming their original cause, AOSIS has pushed for clearer language when it comes to discussing phasing out oil, gas, and coal production (Hunte, 2022). This will be discussed further in the next section on what transpired at COP30.

The table below summarizes the core demands AOSIS has historically put forward and highlights key developments at various COP negotiations.

AOSIS’s Position Entering the COP30: Lowered Dependency On Fossil Fuels

Building upon its agenda for the phasing out of fossil fuels and consistent with its historical demands, AOSIS came to Belém with a clear message: the need for a roadmap that diverges from fossil fuel dependency and increased support for accelerated adaptation.

In the AOSIS Letter to the COP30 presidency, AOSIS articulated urgent demands central to small island survival. It called for enhanced support and capacity building for the delivery of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), National Adaptation Plans (NAPs), and Biennial Transparency Reports (BTRs), all crucial to SIDS’ climate efforts. AOSIS demanded accelerated adaptation and resilience building, noting that as the world approaches the 1.5°C threshold, adaptation options become both more expensive and increasingly limited (Alliance of Small Island States, 2025).

The AOSIS chair state Palau, in its statement at COP30, gave a stern reminder that ‘for small island developing states, 1.5°C is not a political slogan. It is a non-negotiable survival threshold for our people, our cultures, and our livelihood.’ (SPREP, 2025).

In a similar vein, Tuvalu’s climate minister Maina Talia expressed the following without compromise: AOSIS nations don’t just need climate action but a concrete plan ensuring their continued existence as sovereign states (Rowlands, 2025).

AOSIS’ Strategy at COP30: What Worked and What Did Not

AOSIS’s strategy at COP30 focused on two pillars underpinned by an intention to build an informal ‘coalition’ bigger than the AOSIS itself: the first pillar seeks to reframe the fossil fuel narrative and the second to achieve strategic alignment between climate vulnerable peoples worldwide.

Reframing the Fossil Fuel Narrative

Based on the news reports and statements given by AOSIS members, AOSIS frames the fossil fuel issue not as a concern unique to vulnerable small island states, but as a scientifically proven, universal problem that will eventually affect everyone. The 2024 International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion provided a new legal basis for AOSIS’s arguments: it confirmed the states’ legal obligation to protect the climate, including addressing fossil fuel production, licensing, and subsidies (International Court of Justice, 2025).

In line with this, the first week of COP30 saw unprecedented support in line with AOSIS’s core demand. By the middle of the second week, more than 80 countries had joined calls for a formal roadmap to phase out fossil fuels (Earth Org, 2025). This coalition included not only traditional AOSIS allies among lesser developed countries and progressive European nations, but also some fossil fuel producers themselves. These included Colombia, which is notably the world’s fifth largest coal exporter, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana (González Espinosa, 2026).

This informal ‘coalition’ against fossil fuels represents a triumph for AOSIS. It managed to expand the fossil fuel phase-out from a niche position into a majority consensus. A ministerial press conference during the COP30 highlighted this unprecedented support, during which AOSIS members stood alongside major economies to demand concrete action against the phasing out of fossil fuels (International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2025).

However, this majority support proved insufficient against the structural and political realities of UNFCCC negotiations. As draft texts emerged, it became clear that a determined minority, led by Saudi Arabia, Russia, and supported by members of the Arab States and Like-Minded Developing Countries, would block any mention of fossil fuels in the final decision text (International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2025). This is the sad reality of how countries can leverage the consensus requirement that gives any single country effective veto power, allowing them to potentially collapse entire negotiations.

Strategic Alignment with Climate Vulnerable Peoples Worldwide

AOSIS also seemed to have utilized the symbolism of COP30’s location. Held in Belém, situated at the edge of the Amazon rainforest, and host to over 5,000 indigenous participants, forming the highest representation in COP history (Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil, 2025), AOSIS aligned closely with indigenous communities. This framed their shared demands as representing not just national interests but the collective voice of climate vulnerable peoples worldwide.

This tactical alliance with the indigenous community has a legitimate basis. After all, small island states and Indigenous peoples face similar climate existential threats: rising seas that threaten to erase entire nations from the map and extractive industries’ destructive effects on biodiversity forbode similar fates for indigenous communities and AOSIS states. They both risk losing territories and ways of life that have endured for millennia. Both groups possess ancient, lived knowledge of climate impacts that policymakers are often ignorant of. This knowledge is grounded not in modern scientific models but in watching ancestral lands disappear beneath water or fire.

Nevertheless, this alliance also highlighted the unfortunate contradictions of the reality of international negotiations like the COP. While COP30 was celebrated as ‘the Indigenous COP’ for its record participation, indigenous peoples still lacked formal voting rights in UNFCCC negotiations. They could advocate, protest, and propose, but ultimately had no seat at the table where binding decisions were made. AOSIS, despite representing sovereign nations, faced similar marginalization, evident by the eventual disappointing outcome of the negotiations on fossil fuels.

What This Means for the EU

At first glance, the EU and AOSIS appear to operate in entirely different registers of the climate crisis. No EU member state sits within AOSIS, and the existential stakes facing small island states, e.g. submersion, displacement, the complete erasure of sovereign nations, are not threats the EU faces in the same immediate, physical sense. Yet AOSIS’s demands and the dynamics of COP30 carry real implications for the EU’s climate agenda, both in terms of what the EU is politically compelled to do and what it can strategically leverage.

The 1.5°C Target and EU Climate Law

The EU has placed considerable political and legal backing on the 1.5°C target: the European Climate Law commits the EU to net zero by 2050, and its 2030 NDC targets are calibrated around keeping 1.5°C within reach. AOSIS’s insistence that states bear legal obligations to protect the climate system reinforces the legal scaffolding that underpins the EU’s own regulatory framework, from the European Green Deal to the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). If the call for 1.5°C is formally abandoned as a negotiating benchmark, it would put real pressure on the coherence of EU climate law domestically.

Fossil Fuel Phase-Out: The EU’s Ambiguous Position

COP30’s failure to include fossil fuel language in the final text is a setback that the EU is partially to blame for. While progressive EU member states were among the 80+ countries calling for a fossil fuel phase-out roadmap, the EU as a whole has historically struggled to take a unified, unambiguous position on fossil fuels. AOSIS’s demands expose this ambiguity. If the EU genuinely aligns with scientifically backed claims, and with the survival demands of the world’s most climate vulnerable nations, the union could achieve a harder stance on the issues at hand.

Strategic Alignment and Global Climate Leadership

Perhaps most significantly, AOSIS’s successful expansion of fossil fuel phase-out to a majority position, supported by over 80 nations by COP30’s second week, offers the EU a political opportunity. The coalition that assembled around this demand represents precisely the kind of broad-based, science backed alliance that the EU has always sought to lead. The EU’s ability to bridge the lack of trust between developed and developing nations, something which has long plagued UNFCCC negotiations, will be a key determinant of whether future COPs can move beyond the bottlenecks and choking points that prevent a meaningful move towards fossil fuel phase-out.

References.

Duvat, V., Magnan, A., & Gattuso, J.-P. (n.d.). Small islands, ocean, and climate. Ocean & Climate Platform. https://ocean-climate.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/small-islands-ocean-15.pdf

Climate Ambition Support Alliance. (2020). Climate science for Small Island Developing States: A guide to the IPCC’s Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate. https://casaclimate.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/CASA-guide-to-science-of-climate-and-oceans-FINAL-April-2020.pdf

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Hunte, C. (2022, May 10). We need transformation and systems transition to manage the climate crisis [Statement]. Alliance of Small Island States. https://aosis-83010600d5-drhbaxg6h7gce3ep.z03.azurefd.net/blobaosis83010600d5/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20220510_10312022.5.1020-20Statement20-20AOSIS20addresses20brief_Website20User.pdf

Alliance of Small Island States. (2025, June 14). AOSIS letter to COP30 Presidency. https://www.aosis.org/aosis-letter-to-cop30-presidency/

Pacific Environment. (2025, November 18). Palau, as Chair of AOSIS, urges ‘COP of truth’ to act with urgency, solidarity. https://www.sprep.org/news/palau-as-chair-of-aosis-urges-cop-of-truth-to-act-with-urgency-solidarity

Rowlands, L. (2025, October 10). ‘We don’t want to disappear’: Tuvalu fights for climate action and survival. Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10/10/we-dont-want-to-disappear-tuvalu-fights-for-climate-action-and-survival

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