Higher-ranking government ministers have taken charge of negotiations during the United Nations climate talks. The summit, known as COP30, opened its second week with ministers stepping in for lower-level negotiators.

U.N. Climate Executive Secretary Simon Stiell urged them to act swiftly, highlighting the gap between economic changes and negotiation progress. On Monday, speakers emphasized the urgency of action.

U.N. General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock called for immediate efforts to address climate change.

Adding to the pressure, late Sunday, the Brazilian presidency of the talks issued a five-page summary on how to proceed on several sticky issues. Those include pressing nations to do more in their new emissions-cutting plans, how to handle trade disputes and barriers involving climate and the need to deliver on last year's $300 billion annual pledge for climate financial aid to poor nations.

Those difficult issues weren't part of the original agenda nor the COP30 presidency's plans, but several countries pushed for them.

Several nations — especially small island nations for whom sea level rise is an existential threat — have asked that the talks address the inadequacy of the emissions-cutting plans submitted by 116 nations so far this year. Collectively, the plans come nowhere close to cutting heat-trapping gases enough to prevent 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since the 1800s, which is the goal the world adopted in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

That issue may get combined with a call for a plan for phasing out fossil fuels — coal, oil and natural gas, the chief cause of climate change. That phaseout was agreed to after much debate at U.N. climate talks two years ago, but last year, little happened on the issue. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva earlier this month raised the issue anew.