COP30 keeps climate cooperation alive but hanging by a thread

United Nations COP30 climate summit in Brazil was flooded by heavy rain, stormed by protesters and partially burned by an electrical fire. The final session was briefly interrupted due to objections from countries that the texts they had agreed to were too weak.

However, the only truly global process of climate action continued, with all countries except the United States spending 12 days in the Amazon negotiating a common North Star.

The final decision did not mention fossil fuels, the cause of nearly three-quarters of greenhouse gas emissions, although the agreement reached COP28 in Dubai called for transition from these energy sources. More than 80 countries at COP30 were looking for a roadmap to transition to fossil fuels. But oil-producing countries excluded it from the texts, which must be unanimously approved by all 194 states.

“The consensus reached on climate denial is a failed agreement,” said Colombian delegate Diana Mejía, arguing along with delegates from Panama and Uruguay that Brazil ignored their requests to speak out before it voted on the final texts.

Ultimately, Brazil, which said it had not seen the requests, promised them it would help develop a road map for the transition to fossil fuels outside the UN.

“It's like making a board game.” Natalie Jones The International Institute for Sustainable Development talks about a failed road map. “We're playing a game, but some people are still arguing about what the rules should be.”

Still, the final decision, called a “global mutirão” after the Brazilian word meaning “collective effort,” did at least demonstrate that international climate cooperation has suffered “a few hard blows this year,” as UN climate minister Simon Still put it. said in his closing speech.

Donald Trump has again pulled the US, the world's second-biggest emitter, out of the COP process and Argentina has also threatened to pull out, raising fears that the annual talks could break down. At other global meetings this year, Washington torpedoed talks on curbing emissions from shipping and plastic pollution.

Companies, industry groups and charities have also abandoned their climate change commitments, with Bill Gates calling for COP30 to focus on poverty and disease rather than emissions.

Ten years after Paris Agreement at COP21, which set a warming limit of 2°C above the pre-industrial average, we on the way to 2.6°C – although before the agreement the world was approaching temperatures of almost 4°C.

Last year, leading scientists and diplomats wrote to the UN that the COP process was “no longer fit for purpose.” But former Irish President Mary Robinson, one of the letter's authors, said in a statement after COP30 that most countries were moving forward “at a time when multilateralism is being tested.”

In the main text, the countries stressed that they remain united on the Paris Agreement and the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Combined with climate commitments in G20 summit declaration major economies on the same day, which the US also boycotted, is “a really powerful rebuke and rebuke to Trump,” according to Joanna DepledgeCOP historian from the University of Cambridge.

It also sends a strong signal to businesses, investors and subnational governments, she said.

As foreign aid budgets dwindle (the US has closed its aid agency entirely), low-income countries complain that large historical emitters are not supporting them in adapting to climate threats. COP30 agreed to develop a “just transition framework” to help this happen. He also promised to triple adaptation funding, but it remains unclear how much money that should be and the original 2030 deadline has been pushed back to 2035.

“Other than a fair transition mechanism… I have nothing to celebrate,” says Harjeet Singh at the Satat Sampada Climate Foundation, which advocates for people vulnerable to the effects of climate change. “We should have done a lot better.”

Although COP30 was held in Belém on the banks of the Amazon, it failed to agree on a roadmap to halt and reverse deforestation, despite being promoted by more than 90 countries. However, even before the start of the summit, Brazil launched Object “Rainforests Forever”an investment fund that will pay countries a profit for every hectare of forest they leave untouched.

So far, Brazil and donor countries have contributed $6.6 billion to the fund, far short of the $25 billion goal. The rules by which the fund will operate need to be tightened, they say Kate Dooley at the University of Melbourne, but “this is a welcome step away from carbon offsets, which do not protect the climate at all.”

“Brazil itself will take some leadership in the fight against deforestation – this is one of the best results we can hope for at COP30,” says Marco DusoSustainability consultant for Ernst and Young. “And that leadership is taking over at the international level as well.”