COP30 keeps climate cooperation alive but hanging by a thread

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

Nonetheless, the only truly global process of climate action has moved forward in a phased manner, with all countries except the United States spending 12 days in the Amazon negotiating a common guiding star.

The final decision does not mention fossil fuels, responsible for nearly three-quarters of greenhouse gas emissions, even though the agreement reached at COP28 in Dubai called for a transition away from these energy sources. More than 80 countries present at COP30 sought a roadmap to achieve this transition to fossil fuels. But the oil-producing countries removed it from the texts, which must be unanimously accepted by the 194 States.

“A consensus imposed under climate denial is a failed agreement,” said Colombian delegate Diana Mejia, arguing, with delegates from Panama and Uruguay, that Brazil had ignored their requests to speak before deciding on the final texts.

Finally, 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 creating a board game,” says Natalie Jones of the International Institute for Sustainable Development of the road map’s failure. “We are playing the game, but some people are still arguing about what rules to adopt.”

Still, the final decision – called “global mutirão” after an indigenous Brazilian word meaning “collective efforts” – at least demonstrated that international climate cooperation has survived “a few hard knocks this year,” as UN climate secretary Simon Stiell said in his closing speech.

Donald Trump once again withdrew the United States, the world’s second largest emitter, from the COP process, and Argentina threatened to leave as well, raising fears of a breakdown in the annual negotiations. At other global meetings this year, Washington has torpedoed negotiations to limit shipping emissions and plastic pollution.

Businesses, industry groups and philanthropic foundations have also backed away from their climate commitments, with Bill Gates calling for COP30 to focus on poverty and disease rather than emissions.

Ten years after the Paris agreement at COP21, which set a warming limit of 2°C above the pre-industrial average, we are on track to reach 2.6°C – while the world was heading towards almost 4°C before the agreement.

Last year, leading scientists and diplomats wrote to the UN that the COP process “is 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 making progress “at a time when multilateralism is being tested.”

Nations stressed in the main text that they remained united behind the Paris Agreement and the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Taken together with climate commitments contained in a declaration from the G20 summit of major economies on the same day, which the United States also boycotted, this is a “really powerful pushback and rebuke to Trump,” according to Joanna Depledge, a COP historian at the University of Cambridge.

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

As foreign aid budgets shrink – the United States has completely shut down its aid agency – low-income countries complain that large historical emitters are not supporting them in adapting to climate threats. COP30 agreed to develop a “just transition mechanism” to achieve this. He also committed to tripling adaptation funding, but it remains unclear exactly how much this should amount to, and the original 2030 deadline has been extended to 2035.

“Apart from the just transition mechanism… I have nothing to celebrate,” says Harjeet Singh of the Satat Sampada Climate Foundation, which advocates for those vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. “We should have done a lot better.”

Although COP30 was held in Belém, on the edge of the Amazon, it failed to agree on a roadmap to stop and reverse deforestation, despite the support of more than 90 countries. However, before the summit began, Brazil launched the Tropical Forests Forever Facility, an investment fund that will return profits to countries for every hectare of forest they leave standing.

Brazil and donor countries have so far committed $6.6 billion to the fund, far less than the $25 billion target. The rules under which the fund will operate need to be strengthened, says Kate Dooley of the University of Melbourne, but “it is a welcome step from carbon offsetting which fails to protect the climate at all”.

“The fact that Brazil itself is taking some leadership on deforestation is one of the best outcomes we can hope for at COP30,” says Marco Duso, sustainability consultant at Ernst and Young. “And it takes that leadership at the international level as well.”