COP30 in Belém was billed as the moment the world would finally shift from pledges to real climate action. Instead, negotiators left the Amazon with no agreement to phase out fossil fuels and little progress on finance. As the rainforest strained to host yet another global gathering, the world’s political will once again fell short.
The thirtieth conference of parties (COP30) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ended a week ago in Belém, Brazil. The expectations were high, as they always are, so the outcome felt that much more disappointing. The host country had called this “implementation COP,” implying that it was time to move from talk to action. Instead, most observers think that any earlier progress was actually reversed.
Notably, the final conference document makes no mention of phasing out fossil fuels, which after all are the main culprit of global warming. Even in the earlier COPs, held in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Azerbaijan, both petrostates that were seen as slowing down or even undermining the efforts to decarbonize the world, the importance of moving away from fossil fuels made it into the final text.
With regard to deforestation, while more funding was promised for preventing the decimation of forests, countries failed to agree on a plan to stop the destruction and instead decided to rely on voluntary commitments. The location at the mouth of the Amazon, was symbolic and Brazil had emphasized prevention of deforestation as a central issue to prevent climate change. The Amazon occupies an important place in the minds of environmentalists as a symbol of a pristine forest whose environment and Indigenous Peoples are threatened by logging, agricultural expansion, destruction, and greed. The Amazon has been called the lungs of the world and, while this may be exaggerated, its global role in regulating water and climate and as a repository of biodiversity cannot be denied.
The COP saw the presence of a record number of Indigenous peoples – at least 3,000 of them – and Brazil agreed to demarcate 10 new areas reserved for them.
Regretfully, the COP itself brought pressures on the Amazon’s fragile ecosystem as thousands of delegates, activists and other hangers on congregated in Belém. There were concerns that the massive event itself would cause at least local environmental harm. For example, some activists expressed concern about the construction of Avenida Liberdade, a four-lane highway built through a protected area close to the city. Even if the avenue is presented as a “sustainable highway” that includes wildlife crossings, solar lighting and bike lanes, there is still a risk of fragmentation of the forest ecosystem, and providing easier access for loggers and poachers.
A central player on the global scene, the United States did not even participate, as President Donald Trump withdrew the country from the Paris Agreement, not for the first time. At a speech at the UN in September, Trump called climate change the “greatest con job ever perpetrated in the world.”
But the US is not alone. The Europeans continue playing along, but with reduced commitments to actual funding – partly because of the pressures Russia’s aggression in Ukraine has caused for European countries to expand their defense spending.
Similarly, many developing countries have reprioritized and reduced their commitments to combating climate change. This is understandable, given that there are still over 3 billion people in the world living in poverty, according to the World Bank, and the developing countries’ contributions to climate change have been marginal compared with the rich countries. Consequently, they call for resource transfers from the global North to the South to adapt to the impacts of climate change and to leapfrog to latest clean technologies.
For years now, the traditional Western donors have placed their faith in the private sector, having realized that there is no way that the public in their countries would accept transferring the required amounts of funding to developing countries. They just put in catalytic funding by way of guarantees derisking private sector investment. After all, the private sector is richer than ever. This is called “blended finance.”
This approach has so far realized only limited success. The private sector financing has materialized only in a few sectors where there is a clear business case to be made, such as renewable energy (more on that later). The most vulnerable and least developed countries – nearly all of which are in Sub-Saharan Africa – see very little private sector investment in any field, let alone environmental protection. There is an obvious reason for this. The markets are small and institutions are weak. Consequently, investment is risky and the profit potential low. When I worked in the Global Environment Facility, I heard from private sector representatives that, what a public funding organization like the GEF can most usefully do is to create the policy, regulatory and legal frameworks that level the playing field and make investment more secure.
The COPs have a history of generating unfulfilled promises. The demands for funding multiply and new funding mechanisms, such as the Loss and Damage Fund, are established with great fanfare but little actual funding. I asked one of the European government delegates why do they always go along with the demands when they know there’s a snowball’s chance in hell to get the required additional funding. Her response was, because otherwise the developing countries will march out of the negotiations. At the end of each COP, there is a communique celebrating the success that was achieved in the final moment. This is theater that creates expectations and gives an illusion of progress. This time around, there wasn’t even much of a pretense of success.
How bad is it?
The clock is ticking on curbing global warming to the 1.5-2.0 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, as stipulated in the 2015 Paris Agreement. So far, the record doesn’t look promising as greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. While most countries have committed to moving towards net-zero emissions, the timetables are not at sync with the Paris targets.
Still, not everything is bleak, even as the intergovernmental processes falter. While climate proponents have attributed the positive changes that we have seen in recent year to the Paris Agreement, there is little evidence that the policies agreed upon within the COPs would have actually made a concrete difference. Instead, there are other forces at play. Roger Pielke Jr. points out that “business as usual” scenarios used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are highly unlikely to materialize – and have been for a long while. So the actual likely future warming is not +4-6oC by the end of the century, as predicted by the most extreme scenarios, but rather perhaps +2.3-2.5oC. This is bad enough but it is a far cry from the worst-case scenarios.
Whether this spells catastrophe depends on many factors, including where you live and how well prepared you are. Adaptation to climate change has gained much attention, and increased funding, in past years. Ahead of the Belém COP, Bill Gates angered many climate activists saying that global warming doesn’t mean the end of civilization. He emphasized that we need to adapt and be better prepared. He also noted that development is adaptation. He’s got a good point there. Many places will suffer; but the better prepared we are the less we’ll suffer. And wealthier places are inevitably safer than the poor corners of the world. Some places will become hard to live in, while others may even benefit. Sea levels will rise threatening especially small islands and low-lying coastal countries. Droughts, water shortages and weather anomalies affect most poor countries and people in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.
Just today, Reuters reported on the rising death toll from a strong cyclone that devastated Southeast Asia, attributing the storm to climate change. Storms may intensify due to warmer ocean temperatures. However, the conclusion from IPCC’s 6th Assessment Report on the increasing frequency of storms is less conclusive. Heat waves are already killing more people than any other climatic hazard.
Reducing deforestation will be very important, as is protecting coasts. The oceans and forests are the biggest carbon sinks on the planet. If well managed, they have great potential to regulate global climate. Therefore, loss of the Amazon rainforest – apart from its devastating effects on biodiversity and the lives of Indigenous Peoples – would be disastrous.
The other piece of good news is that energy transition is on the way. Despite the best efforts of the US administration, the forward march of renewable energy is now unstoppable. The technologies –whether solar, wind or other – are progressing more rapidly than anyone dared to hope, due to improved technologies and sinking prices. Storage technology that has long been a bottleneck is improving by leaps and bounds thanks to new batteries. Already now, a third of global electricity is produced by renewable energy, and it is projected to grow rapidly. This is largely thanks to massive developments in the two most populous countries in the world, China and India. There is no doubt that renewables are the future. The markets guarantee this. A friend from West Virginia told me how former coal miners are now flocking to wind farms, still proud to be producing the much-needed energy to fuel development in their state and far beyond.
The global leadership in the environment – as in many other fields – is now assumed by China. In fact, it is being handed over to it on a silver platter as the US voluntarily dismantles its science and technology capacities; the basis of America’s leadership over much of the past century.
China is still suffering from terrible pollution and is still building up its fossil fuel production capacity to meet its burgeoning energy demand. At the same time, it is building more renewable energy than any other country in history. In the first five months of this year, China has installed five times more renewable energy generation capacity than California’s entire grid from any source. China is also now the leading manufacturer of electric vehicles.
It is true that China has taken the dubious first place as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. This is due to its rapid development and the unprecedented poverty reduction that the country has achieved since the death of Mao Tse Tung. China is a big country and its emissions per capita are just 60% of Americans’. Similarly, in an historical perspective, China’s total emissions pale in comparison with those of the countries that industrialized earlier, in Europe and North America.
We will not be able to thrive in a hothouse world, using up all our natural resources. The inequality, apart from being morally wrong, is neither sustainable nor conducive to social and political stability. I do believe, however, that the transition to a more sustainable development model is inevitable, as argued by Rob D. van den Berg in his book, Evidence for Hope: The Emerging Sustainability Revolution. The transition will also encompass the USA. How fast it takes place is partly determined by the political decisions made. I have argued elsewhere that we can’t only rely on renewable energy and EVs, but should also look at ways of capturing carbon from the atmosphere.
It is now inevitable that we will surpass the goals embedded in the Paris Agreement. However, climate change doesn’t have to be the end of the world leading to global chaos, but it will require proactive management and adaptation to its impacts. And it will require reducing inequality, both within societies and between countries and continents.
If COP30 proved anything, it is that diplomacy alone won’t save us. Real progress will depend on countries investing in resilience, accelerating the energy transition, and confronting inequality – not waiting for perfect consensus. With rapid advances in clean energy and growing calls for equity, the tools for a safer climate future already exist. It’s up to all of us to work towards this goal.
