Martin Franklin assesses the recent conference in Brazil.

Science warns us that we are on the brink of climate ‘tipping points’ which destroy ecosystems, cause increasingly extreme weather events and ultimately threaten human civilisation.  It is hard to grasp how issues of such existential importance are being handled in such a dysfunctional way.

After thirty summits and now ten years since the Paris Agreement, the UN Conference of the Parties, COP 30, should have been a landmark event.  But it was yet another dance of dispute and delaying tactics by fossil fuel interests.  Besides the large presence and influence of lobbyists, the problems with COPs and the 2025 Paris Agreement are deep and raise questions about the usefulness of these performative gatherings.

The prospects for COP30 were gloomy. The international surge of right-wing politics has pushed climate science denial and dismantled progressive environmental programmes, encouraged by President Trump’s statement that climate change is “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”

The last three summits were held in undemocratic petrostates, but Brazil’s democratic state allowed COP30 to be a platform for climate justice protests. Even so, the voices of those experiencing the intensifying impacts of climate heating, such as indigenous groups, were heard outside the conference, at times subject to police control, while those benefitting from fossil fuelled business as usual, were inside the conference, shaping agreements.

For two main reasons COP is unlikely to halt climate heating before it’s too late. First, the Paris Agreement requires the 195 signatory states to set carbon reduction goals, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). NDCs are reviewed every five years, and further reductions are meant to be set to limit global heating to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2200 with an ambition for 1.5 degrees – this has already been overshot.  

Ten years on from Paris, COP 30 had a critical role to review and set higher targets to limit global heating, but many countries failed to submit NDC pledges.  A UN Environment Programme assessment lamented that:

“a huge implementation gap remains, with countries not on track to meet their 2030 NDCs, let alone new 2035 targets.”  The full implementation of current NDCs would result in up to 2.8°C of warming above preindustrial levels.

The lack of submissions, means that the conference seems to have ended without a new global NDC reduction target.

Note that NDCs are pledges – not legally binding targets. They do not reflect real reductions and are unsecured promises.  Still more alarmingly, the estimates of mitigated warming are based on inaccurate data.  Leaving aside the absence of the USA – the world’s biggest fossil fuels producer and second largest CO2 emitter from estimates – there are serious problems with emissions accounting that underpin the Paris Agreement. 

A Washington Post report exposed how many countries’ climate pledges are based on flawed data. The investigation found underreporting of greenhouse gas emissions, amounting to an estimated gap of 8.5 to 13.3 billion tons in 2021. 

Underreporting results from, amongst other factors, differing national capacities to measure emissions, intentional undercounting, and exclusion of some greenhouse gases such as methane.  Some countries exclude logging and deforestation defining them as carbon neutral along with emissions from biomass fuels (such as burning wood pellets).

The second problem is ‘consensus-based decision-making’. Agreements do not result from a majority vote so a single objection will veto them. At COP1 in 1995, advice from US lobbyists linked to fossil fuels, auto companies and libertarian political groups led the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to argue against a “last resort” voting rule to break deadlocks. 

Consensus decision making inhibits meaningful action and increases the vulnerability of summits to procedural ‘climate obstruction tactics’ which bog down discussions and place time pressures on delegates to compromise in order to reach agreement.  At COP30 the inclusion of fossil fuels was a sticking point. Despite the support of over 80 countries, a roadmap for transitioning away from fossil fuels, or any mention of them, was excluded from the text.

Majority decisions, with a vote, would allow countries to agree and initiate effective policy measures and hopefully bring others onboard.  Instead, COP summits end in weakened commitments laced with ambiguity and loopholes, outcomes favouring the richer states and fossil fuel interests over poorer nations, some facing imminent obliteration from rising seas, extreme weather and desertification.

To control climate breakdown, core actions are necessary. These include the phasing out of fossil fuels (and supporting the growth of sustainable alternatives), halting deforestation and financing poorer, global south countries to enable them to cut emissions, adapt and build resilience against environmental breakdown. Reparations for loss and damage caused by the historic emissions of the global north nations also need to be in place.  These actions would shift the dial towards climate justice. So how were they addressed in the final agreement? 

Any reference to fossil fuels was blocked by fossil-fuel-aligned governments, as was a deforestation roadmap. In response Brazil pledged to produce voluntary roadmaps for transitioning away from fossil fuels and to halt and reverse deforestation, but these will be outside the COP process. 

Headlines stated that developing countries would receive a tripling of financial support from rich countries to adapt to the climate crisis. But these appear to rely heavily on loans which would worsen the debts of poorer countries and are not expected before 2035. Vulnerable nations are facing crises now.

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) estimates that the funding secured at COP30 is a fraction of the up to $365 billion per year needed by 2035 for adaptation in developing countries. “Developing countries are receiving less than 10 per cent of the money they need to adapt to a world increasingly vulnerable to extreme weather… By 2035, developing nations will need well over $310 billion per year in dedicated funding to adapt to a planet increasingly altered by polluting fossil-fuel emissions”.

Rich nations acknowledged responsibility for historic emissions and began the process of operationalising a Loss and Damage Fund.  Yet the figure ($250 million) for the first phase is seen as a “drop in the ocean,” given the challenges poorer nations face to address climate-related losses. Estimates suggest a financial gap of nearly $400 billion for 2025 alone.

COP outcomes are always spun as positive progress and if you’re part of the institutionalised culture of UN bureaucrats and participants, getting an agreement is in itself an achievement and failure would scupper the Paris Agreement.  However, COP progress weighed against the reality of greenhouse gas emissions and global heating over 30 years can only be seen as abject failure.  

Nonetheless, some outcomes maybe positive. COP30 launched a Just Transition ‘mechanism’ to support workers and communities affected by a shift away from fossil fuels.  It was hailed as an important outcome of pressures from climate justice campaigners and an acknowledgement of the need for such a global shift that does not abandon workers and frontline communities. 

Reflecting frustration with the agreement’s exclusion of a fossil fuel roadmap, Colombia in collaboration with the Netherlands, will hold a global just transition conference in April 2026.  Governments, experts, industrialists, indigenous people and others, will meet to chart “legal, economic and social pathways” for a fair and just phase-out of fossil fuels.  Twenty-four countries and Pacific island nations signed up for this conference, including fossil fuel producers Australia and Mexico. Their presence can be seen to endorse the importance of a just transition away from fossil fuels.   

In addition, the Belém Declaration on Global Green Industrialization was launched, aiming to accelerate industrial transformation towards sustainability. 195 countries and international organizations approved the package.  Both initiatives, the conference and declaration, include the usual COP lineup but will hopefully not reflect all of its dysfunctionalities. 

The aims of the Colombia conference align with a recent opinion from the International Court of Justice on the Obligations of States in regard to Climate Change. The ICJ affirmed that states are obliged to protect the climate system from human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.  Though advisory, it has implications for national climate policies and international climate negotiations, opening new pathways for international and domestic litigation against governments.  This has already been mentioned in relation to the Australian Government’s proposed legislation to remove environmental impact assessments and climate harms from fossil fuels.  The island nation, Vanuatu is seeking to mobilise the ICJ opinion though the UN against this legislation, pursuing a UN resolution to turn it into political action.

COP provides a platform for protests and concern about environmental breakdown.  It also exposes and shifts the power imbalances between opposing parties in the fight for climate justice. Yet it currently provides a weak means of accountability and delivery on climate measures that need to be strengthened. Does the conference in Colombia and other initiatives adjacent to COP indicate a fragmentation that undermines it or will they provide pressure for positive and meaningful action?  

If a habitable planet for humans is to be secured for the future, a more functional international body is needed.  Can COP be reformed and what other pathways can be developed in time? 

Martin Franklin is a member of the steering committee of the Islington Environmental Forum.

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