The 30th United Nations climate conference (COP30) has begun. The UNFCCC COP30 kicked off yesterday in Belém, Brazil. World leaders began gathering ahead of the conference on Thursday, November 6th, for the two-day world summit of world leaders that accompanies every COP. This year, the meeting took place a few days before COP30 began, rather than (as has been normal for the last few COPs) during the first two days of proceedings. Maybe this will leave more time and space at COP30 itself for negotiators to dig into business without the distraction of their boss’s bosses being in town. The leaders of China, the US, and India — the “planet’s three biggest polluters” — are “notably absent” from the two-day leaders’ summit. In fact, there will be no high-level U.S. officials at COP30, but the US may still try to shape negotiations from afar.
Onlookers have critiqued the accessibility of this conference due to COP30’s limited badges and high logistical costs. These barriers priced out many activists from countries at the forefront of the climate crisis, whose presence adds pressure to nations to take concrete, just action.
In late October, the UNFCCC published its 2025 Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) Synthesis Report. Based on the submissions of only 64 parties (countries that signed the Paris Agreement), it’s difficult to draw conclusions. What is clear is that ambitions and goals are not yet big enough. Nor are parties working fast enough to close the gap between the existing projected 2.6°C of heating this century, and the 1.5°C goal which the UN Secretary General recently warned is slipping from our grasp. The initial deadline for submitting 2025 Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the UNFCCC was February 10, 2025, but most countries missed it, with a cut-off date in September 2025 set by the Secretariat for inclusion in this synthesis report, and most remaining submissions are expected during COP30.
Brazil’s President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has called for COP30 to be the “COP of Truth.” He has promised to put a stop to deforestation in Brazil by the end of the decade. He’s been successful so far; Brazil’s emissions fell nearly 17 percent last year, the biggest dip in 15 years, as his government cracked down on illegal deforestation. But the “Amazon COP” is also being overshadowed by Brazil’s decision in October to greenlight exploratory oil drilling at the mouth of the Amazon River. COP30 is expected to heavily focus on two central issues: deforestation and financing climate action.
Brazil has launched an initiative called the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF). The TFFF aims to raise $125 billion, invest it in bonds, and use the returns to pay countries and communities for preserving existing standing forests. The World Bank has agreed to host the TFFF. Indigenous communities and climate justice advocates have criticized the fund, saying that it commodifies the forests rather than protects them, and gives control of preserving forests to global financial actors and the World Bank — institutions dominated by the Global North, and is dependent on the bond investments turning a profit. It could potentially divert funding from existing mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage funds. Financing climate initiatives is the other central issue expected at COP30. Financing that actually addresses the enormity of the climate crisis has been an ongoing and growing tension between the Global North — countries that have historically benefited from the carbon economy and are most responsible for the climate crisis — and the Global South — those least responsible but most impacted.
Others are calling COP30 the “Implementation COP”, in part because it has been 10 years since the Paris Agreement, which set a goal to limit greenhouse-gas emissions to 1.5 °C. Over those 10 years, the rules and mechanisms have been negotiated, and this year is a pivotal year for countries to actually follow through on their commitments. The Brazilian COP Presidency has declared there will not be a so-called cover decision — the main decision text that telecasts the conference’s political outcomes — this year.
Delegates representing the parties will be addressing the need to measure adaptation goals and will attempt to whittle down and codify a list of “indicators” that started with more than 10,000 different options.
Climate Justice advocates agree that this COP must be different. Given that we’ve passed that temperature limit agreed upon in the Paris Agreement, it will be critical that negotiating parties take action to:
- Phase out fossil fuels – committing to a full, fast, fair, and funded plan to stop producing and using fossil fuels like coal, gas, and oil.
- Protect civic space – elevating the voice of activists, human rights and land defenders in the push for climate action, protecting them from the intimidation, harassment and criminalization they too often experience.
- Massively scale up non-debt-creating climate finance from high-income polluting countries – enabling lower-income countries to phase out fossil fuels and to protect their populations from the inevitable harms climate change is already causing.
