COP30: fandango of feckless fantasy or significant turn of direction?

By Kennedy Maize

Delegates, staff, academics, activists, journalists, and miscellaneous hangers on have begun arriving in Belem, Brazil, a city of 1.4 million on the northeast coast, situated on the edge of Amazonia, the metaphorical “lungs” of the planet.

They are gathering, tens of thousands, for the 30th annual gabfest of the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It’s the “conference of the parties,” commonly known as COP30.

The often-chaotic event kicks off Nov. 6 for four days of officially unofficial pre-conference meetings. The climate rubber meets the official rocky road on Nov. 10 and ends Nov. 21. The guiding theme of the meeting is that COP30 will become the “implementation COP,” which itself reveals what has been the record of the previous 29 meetings: lots of rhetoric, promises, grandiose optimism, and little action.

The runup to COP30 began inauspiciously. In March, the BBC headlined a broadcast, “Amazon forest felled to build road for climate summit.” The broadcast reported, “A new four-lane highway cutting through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest is being built for the COP30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belém.”

The U.S. is not directly participating in COP30, reflecting President Donald Trump’s distain for environmental issues, a stated belief that climate change is a hoax (which is, or course, a lie), and his withdrawal from the 2015 Paris climate accord. In his first administration, he sent mid-level observers to the COP meetings.

This time around, Trump is again boycotting the meeting. In July, Reuters reported, Trump killed the State Department’s Office of Global Change. The news service added, “Without State’s climate staff in place, even Capitol Hill lawmakers who usually attend the summits have been unable to get accredited, a source familiar with the process said,” also suggesting that the U.S. absence could represent a huge victory for China.

COP30 is important in the history of global attempts to deal with global warming. The process that led to the annual green gatherings began in at the dawn of end of the cold war and the beginning understanding of the man-made impacts of industrialization on the earth’s climate. In 1992, the UN convened an international meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Argentina, which became known as the “Earth Summit.” The meeting resulted in the creation of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change.

COP1, in Berlin, followed in 1995. The first significant COP was 1997’s COP3 in Kyoto. The result was the Kyoto Protocol, which, for the first time, committed the parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While a first step, few additional followed beyond the typical hortatory rhetoric. Then came 2015 in Paris, COP21, when the parties agreed to work toward preventing the global climate from increasing more than 1.5° Celsius. The tools were to be mainly reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, primarily CO2 from burning coal, petroleum products, and natural gas. Technology and technological advancements would pave the way for climate stability.

A decade later, the world has missed that target. Temperatures have exceeded the magic figure. Mitigating emissions through intervention has failed. Now the world must figure out what comes next.

It appears possible that COP30 will see a significant turn in direction away from searching for magical technological solutions and toward a term and concept that many deep climate activists detest: adaptation. Brazil’s president of COP30, André Corrêa do Lago, a career diplomat at Brazil’s Foreign Ministry and a longtime climate negotiator, has laid out a new vision for the world that features adaptation.

In an October 23 letter to the delegates, he writes, “As the age of warnings gives way to the age of consequences, humanity confronts a profound truth: climate adaptation is no longer a choice that follows mitigation; it is the first half of our survival. At each turning point in our evolution, our species has earned its place on this planet by adapting – learning, innovating and transforming the conditions of life itself. Adaptation has demanded the courage to let go of what no longer serves us while preserving what defines us,”

Whether COP30 reflects Corrêa do Lago’s plea will be a key outcome from COP30. The answer may well be in the hazy details of what the delegates discuss in their 11 days of formal proceedings. It may be difficult to tease out a change in direction from the frenzy of organized and disorganized chaos that will characterize the confab. The agenda is dominated by items passed last year at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, and punted to Brazil.

Among the contentious agenda items:

• Follow the money. Many international endeavors involve pitting poor, underdeveloped countries against the rich, mostly Western, world. The COPs are no exception. COP 29 committed developed countries to provide $300 billion annually to the poorer countries, and eventually $1.2 trillion. So far, no money has changed hands and COP30 will take up a “road map” to spreading the riches.

• Define “adaptation”. The Paris Agreement called for a “global goal” for adaptation, without any details. COP28 at the UAE adopted a “framework” for adaptation. COP30 delegates will wrestle with how to flesh out the bureaucratic bones. At the same time, Corrêa do Lago has called on the participating governments to develop ‘National Adaptation Plans’.

• Fossil fuel freedom. COP28 also saw agreement to “transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems” and do it “in a just, orderly and equitable manner … to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science”. The governments also agreed to triple renewable energy by 2030. Neither goals appear attainable but the fallout will be on the COP30 agenda.

It is also possible, although unlikely, that COP 30 will be the end of the line for the three-decade-old climate extravaganza. COS Futures, an organization of “chief sustainability officers” from among the world’s governments, commented, “After several disappointing climate conferences, expectations for this year’s COP30 are particularly high – with countries due to present renewed national climate plans for the next 10 years. So what’s at stake in Belém, and why are many Chief Sustainability Officers choosing to watch it from afar?”

The COS organization noted that COP30 “comes at a time of weakened – or in the case of the US, abandoned – political climate leadership and renewed investment in fossil fuels, including by host country Brazil, whose President Lula has been supporting new oil drilling in the Amazon.

“This context, along with classic COP controversies around the environmental and social impacts of building the infrastructure needed to accommodate an expected 60,000 to 75,000 attendees, as well as the flights booked to attend it, is leading many already disillusioned sustainability professionals not to attend the world’s largest climate event this year.”

The Quad Report