The obstacle course at Belem: COP30 agenda faces multiple headwinds

As negotiators meet in Belem, Brazil, for the 30th annual United Nations Conference of Parties (COP30), the outcomes for a world that is straining to reach climate targets appear discouraging. For a start, the leaders of the world’s two largest greenhouse gas emitters — the United States (US) and China — are conspicuous by their absence. This year, India, one of the world’s significant emitters in absolute terms, will be represented by Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav, but India’s ambassador to Brazil represented the country at the Leaders’ Summit. 

The Leaders’ Summit of November 6 and 7 offered an encouraging preface to COP30 by pledging the creation of Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) to provide long-term finance for forest conservation. But the reality lies in the detail. The $125 billion facility seeks to raise 70 to 80 per cent from private investment. Given that private funding for climate change has been underwhelming so far, the chances of the TFFF meeting its targets appear slim. Although over 50 countries have endorsed the TFFF, only a handful have pledged funding so far (India said it would join as an “observer”). Ironically, the fact that a section of the Amazon forest, one of the world’s key carbon sinks, was cleared to build a road for the summit, and that President Luiz Inacio Lula De Silva continues to grant licences for oil and gas have enhanced scepticism about consequential progress at COP30.   

This much was evident when it became clear that only a third of countries, ahead of the summit, submitted updates detailing how they would cut the emission of greenhouse gases (India is expected to unveil its plans during the conference). This omission will make it challenging for the summit to deliver fresh carbon-cutting commitments to keep the global temperature rise below the 1.5 degrees Celsius, which was committed in Paris in 2015. In the main, COP30 hopes to move the needle on commitments made at earlier conferences. For instance, at COP28, held in the United Arab Emirates, countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels, but the subsequent COP29 statement, in Baku, Azerbaijan, excluded this commitment. Similarly, at COP28, countries agreed to treble global capacities of renewables by 2030, but the world is some distance from that goal. Meanwhile, solutions to reach a climate-finance target of $1.3 trillion a year, up from $300 billion, that poor nations have been demanding from the developed world have been stubbornly elusive, a casualty of steady diminution of the “common but differentiated responsibility (CBDR)” concept in climate-change talks. Brazil has since submitted a “road map” to reach this enhanced target, though the serial private-finance exits from climate funds after Donald Trump’s election as US President make this fulfilment increasingly unlikely. 

In Belem, the large turnout of representatives of the fossil-fuel industry and Mr Trump’s recent description of climate change as “the greatest con job ever” at the United Nations have undoubtedly raised the stakes for a desirable outcome. In the runup to COP30, Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ assertion that investment in development and poverty eradication rather than in climate change is a more appropriate way forward has been distinctly unhelpful. Evidence shows that even the relative underinvestment in renewables so far has steadily reduced annual carbon emission. By presenting binary choices, Mr Gates has strengthened the case of influential climate deniers at a time when the world urgently needs a sharp corrective.