CLIMATE ACTION
WHAT ARE COPS FOR? As the world gathers in Belém for the latest UN climate summit, the challenges could not be greater, but expectations could hardly be lower By Axel Reiserer, OPEC Fund
W hen Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva chose the host city of this year’s UN climate change conference COP30, he wanted to send a signal: “We decided to hold COP in Belém so that people can see what the Amazon really is.” After all, the rainforest, which serves as a critically important global carbon sink, is in imminent danger. However, preparations for the climate summit were overshadowed by concerns about infrastructure, logistics and accommodation. Yet these were by no means the only challenges the Brazilian COP Presidency has been facing since receiving the baton from Azerbaijan at the end of last year’s climate change conference in Baku. That event had deferred several key issues to the next round of negotiations, including the
for climate financing from US$100 billion annually to US$300 billion by 2035, this trebling still remained far behind expectations. Instead, the nations agreed on a so-called “Baku to Belém Roadmap to 1.3T” that aims to resolve the issue in Brazil with an agreement to scale up support to at least US$1.3 trillion annually by 2035. While climate financing is notoriously difficult, it is far from the only concern on the COP30 Presidency’s mind. Almost all the 198 signatories to the Paris Agreement failed to honor the February 2025 deadline to submit their national climate plans to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the global climate watchdog. These nationally determined contributions (NDC) are binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change impacts. Under the treaty the NDCs must be updated every five years. Yet by the end of August, fewer than 30 countries had submitted their plans for the period until
quit the Paris Agreement entirely under President Donald Trump. In a last-minute intervention UN Secretary-General António Guterres extended the deadline for submission to late September and said: “These must cover all emissions to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels.” The UNFCCC has warned that failure to deliver updated NDCs will make it impossible to compile a crucial status update (Synthesis Report) to show how far off track the world is on the crucial goal of limiting global heating to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Going into COP30 without such basic information would be like embarking on a world trip without a map. Brazil’s COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago, a veteran diplomat, appealed: “Far from representing mere climate targets for 2035, our NDCs represent the vision of our shared future. They are vehicles of cooperation, enabling us to realize this vision together.” With his statement UN Secretary- General Guterres explicitly reminded the parties of the commitment they made at COP28 in the UAE “to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, with developed countries continuing to take the lead.” But the momentum today is
thorny issue of financial commitments. Although advanced economies pledged at COP29 to increase the support to developing countries
2035. The top emitters China and the EU (on behalf of its 27 member states) had yet to do so, while the USA has
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, President of Brazil
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Photo: Ricardo Stuckert_PR
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