COP30: A summit of fading hopes, fires & thunderstorms

Thirteen days of tropical heat, torrential rain, the flooding of the summit venue, a riot, 70,000strong protesters, a coffin march for fossil fuels, and a fire on the penultimate day razing a pavilion—you could see it all in Belem, Brazil, at the world’s biggest annual climate summit.

- S DINAKAR

With Belem having only 18,000 hotel beds, COP30 host had offered free cabins on cruise ship (pictured) to poorer nations before start of the summit

(PHOTO: REUTERS)

But what you couldn't see at the 30th edition of the Conference of Parties (COP30)—in the final agenda document adopted on Saturday night after hours of high drama — were road maps to fund climate pledges; nor visible concrete plans to move away from fossil fuels, responsible for nearly 80 per cent of global emission and a growing threat to civilisation, climate scientists say.

India’s vociferous demand for a road map to allocate $300 billion in public funding by developed countries — a commitment made at COP29 in Baku last year — did not find a place in the final agenda after the European Union (EU) declined to commit itself to the details.

Little was available on plans to mobilise up to $1.3 trillion a year, with the document merely “calling on all actors to work together to enable the scaling up of financing for climate action from all public and private sources to at least $1.3 trillion per year by 2035”.

“It’s a low-ambition text,” said R R Rashmi, distinguished fellow at think tank The Energy and Resources Institute, and India’s lead negotiator at previous United Nations climate summits. “The decisions on NDC (Nationally Determined Contributions or climate pledge) and finance are very weak.”