30 years of climate talks: Progress, pitfalls and a planet in peril

As leaders gather for the UN climate summit (COP30) in Brazil this month - three decades after the world's first annual climate conferencethe data charting progress in the fight against global warming tells a sobering story.

- REUTERS

Despite years of negotiations, pledges, and summits, greenhouse gas emissions have climbed by a third since that first meeting; fossil fuel consumption continues to rise: and global temperatures are on track to breach thresholds scientists say will unleash catastrophic damage to the planet.

"Yes, some good has come out of these conventions, but not enough to ensure the promise of life on Earth," said Juan Carlos Monterrey, Panama’s special representative for climate change, who is leading a push to streamline major environmental agreements.

That grim assessment raises a fundamental question ahead of the November 10-21 summit in Belem, Brazil: Is global climate diplomacy failing? Or have the gatherings succeeded in ways that raw data cannot capture?

Simon Stiell, the head of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), says the annual meetings are helping.