One step forward, two backward

THE WORLD NEEDS A NEW MULTILATERAL ARCHITECTURE FOR A NEW PHASE OF CLIMATE ACTION

- CHANDRA BHUSHAN

BRAZILIAN PRESIDENT LUIZ Inacio Lula da Silva had declared the 30th Conference of Parties (COP30) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as the “COP of truth”.

And truth, indeed, was unmistakable in Belém. The meeting made it clear how fragmented and fragile the global consensus on climate action has become. Decisions that countries had once celebrated as historic achievements were rejected outright. Commitments that were hailed as breakthroughs only a few years ago suddenly appeared to have evaporated.

The most prominent example was the decision to “transition away from fossil fuels”, which had been agreed at the Dubai COP in 2023. That phrase—hailed then as a diplomatic triumph—did not even appear in the final text at Belém. Countries that had supported it earlier refused to accept it now. A similar retreat occurred on deforestation. At COP26 in Glasgow, over 130 nations pledged to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. At COP30, a road map to achieve this was quietly dropped. The symbolism was striking: a climate summit held at the edge of the Amazon was unwilling to reaffirm the world’s most widely supported forest pledge.

The question, then, is what COP30 actually achieved. The honest answer is: very little. Ten years after the Paris Agreement, instead of accelerating climate action, the world found itself postponing decisions and shifting difficult conversations away from the UN climate process. The most contentious issues were not resolved; they were simply moved elsewhere.