COP30 must begin shift from “talk” to “action”

2025 marks the 10th year since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, then heralded as a game-changer in addressing the climate crisis. 

However, the past decade has seen little meaningful progress. Recent climate negotiations or COPs have been mired by familiar problems: more words than actions, deep division among blocs of countries, the unjust presence of fossil fuel lobbyists, and the unwillingness of historical polluters to provide enough support to vulnerable countries. 

Newer challenges have also emerged, most notably the growing number of participants and the logistical challenges for host-cities. Within this decade, the United States has announced its departure from the Paris Agreement not once, but twice.   

We have seen all of these problems before, in one way or another, yet little has been done to address them. And you know what they say about doing the same thing time and again and expecting different results.

To a certain extent, it is understandable why the progress of climate COPs has been slow. Finding common ground among the diverse contexts, perspectives, and interests of around 200 countries and thousands of other on-site delegates, assuming all negotiators actually want to include their inputs, is naturally a difficult task. Yet for the sake of current and future generations, we must try to find it.

Yet the process must change. The goal remains to reduce global warming and the resulting impacts on climate, nature, and people. It is time for reforms in the COP process to ensure that this goal will actually be achieved. 

We need more focus

During the second half of this past decade, many have expected the shift of the focus of global climate discourse towards implementation. And as expected, recent talks on this matter have proven to be the most difficult, especially on climate finance.

Look no further than what happened in 2024. During last year’s intersessionals, almost every single major issue that lacked a decisive outcome, from the Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP) to Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE), was caused by disagreements on finance. 

The Baku climate talks, dubbed as a “finance COP”, ended up branding the “at least” phrase as a hopeful bare minimum to which developed countries may overdeliver instead of its true meaning of forcing the developing world to be satisfied that there even was spare money for them.

A different approach should be undertaken to ensure that global action can truly be accelerated during climate COPs. One such way is to streamline the process to ensure speed and scale in decision-making by narrowing the scope of agenda discussed in these conferences.  

Just like finance in Baku, one or a few issues end up being the focus of every year of climate negotiations. Yet virtually every work stream is being negotiated in these events, resulting in large delegation sizes, prolonged discussions, inefficient work by the subsidiary bodies, and likely outcomes with little impact on the ground.

Reducing the scope of the annual COP agenda does not mean that whatever will be deemphasised is no longer important or will be fully disregarded throughout the year. Rather, this would allow such issues to be fully focused on in other UNFCCC sessions or in another platform within the negotiations proper, ensuring a more urgent delivery of concrete solutions that would directly benefit specific sectors or communities.

The resulting decrease in attendance during these events must also not come at the expense of inclusivity or equitable representation. With this context, disallowing fossil fuel lobbyists from attending the COPs can help ensure a more efficient decision-making process.

Actions over words

The needed components for making the climate COPs more action-oriented are already there. The work programmes, including the aforementioned JTWP and ACE, have already been set up. There is also the Enhanced Transparency Framework (ETF), the part of the Paris Agreement that requires nations to report progress on their NDCs, received or given support, and other aspects of climate work.  

Aside from the actual decisions, recent climate COPs have seen more multiple multi-country initiatives and non-State actors’ platforms be made, aligned with the imperative of accelerating global climate action. Accessing information indicating the progress of these partnerships is necessary to make these conferences truly more action-oriented. 

While the Global Stocktake has provided a notable push in this regard, much of this information has not been used to inform negotiators and other policymakers. Challenges such as a lack of known platform for mapping out the initiatives of all actors and lack of awareness among these stakeholders of said initiatives have hindered actions at the national and local levels as much as at the global scale.

This is why it is necessary to institutionalise a formal process during the negotiations proper where all the aforementioned components can be used as inputs to identify concrete ways to support Parties and non-State actors in their implementation of solutions. The issues highlighted should be aligned with the agenda focused on as previously described, which may be influenced by that year’s COP Presidency.

This implementation forum also provides another platform for non-State actors attending the climate COPs on-site to have more meaningful and impactful engagements, with outcomes that are more relevant to their respective constituencies. It would enhance transparency and accountability, while also building or restoring trust by these stakeholders in what is now widely viewed as an inefficient and ineffective multilateral process.

With COP30 in Belem, Brazil poised to be a milestone climate conference, it is a timely opportunity to redefine climate multilateralism. The pieces are in front of us; it is long past due to put them together and allow us to truly see the big picture.      

illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.