The Passive Failure of COP30

COP 30 President André Corrêa do Lago (center). Photo by IISD/ENB | Mike Muzurakis

The Conference of the Parties is the largest UN summit for discussions and negotiations on climate change. Held annually, last year was its 30^th run held in Belém, Brazil.

COP30 secured new targets and increased funding for climate adaptation, tropical forest conservation, and featured a wide range of intersectional and indigenous voices. No doubt positive change, but is it enough? In the face of climate destruction, COP30 has ended with no concrete resolution on banning the use of fossil fuels, halting deforestation, or preventing further temperature rise and the destruction of nature. With countries voting against using explicit language around fossil fuels in policy, how do we expect any actual change to come from the COPs?

Again and again in global climate policy summits, there is a recurrence of vague pledges where countries promise big changes without any accountability structure or targets, and where each country can decide their own goals and policies. This allows governments and corporations to get away with at best small changes and at worst contributing even further to the mass destruction of the climate.

COP30 based a lot of its organisation and marketing around how it would have the most participation from indigenous communities in history. Whilst this is a good change, there is no point in inclusion if there is no audience to listen and enact change accordingly. Which, clearly, did not happen. This appropriates indigenous knowledge to make it seem as if those participating in COP30 are taking steps towards change whilst making little progress on climate policy, which is directly contributing to the marginalisation and loss of indigenous communities.

In the face of the worsening climate emergency, the more time that is wasted, the less time we have to prevent, mitigate, and adapt to catastrophic impacts of temperature increases and environmental degradation. Another year has gone by, and nations at the COP have failed again to make any significant resolution or even progress towards effective climate change policy, with some leaders not even bothering to attend. After 30 of these conferences, binding legislation is yet to be enacted. Something is obviously wrong with the COP system, and global climate legislation enforcement (or lack thereof).