What was COP30 all about?

Two years ago, at COP28 in Dubai, global civil society won a significant victory when we collectively campaigned to get a decision to transition away from fossil fuels.

This outcome was historic – the first time in the nearly three-decade history of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process that addressing the primary cause of climate change was mentioned in an outcome decision. Since that time, sadly, we have seen a global erosion of the consensus that led to this decision – including in the UK – however, that global agreement still stands today.

This year, at COP30 in Belem, global civil society won a significant victory collectively campaigning for a Belem Action Mechanism (BAM!) for just transition. This outcome is historic – not only does it create a mechanism to catalyse and support nations to put workers and communities at the heart of climate plans to ensure no one is left behind – the decision also includes the strongest language ever seen in the UNFCCC on rights, participation, and inclusion. 

The outcome demands the right to a healthy environment, the rights of Indigenous People, and recognises for the first time people of African descent. But have you even heard about this historic outcome, which was also the only really concrete outcome of COP30? Probably not. 

From the long list of mandated agenda items plus those from Parties, there was never a clear headline for COP30, except for civil society’s unwavering determination for justice and the BAM. The issues for COP30 were the ones that never get political attention or hit the headlines, but need it and deserve it – this was set to be the COP for gender, adaptation, workers, nature, forests, transparency/data, and provision of finance.

But COP30 was suffering the hangover of COP29 – the finance COP that did not deliver. Without finance there is no implementation despite Brazil’s hopes for an implementation COP. But when high-income countries, including the UK, packed for Belem, they forgot their wallets and arrived empty-handed. Not only was COP29 – and the new global climate finance goal agreed there – a betrayal of developing countries, but in the year since Official Development Assistance (currently the main source of climate finance – despite it being meant to be new and additional) has been slashed – globally, including by the UK cutting it by 57% in 7 years. 

With the UK’s current five-year international climate finance (ICF3) commitment ending in March, COP30 should have been the moment to announce a high-ambition and high-quality fourth round of UK ICF that amounts to the UK’s fair share of the climate finance needs of developing countries. Instead, the UK arrived empty-handed, and expectations for ICF4 are low given the current rhetoric and cuts.

The headline of COP30 really should have been this abject moral failing of developed countries to provide the finance needed to tackle the climate and nature emergencies, despite the public popularity of taxing the wealthiest and largest polluters in our societies to pay for climate action at home and overseas, and the need to end harmful subsidies that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) advised in July is “an internationally wrongful act” l and redirect that finance. The stage was set and the villains were clearly cast ahead for this festive season pantomime. 

But then the script changed, when President Lula took to the stage calling for a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, and a redemption arc for our pantomime villains to be recast as heroes was written. Developed countries including the UK made this the fight of their lives at COP30. It is completely understandable and indeed commendable to seize this much needed opportunity to advance fossil fuel phaseout – it is outrageous that this process to address climate change does not have a functional space where fossil fuels can be discussed – but this eleventh hour rewrite stole the limelight away from the issues that should have been playing the starring role, relegating them to mere background players.

But developing countries were following a very different script – they came to COP30 to fight for adaptation and agree a robust Global Goal for Adaptation, to fight for finance so they can implement, to fight for workers and communities with a BAM, and to fight for nature and their forests and lands, and without warning the focus of the entire negotiations shifted away from what they came here to do – the work that never gets the political attention or headlines.

There has long been a Global North/Global South divide on the primacy of mitigation (Global North) and its balance alongside other important issues including adaptation, loss and damage, and provision of finance (Global South) – and with one line from a stage, this went from a COP focused on what developing countries need, to what developed countries want to talk about – getting them off the hook for no finance, and casting a new set villains.

And it’s a narrative that is clear and more obvious to the media and public in the GN, that fossil fuels are the problem and must be stopped. But what was really going to be achieved in a roadmap? COP29 already had the responsibility to deliver a roadmap – a Baku to Belem Roadmap to deliver $1.3tn a year for climate action – and it came to absolutely nothing. Instead, developing countries paid a very high price for efforts to get this fossil fuel roadmap, with everything they came for overshadowed and underprioritised, and media attention diverted from the lack of finance.

COP30 was meant to be adaptation’s most vital moment, and it fell far short. The gender action plan was agreed upon, but with barely a mention. The work to strengthen nature-climate synergies across the Rio Conventions was as bad as it could be. And everyone forgot that the developed countries slashed ODA and came empty-handed, while asking developing countries to do more.

This COP did not deliver on substance or narrative. The headlines do not tell the real story of what was at stake here at COP or who the heroes and the villains are. 

Yet, despite the weak outcomes, there were clear heroes at COP30:

• Civil society has been coming every year demanding climate justice, and securing a historic win for workers, communities, and rights.
• Workers for demanding a just transition and getting the BAM – and the workers at the COP30 venue who heroically ran towards the fire to put it out to protect us all, and suffered smoke inhalation by doing so.
• Indigenous Peoples for demanding to be heard and seen at this COP, despite being largely shut out, and despite being faced down by guns and militarisation of a COP never before seen. Their energy and struggle will be what all of us there remember about this COP.

These should be the heroes and headlines of COP30.