COP30, A HISTORIC MISSION: LOOKING BEYOND PARIS
Just over a month to go before the start of COP30 on climate, which this year at the behest of Brazilian President Lula will be held in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, in Belém do Pará. While journalistic attention in recent months has focused on the crippling logistics of a decentralized COP desired first by the federal President and then by the state and local governments (which stand on opposite sides of the political spectrum), we believe it is useful to provide an overview of expectations on the actual negotiations.
A “push from outside”: extra-negotiation initiatives
First, it is necessary to make a distinction – as always and even more so this year – between what will happen inside the actual negotiating rooms, and what will happen on the sidelines of those meetings. Based on the now seven letters sent to the world’s delegates by the COP chair, the experienced negotiator Andrè Correa do Lago, it seems that the presidency will want to focus on the second aspect, that is, on all those side initiatives that the presidency itself hopes to be able to put in place before and during the two-week summit. A two-speed climate diplomacy that is very reminiscent of what we saw in Glasgow in 2021, with the very strong investment of political capital by Boris Johnson’s government that led to the signing of a then-relevant set of extra-negotiated agreements on coal, new overseas oil and gas fields, methane, and deforestation, while in the halls discussions continued (as we would see on the final one) about phase out and phase down.
Some of those initiatives and promises remained on paper, also due to the violent and rapid changes in the international geopolitical landscape. But, let’s face it, this was also due to the lack of commitment from some countries, which, in the heat of the COP, found themselves signing collective, high-level promises, almost as if towed by the force majeure imposed by the British presidency, which was eager to conclude the COP with ambitious, prestigious, and ultimately visible results, while blatantly underestimating the financial aspect. This mistake would later shape the course of all subsequent COPs.
Four years later, and after adopting the new global financial target at the last minute in Baku (amid grumbling from many), Brazil presents itself on the eve of the COP, in between trips by Correa and his staff in this phase of intense pre-weaving, with six thematic “axes” of action: energy, industry and transport; forests, oceans and biodiversity; agriculture and food systems; cities, infrastructure and water; human and social development; and issues and problems that cut across the others. Each of these “axes” of action will then be declined in a calendar of thematic days already available on the Conference website.
Not only that. Among the many initiatives already launched by the presidency in the months leading up to the COP, three stand out as highly symbolic: the invitation to bring together, starting in Belém, the Presidencies of the three COPs on climate, biodiversity and desertification toward greater interoperability of the work of the three Rio 1992 conventions – a policy proposal that has always been advanced by Italian Climate Network; the creation of the “circle” of Finance Ministers, in support of the path launched in Baku toward a global financial mobilization for climate that also goes through the restructuring of multilateral development banks; finally, the creation of the “circle” of COP presidencies from Paris onward, chaired by none other than COP21 President Laurent Fabius, with the aim of reviving what many ministries still like to call “the spirit of Paris” i.e., an expanded and inclusive global concertation of new economies, based on the principle of full participation of all actors, which led to the successful drafting of a new post-Copenhagen text between 2010 and 2015, the Paris Agreement.
As in Paris in 2015 and then in 2021 in Glasgow, it is legitimate to expect a significant number of high-level declarations, new commitments on the main issues selected by the presidency signed by relevant groups and numerous countries, as well as the launch of new and concrete multi-stakeholder initiatives in collaboration with non-state and private actors. Compared to COP21 and COP26, most of these initiatives will be Global South-driven, with Western partners in the role of followers and no longer leaders, albeit with important historical and therefore financial responsibilities.
It will be interesting to closely follow the main new initiatives also to understand which private actors will be involved, given on the one hand the growing influence in the negotiations of some international philanthropic actors (such as Bloomberg Philanthropies and others), on the other hand, the withdrawal from the climate scene of the main US Big tech giants, a void that will probably be filled by actors of different passports.
A “procedural” agenda
The actual negotiating agenda does not seem to hold any big surprises as of to date. However, we will have to wait for the mid-October preCOP to see if any new points are added to the agenda compared to the one published at the beginning of September.
At the moment, among the agendas of COP, CMP and CMA, SBI and SBSTA (the different configurations through which the countries adhering to the Convention, the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement meet according to membership) we find the same negotiating items of recent years on the main issues – a de facto procedural agenda, aimed at reopening the discussion on all the tables, starting from the complex negotiation on adaptation measures and their financing, with related indicators, up to gender policies in the climate field. Items that had been postponed in Baku reappear on the agenda – such as the Work Program on Mitigation, dear to the European Union, the Just Transition Work Program, but also the now traditional “inaugural” and in a way provocative points on unilateral trade measures and on the revision of the membership Annex I and Annex II proposed by members of the G77 group (the second, in particular and for the umpteenth time, by the Russian Federation).
At COP30, delegations will be asked to express themselves with choral and formal decisions on a series of financial reports, in particular on the Green Climate Fund, the Global Environmental Facility and, for the first time, the Loss and Damage Fund. It should be noted that these decisions on the reports of the various financial instruments are expected and planned according to previous decisions and not according to the presidency’s initiative. The three tables will in any case interact with the broader and parallel discussion on financial mobilization with respect to the NCQG as adopted in Baku, discussions that we will most likely see take place under the “Long term finance” strand, transversal to the various negotiating configurations.
The implementation of the 2023 Global Stocktake will be discussed again, particularly in the CMA format (where the countries adhering to the Paris Agreement are present), through multiple roundtables divided into different negotiating points. This strand could prove to be one of the most challenging, given the numerous problems (even simply in terms of interpretation of the negotiating mandate) identified in Baku a year ago and the simultaneous absence, more political than formal, of the key document that should have supported the transition from COP30 to the second stocktake in 2028: the new UNFCCC NDC Synthesis Report. As we know, it will arrive at the COP mutilated, lacking data on the European Union and China’s climate plans, and instead including the old US NDC produced by the Biden administration, now obsolete.
The negotiations on the development of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement will continue, regarding cooperation between states through market and non-market mechanisms. At COP29, important decisions were adopted on interoperable registries and methodologies, particularly those relating to projects eligible for approval under the new global PACM mechanism (Article 6.4), accompanied by innovative precautionary measures such as the appeals mechanism and the mandatory creation of safeguard credits. Negotiations on the implementation of strands 6.2 and 6.4 are expected to be more operational, as usual, thanks also to the need to refinance the work of the Supervisory Body, which has run out of funds. Surprises may arise regarding the neglected strand of non-market approaches under Article 6.8, a long-standing concern of some South American countries, if the Presidency pushes for it.
A cover decision will be needed
In 2021, the one in Glasgow was the first COP of the pandemic era, two years later Dubai was the COP of the first Stocktake, and finally Baku managed, somewhat surprisingly, to be the COP of the new global financial target and the completion of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. Four COPs, including the turbulent 2022 Sharm el-Sheikh conference in Egypt that established the Loss and Damage Fund, all share two common threads: the financial issue, loudly demanded by Global South delegations from Glasgow onward, and the need to complete parts of the Paris Agreement, or test some of its components for the first time (the first stocktake, then the new multi-year financial target).
In between, the pandemic, the global economic, social, health, and energy crisis, Donald Trump’s return to the White House, the French military retreat from West Africa, and the new geopolitical role of the Sino-Russian axis and the expanded BRICS, large-scale armed conflicts in Europe, the Caucasus, and Africa, and now the macro-conflict in the Middle East, which, from the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Palestine, is spreading to Beirut, Tehran, Yemen, and Qatar. Meanwhile, the first certified exceedance of the 1.5°C threshold compared to the pre-industrial period in 2024 indicates a possible early timing of the so-called overshoot predicted in the IPCC scenarios, which brings us dangerously close to the impossibility of achieving the minimum targets of the Paris Agreement without the necessary, very strong, rapid, and drastic cuts in global emissions.
It is clear, without mincing words, that if this COP is to have any meaning, it must have it both with respect to the treaties that legitimize its functioning and with respect to the broader global context. And with respect to this context, the COP will have to demonstrate once again that multilateralism is useful to the world, countering the gradual erosion of any remaining space for diplomatic conflict management. All countries gathered around a single thematic table despite everything, to discuss climate change in a more or less operational manner based on the 1992 Convention, the Paris Agreement and, as would like, what was decided in Dubai in 2023 – that transitioning away, the “transition out” of fossil fuels to be started within this decade that seems to be slipping further and further from reality, despite the alleged Chinese emissions peak and the incredible and continuous global growth of renewable capacity.
This will require a cover decision, that is, a final political decision from the COP summarized in an umbrella text to be negotiated during the two weeks, following all the specific negotiating rounds, a practice in use until 2023. While cover decisions may have been a political fad for some presidencies for some years, they have actually also served a governance role, at times creative and instrumental, by filling procedural gaps, for example when the UAE presidency of COP28 decided that the first Global Stocktake would be discussed and voted on, precisely, as part of the general cover decision of that COP.
A decision of this kind will be needed in Belém, a vote on a single, joint political declaration from the entire COP, to demonstrate that, despite missiles and relational fractures, there is still the capacity to collectively discuss certain minimum political objectives. And it is a good thing, in this international scenario, that a non-Western country is wielding the gavel. A caveat is needed: if it is, the COP30 cover decision will necessarily be a text conceived, written, and presented by non-Western governments, most likely under the aegis of BRICS, to which at most Europe and Western allies will propose amendments for negotiation. It’s simply the new reality, as well as the only way to reach consensus in the room, given the context and the numbers in hand. We’ll have to get used to it.
The historic mission of looking beyond Paris
We were talking about the meaning of Belém with respect to the treaties. Here, COP30 will have to make a qualitative leap precisely because, as previously mentioned, there are no more “pieces” of the Paris Agreement to complete or test in practice; the process is underway, and despite everything, the machine has held up so far. COP30 will be the first COP to face the real dilemma of implementation, of realizing the objectives of the Convention and the Agreement, despite a bleak scenario made worse by the delay in climate plans of most global economies, first and foremost, the European Union. But we need to look beyond.
The international landscape could not be more complex, yet a quantum leap is needed in imagining how the international community will manage this enormous “long problem,” to use the words of Professor Thomas Hale of the University of Oxford, who discusses “Long Problems” in his latest, illuminating, and eponymous book on climate governance. While globalization has accustomed us to a horizontal, geographical expansion of politics, from national to necessarily international, the problem of climate change presents us with the need to extend policies forward in time, a collective exercise never attempted before in human history. We see this in the Paris Agreement, innovative in its collective, bottom-up approach, but above all in its temporal projection: a treaty that governs the collective behavior of states from 2020 to 2100.
But can the Paris Agreement survive in the coming years? Will it be enough? I think not—and I say this with the intention of adding, not subtracting. It’s now clear that governments and investors are experiencing this turbulent and conflictual political period as if in a state of wait and see, hoping for the storm to subside. This leads to a longer and more frustrating climate inaction than expected and, perhaps, to what will be an extremely urgent need for a vertical decarbonization between 2040 and 2050, to achieve net-zero global emissions through a moderate temperature overshoot. By then, market forces and research and development may have provided us with very low-cost green technologies; we already see the nascent signs of this trajectory. But we will lack a political framework, a global goal. Paris alone will not be enough.
COP30 can truly make sense if, in those rooms, some delegates and ministers begin to ask themselves, possibly in public: what comes after Paris? What kind of goals will we need in the coming years? What collective aspiration can we anchor this process to, so as not to turn it into an empty ritual? The time it takes to reach a multilateral political decision can be very long, especially in a context characterized by armed violence and polarized dialogue. But someone must start raising this provocative question:
Do we collectively have the courage to begin thinking about the next Agreement, the next Protocol, possibly to be adopted between 2030 and 2035 (once the storm has passed) to regulate the final transformation of our emissions between 2040 and 2050, towards zero?
It’s unrealistic to expect something similar in the formal texts of this COP, but it’s a conversation the key stakeholders must begin to have, proactively. If at COP30 someone, especially some countries, raises the issue, then we can say the COP will have had a “long-term” purpose, useful, and necessary, beyond the short- to medium-term decisions adopted at individual negotiating tables. This will perhaps be Belém’s historic mission: to go beyond Paris, starting right back in Brazil, where it all began in 1992.
Article by Jacopo Bencini, president of Italian Climate Network.