What are COPs for?

When Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva chose the host city of this year’s UN climate change conference COP30, he wanted to send a signal: “We decided to hold COP in Belém so that people can see what the Amazon really is.” After all, the rainforest, which serves as a critically important global carbon sink, is in imminent danger. However, preparations for the climate summit were overshadowed by concerns about infrastructure, logistics and accommodation. 

Yet these were by no means the only challenges the Brazilian COP Presidency has been facing since receiving the baton from Azerbaijan at the end of last year’s climate change conference in Baku. That event had deferred several key issues to the next round of negotiations, including the thorny issue of financial commitments. Although advanced economies pledged at COP29 to increase the support to developing countries for climate financing from US$100 billion annually to US$300 billion by 2035, this trebling still remained far behind expectations. Instead, the nations agreed on a so-called “Baku to Belém Roadmap to 1.3T” that aims to resolve the issue in Brazil with an agreement to scale up support to at least US$1.3 trillion annually by 2035. 

While climate financing is notoriously difficult, it is far from the only concern on the COP30 Presidency’s mind. Almost all the 198 signatories to the Paris Agreement failed to honor the February 2025 deadline to submit their national climate plans to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the global climate watchdog. These nationally determined contributions (NDC) are binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change impacts. 

Under the treaty the NDCs must be updated every five years. Yet by the end of August, fewer than 30 countries had submitted their plans for the period until 2035. The top emitters China and the EU (on behalf of its 27 member states) had yet to do so, while the USA has quit the Paris Agreement entirely under President Donald Trump. In a last-minute intervention UN Secretary-General António Guterres extended the deadline for submission to late September and said: “These must cover all emissions to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels.” 

The UNFCCC has warned that failure to deliver updated NDCs will make it impossible to compile a crucial status update (Synthesis Report) to show how far off track the world is on the crucial goal of limiting global heating to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Going into COP30 without such basic information would be like embarking on a world trip without a map. Brazil’s COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago, a veteran diplomat, appealed: “Far from representing mere climate targets for 2035, our NDCs represent the vision of our shared future. They are vehicles of cooperation, enabling us to realize this vision together.” 

With his statement UN Secretary- General Guterres explicitly reminded the parties of the commitment they made at COP28 in the UAE “to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, with developed countries continuing to take the lead.” But the momentum today is elsewhere, and geopolitical tensions and economic turmoil are sapping scarce resources. While the USA has completely reversed its energy policy, the EU is mired in arguments over its plans and China has not only become the biggest producer of renewable energy in recent years, but lately also launched a new drive to invest in – superficially cheap – coal. 

While the political circumstances are not conducive to big breakthroughs in the COP framework, the facts about climate change make immediate, comprehensive and joint action as important as ever. Last year was the first in which global temperatures averaged more than 1.5°C, the Paris target. Data published by the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service in May 2025 showed that the monthly average global temperature had exceeded the 1.5°C threshold for 21 out of the past 22 months. “The world is on the trajectory to 3°C,” warned UNFCCC chief Simon Stiell. 

But it is not only temperatures which are rising. Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels reached a record 37.8 billion metric tonnes in 2024, according to the Global Carbon Project, a research group. “Solar and wind is displacing fossil fuels in some countries, but when you put the whole global sum together, fossil fuels are still winning,” said Glen Peters, senior researcher at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research in Oslo. 

Following a UN initiative by the South Pacific archipelago nation of Vanuatu and other climate-vulnerable countries the International Court of Justice found in a groundbreaking ruling in July 2025 that states could be legally pursued for failing to act on the “urgent and existential threat” of climate change. Reshaping international law, the unanimous finding by the panel of 15 judges said that states had an obligation to cut greenhouse gas emissions, clarifying that climate obligations are legally binding and countries face legal consequences if they fail to take effective action. 

Well aware of the challenges the global climate agenda is facing the Brazilian COP Presidency has outlined its plans for the summit from November 10-21. The host country made it clear in regular communications to all parties that it wants the conference to be inspired by the spirit of mutirão – a local term referring to a collective effort toward a shared goal. 

Regardless of the controversies in the run-up to the conference up to 50,000 delegates are expected to attend COP30 in Belém and gain a personal impression of the gateway to the Amazon. It is not the first time that Brazil is hosting a global environmental conference: The Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro 1992 was the cradle of the Rio Conventions, the Rio Declaration and Agenda 21. Twenty years on, leaders gathered again in Rio at the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20). 

COP30 will also mark the 10th anniversary of the signing of the Paris Agreement. Whether this is a cause for celebration is debatable. The movement has succeeded in moving climate change to the top of the international agenda. But despite pledges of trillions of dollars and powerful calls for urgent action, the goals of the treaty were not even achieved when the prevailing zeitgeist was with the green transition. 

Now that the wind is blowing from the opposite direction, it is worth asking whether COP remains the best format to make much-needed progress. While advanced economies are turning their backs, developing nations are increasingly disappointed: Kgaugelo Mkumbeni, research officer at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, says: “Hope is dying in Africa when it comes to the COP process in general. There is a big sense of disillusionment.” 

The Financial Times associate editor Pilita Clark speaks of a “dismal pace of progress [which] has fueled demands for something the UN was not set up to do: drastically speed up measures to cut emissions.” Frustrated with the slow pace of progress there is talk of a new “Coalition of the Willing” outside the COP process of countries which are prepared to move faster and further. One idea put forward by the political scientist Jessica Green from the University of Toronto asks for a shift away from counting emissions to evaluating asset classes. 

The COP30 action agenda: 30 key objectives COP President André Corrêa do Lago set out four pillars for the meeting in Belém: Leaders’ summit, negotiation, mobilization and action agenda. Recognizing current geopolitical realities, the latter focuses on the implementation of what the world has “already collectively agreed,” as he put it. This focus on delivery is centered around the Global Stocktake concluded at COP28, which warned that “the world is not on track to meet the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement.” The COP30 action agenda includes 

30 key objectives, under six broad categories. 

Transitioning Energy, Industry and Transport 

1. Tripling renewables and doubling energy efficiency 

2. Accelerating zero- and low-emission technologies in hard-to-abate sectors 

3. Ensuring universal access to energy 

4. Transitioning away from fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner. 

Stewarding Forests, Oceans and Biodiversity

5. Investments to halt and reverse deforestation and forest degradation 

6. Efforts to conserve, protect and restore nature and ecosystems with solutions for climate, biodiversity and desertification 

7. Efforts to preserve and restore oceans and coastal ecosystems. 

Transforming Agriculture and Food Systems

8. Land restoration and sustainable agriculture

9. More resilient, adaptive and sustainable food systems 

10. Equitable access to adequate food and nutrition for all. 

Building Resilience for Cities, Infrastructure and Water

11. Multilevel governance 

12. Sustainable and resilient constructions and buildings 

13. Resilient urban development, mobility and infrastructure 

14. Water management 

15. Solid waste management. 

Fostering Human and Social Development 

16. Promoting resilient health systems 

17 Reducing the effects of climate change on eradicating hunger and poverty 

18. Education, capacity-building and job creation to address climate change 

19. Culture, cultural heritage and climate action. 

Cross-cutting issues: Unleashing Enablers and Accelerators, including on Finance, Technology and Capacity Building

20. Climate and sustainable finance, mainstreaming climate in investments and insurance 

21. Finance for adaptation 

22. Climate-integrated public procurement 

23. Harmonization of carbon markets and carbon accounting standards 

24. Climate and trade 

25. Reduction of non-CO2 gases 

26. Governance, state capacities and institutional strengthening for climate action, planning and preparedness 

27. Artificial intelligence, digital public infrastructure and digital technologies 

28. Innovation, climate entrepreneurship and small and micro businesses 

29. Bioeconomy and biotechnology 

30. Information integrity in climate change matters.

OPEC Fund adopts Paris Agreement alignment goals 

Further strengthening its commitment to climate action and joining the concert of multilateral development banks (MDBs), the OPEC Fund has adopted its Paris Agreement alignment goals. In September 2025, the Governing Board approved as targets achieving 60 percent alignment by 2027 and 80 percent by 2030, excluding trade finance. The ultimate goal is to reach 100 percent alignment across all operations in a transformation through a phased approach. 

A 2024 portfolio assessment found that the majority of OPEC Fund operations already align with the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty aimed at limiting global average temperature rise to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. MDBs have committed to aligning their operations with these goals through a joint framework, which guides the assessment of the alignment of financial flows with pathways toward low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.