Q&A: what are the main issues at Cop30 and why do they matter?

Cop returns to its Brazilian roots and attempts to map a path to crucial emissions cuts that navigates financial, scientific and ethical aspects of the climate crisis

Cop30 is the 30^th conference of the parties under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the treaty signed in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro that binds the world to “avoid dangerous climate change”, without specifying how to do so.

This year, Cop returns to its roots in Brazil for the first time in the Amazonian city of Belém. The Brazilian hosts have a packed agenda, with 145 separate items on it, and decided to begin early, with a preliminary event called the Belém Climate Summit. World leaders were invited to this two-day event, held on Thursday 6 and Friday 7 November in Belém, to try to encourage their negotiating teams to shed entrenched positions and take bold actions at Cop itself.

Q: What are NDC pledges and why have countries missed their deadlines?

A: This year’s Cop comes at a key point in the cycle of the 2015 Paris agreement, which fleshes out the “how” of the UNFCCC by requiring every country to come up with a national plan on greenhouse gas emissions. Called nationally determined contributions (NDCs), these plans must be revised every five years.

Two cycles of NDCs – the first at Paris, the second compiled in 2021 at the Cop26 summit in Glasgow (which was delayed from 2020 by the Covid pandemic) – have now passed. In the first, nations put forward targets, mostly pegged to 2025, which would have allowed temperatures to rise by more than 3C above preindustrial levels, far beyond the 1.5C that was the more stringent of the two targets in the Paris treaty.

By Cop26, countries were doing slightly better – their NDCs would have caused temperature rises of roughly 2.8C. Using the “ratchet” mechanism in the Paris agreement, which allows for the tightening of NDCs, countries were encouraged to come back to future Cops with more stringent plans. However, only a handful have ever done so outside the five-year cycle.

This year’s crop of NDCs were supposed to be the ones to align with 1.5C, because scientists have warned repeatedly that emissions need to drop rapidly in the 2020s to stay within the crucial limit.

The deadline for NDCs, according to the Paris provisions, should have been February. But few countries made it, and the UN made it known that the organisers would be happy if the plans were delivered before Cop30 instead.

By the start of Cop30, most of the major countries had submitted their NDCs. But the picture was still grim. According to the UN, the assessed plans would cut greenhouse gas emissions by about 10% by 2035 – nowhere near the 60% cuts needed by that date, to have a reasonable chance of staying within 1.5C. These NDCs would result in temperature rises of about 2.5C, if all the targets within them are fulfilled, or 2.8C if only those targets that have clear policy measures attached to them are counted.

The task for Brazil, as Cop president, is to map out a clear pathway from Cop30 to the emissions cuts needed for a 1.5C world, showing how these inadequate NDCs can be bolstered by real-world actions that will substitute clean energy for fossil fuels.

Q: Can the world stay within 1.5C?

A: The Paris agreement, signed 10 years ago, bound countries to limit temperatures to “well below” 2C above pre-industrial levels, while “pursuing efforts” to stay within a 1.5C increase. Subsequent scientific advice from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change established that 2C was far more dangerous than 1.5C, and so at Cop26 and other meetings since countries have reaffirmed that the more stringent 1.5C target should be their main goal. This now seems increasingly unlikely, as global average temperatures for two consecutive years have risen above that level. That does not negate the Paris target, because it will be measured across a much longer period, but it does send a concerning signal.

Scientists fear further heating could trigger a series of tipping points that could reinforce the heating trend and give it potentially unstoppable momentum.

It may be possible to overshoot the 1.5C target and then lower temperatures, but this will be difficult and could require the use of unproven carbon capture and storage and removal techniques that draw carbon from the atmosphere. The best way of achieving it will be to minimise the temperature rise, and make the overshoot as brief as possible. That means cutting carbon as fast as possible now.

Q: Will rich countries stump up climate finance for vulnerable ones?

A: Last year’s Cop29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, was the finance Cop where, for the first time, countries debated how much assistance should be provided from the rich world to the poor. The previous target of $100bn each year from 2020 was not subject to debate, but was adopted at Cop15 in Copenhagen in 2009.

After two weeks of bitterness and hostility, Cop29 arrived at the same conclusion that had been predicted long before its start: an overarching goal of $1.3tn a year was to flow to the developing world by 2035, drawn from a wide variety of public and private sources and, within that, a pledge by developed countries to supply $300bn directly.

The divisions, fights and unseemly wrangling of Cop29 left a bitter taste for many, which Brazil has tried to heal and dispel. Part of that effort has been the preparation of a Baku to Belém Roadmap to 1.3T, a joint report by the Cop29 and Cop30 presidencies published a few days before the start of Cop30.

It contains more than 50 recommendations, none of which are binding on Cop30, but which will form the basis for discussions. They include raising money from oil and gas producers and other high-carbon activities, such as levies on frequent flyers and transport.

Q: Will countries agree to move away from fossil fuels?

A: At Cop28 in Dubai in 2023, countries agreed for the first time to “transition away from fossil fuels (Taff)”. No date was set for the phaseout, and no further details were given, but the resolution marked the first time the central cause of the climate crisis had been addressed in a Cop outcome.

No sooner had the gavel descended than petrostate opponents of the deal were trying to unpick it. They suggested it was not a binding resolution but simply one of a menu of options, and that it did not necessarily apply to all fossil fuels.

Last year, proponents of the “transition away” tried to strengthen it with a further resolution at Cop29, but they failed, in part because of the handling of the issue by the Azerbaijan Cop presidency.

This year, they want to bring it back again, but the Brazilian presidency is wary. Scores of countries have raised objections in some forums, and the issue is a hot potato. Some developing countries with oil and gas deposits fear they will be prevented from exploiting them and want to ditch the issue; others in favour of the resolution are cautious, arguing that it was settled at Cop28 and it would be dangerous to reopen it. But many proponents fear that if it is not progressed in some form that gives a plan as to how it can be achieved, the “transition away from fossil fuels” will remain just a vague promise with little value.

Brazil will have to find some way of navigating these shoals. One solution may be to set up a forum where countries can express their concerns freely, and without pressure, and that will take several years under successive Cop presidents to come up with a plan for the transition away from fossil fuels, rather than struggling to find an answer within two weeks.

Q: Can Brazil create a forest-saving fund?

A: The Amazon rainforest is everywhere in evidence in Belém, not least in the weather of this rainy city. Brazil brought world leaders here for a reason: President Lula’s leading project for Cop30 is the Tropical Forests Forever Facility, a fund that will use initial cash injections from developed country governments to raise money from the private sector and financial markets, to spend on projects that help governments and local communities preserve their existing forests, rather than exploit them for short-term gain.

Lula hopes to raise $25bn of initial funding, which will be used to create a $125bn fund. But the project has run into problems. Germany is likely to provide €1bn and Norway about $3.5bn to the fund. But the US will not contribute now under Donald Trump, and the UK disappointed the hosts by refusing to stump up cash at this stage, despite having been one of the key players in the early stages of the design of the fund.

Paying countries and communities with tropical forests to keep them standing is probably the best way yet found to preserve forests. The idea of doing so was endorsed two decades ago in the Stern review, and has a long pedigree. Alternatives, such as awarding forested countries carbon credits to be sold on the carbon markets, have proved problematic.

Without such payments, the need to raise cash for subsistence from exploiting the forest, through logging, ranching or conversion to soy or palm oil plantations, can be too strong. Nations also need money to combat illegal forces bent on forest destruction. Lula has succeeded in reining in the rampant deforestation that marred the tenure of his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro. But without international support in his efforts, Lula may face increasing difficulty at home.

Q: Will Indigenous voices finally be listened to?

A: Lula pledged that holding Cop in the Amazon would be an opportunity for Indigenous peoples to take the global stage, bringing their voices to the fore and their concerns, as well as celebrating their achievements.

All Cops have a small number of Indigenous people attending, often standing out from the crowd in colourful traditional dress. But few achieve much of substance for them, beyond warm words.

The difference at Cop30 is a new initiative from Brazil, called the global ethical stocktake. This takes inspiration from the global stocktake under the Paris agreement, which is a regular assessment of the progress made towards the 1.5C goal, by evaluating countries’ NDCs and the policies they are implementing to reach them.

The global ethical stocktake will focus on the “moral, ethical and cultural” aspects of the climate crisis, including the ways in which it has an outsized impact on poor, vulnerable and disadvantaged people, on women, on children and on Indigenous people.

It is not clear yet what influence the global ethical stocktake will have, but Brazil’s highly regarded environment minister, Marina Silva, will be in charge of ensuring it delivers for the people who need it most.

Q: Can a quick win on methane be agreed?

A: Cutting carbon is hard, but cutting the powerful greenhouse gas methane gives more bang for the buck. About a third of the global heating of recent years may be down to rising methane levels, and each molecule has about 80 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide. That means cutting methane could be the “emergency brake” on temperatures that the planet desperately needs.

There are relatively easy ways to achieve this – for instance, by stopping the venting or flaring of methane from oil and gas production facilities, staunching leaks from oil and gas wells and coalmines, and capturing and using the methane from landfill rubbish dumps.

But few countries enforce such rules, so the opportunity is lost. Brazil has shown little enthusiasm for methane action – the country has a huge agriculture sector, and cattle are another major contributor to global methane emissions – but addressing the issue would be a big help at this crucial juncture in the climate crisis.

Brazil does have enthusiasm for biofuels – fuels from non-fossil sources – and this is controversial. Brazilian biofuels – much in evidence around Cop – are often efficiently produced, but around the world this is not always the case, and biofuels can displace nature, compete with food production for land, require the use of vast quantities of chemical fertiliser and water, and, in many cases, do not actually represent a substantial saving of carbon dioxide compared with fossil fuels. Many campaigners fear that the host country’s plans for a quadrupling of “sustainable” fuels (mostly biofuels, but with some other synthetic fuels and hydrogen included) could have unintended poor consequences.

Q: Will Trump scupper the talks in absentia?

A: The US president, Donald Trump, will not attend Cop30, but he will overshadow it. The US, the world’s second biggest emitter of carbon dioxide after China, saw a boom in renewable energy under Joe Biden (though also an increase in fossil fuel exports) and further declines in its greenhouse gas output.

Trump has scrapped incentives for renewable energy, halted major projects, opened up new lands for oil and gas drilling and boosted the coal industry. The US NDC was submitted under Biden, but it was largely a symbolic gesture – Trump has vowed to withdraw from the Paris agreement, for the second time.

While the world can carry on without the US, and while many states, cities and businesses within the US have also pledged to continue with their own climate plans, the actions of the president of the world’s biggest economy inevitably have far-reaching impacts. Trump has signalled in many forums that he rejects the international consensus on “multilateralism” – the idea that global problems should be solved by nations coming together in a spirit of cooperation, respect for each another and the rule of law.

 

Cover photo:  Cop30 is taking place in Belém at a key point in the cycle set out in the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change. Photograph: Victoria Jones/Shutterstock