Fran­cis Mc Bar­nett

As of No­vem­ber 2025, the 30th Con­fer­ence of Par­ties (COP30) of the Unit­ed Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (UN­FC­CC) will con­vene in Brazil. There has been much an­tic­i­pa­tion as cli­mate change dis­cus­sions re­turn to the coun­try where these is­sues were for­mal­ly in­tro­duced with­in the Unit­ed Na­tions sys­tem.

The glob­al com­mu­ni­ty, how­ev­er, is liv­ing through an “in­ter­est­ing time” with a pha­lanx of is­sues that could dis­tract from the ur­gency of the cli­mate chal­lenge. There is, of course, the sit­u­a­tion in the Oc­cu­pied Ter­ri­to­ry in the Mid­dle East, the on­go­ing war in Ukraine, the civ­il war and hu­man­i­tar­i­an sit­u­a­tion in Su­dan, the po­lit­i­cal stale­mate in the Unit­ed States Con­gress, the de­ci­sion of the Unit­ed States ad­min­is­tra­tion to leave the Paris Agree­ment, the mar­itime ac­tiv­i­ties of the Unit­ed States mil­i­tary in the South­ern Caribbean, and the dev­as­ta­tion to Ja­maica and oth­er coun­tries by Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa in the Caribbean, to name a few is­sues.

The Re­pub­lic of Brazil will be the host and have the pres­i­den­cy of COP30, to be held in Belem, and the pres­i­den­cy an­nounced the launch­ing of four Vi­sion­ary Cir­cles of Lead­er­ship, which it be­lieves will con­cen­trate on re­al­is­ing progress in sev­er­al of the dif­fi­cult is­sues. It has stressed, nev­er­the­less, that the ap­proach would be found­ed on a be­lief in mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism and re­spect for sci­ence.

It is hoped that the is­sues men­tioned ear­li­er will not “take the wind out of the sails” of the for­mal Unit­ed Na­tions ne­go­ti­a­tions. The con­fer­ence it­self will re­veal how suc­cess­ful the Brazil­ian de­lib­er­a­tions have been in build­ing con­sen­sus and mov­ing for­ward on a host of dif­fi­cult is­sues, in­clud­ing cli­mate fi­nanc­ing.

The US has with­drawn from the Paris Agree­ment, and this, in prac­ti­cal terms, elim­i­nates one of the lead­ing coun­tries and ma­jor his­toric pol­luters from the process. This de­ci­sion will put ad­di­tion­al pres­sure on the sub­mis­sions of the Eu­ro­pean Union in terms of sub­stan­tive ac­tions to lim­it emis­sions and in pro­vid­ing fi­nan­cial re­sources to ad­dress cli­mate change.

In ad­di­tion, the ac­tion by the US may em­bold­en or strength­en those de­vel­oped coun­tries that, in the past, have at­tempt­ed to fo­cus on the emis­sion pro­files of coun­tries like Chi­na and In­dia. Some de­vel­oped coun­tries have al­so float­ed ar­gu­ments for greater par­tic­i­pa­tion from the oil-pro­duc­ing coun­tries in the Mid­dle East. For its part, the Chi­nese au­thor­i­ties have giv­en a com­mit­ment to phase down the use of coal, and at the same time, the coun­try con­tin­ues to be a ma­jor play­er in the re­new­able en­er­gy tech­nol­o­gy mar­ket.

At the con­clu­sion of COP29 in Baku, Azer­bai­jan, in 2024, the par­ties agreed to a New Col­lec­tive Quan­ti­fied Goal (NC­QG) on cli­mate fi­nance of US$300 bil­lion per year to sup­port cli­mate ac­tion in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries. The Glob­al South, how­ev­er, had ini­tial­ly made a re­quest for US$1.3 tril­lion on an an­nu­al ba­sis to treat with the cli­mate chal­lenge. The fi­nal agree­ment was, there­fore, by their es­ti­mate, short by US$1.0 tril­lion.

The par­ties to the UN­FC­CC are re­quired un­der the Paris Agree­ment to sub­mit this year Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tions (ND­Cs), which are for­mal in­di­ca­tions of ac­tions that the coun­tries are un­der­tak­ing to keep glob­al tem­per­a­tures be­low 1.5 de­grees Cel­sius. Coun­tries were en­cour­aged by the Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed Na­tions to make these sub­mis­sions am­bi­tious. To date, de­spite promis­es, it is re­port­ed that there have been just over 60 ND­Cs sub­mit­ted, and the eval­u­a­tions of these doc­u­ments in­di­cate that the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty is not on track to achieve stat­ed goals. We can but hope that the out­stand­ing ND­Cs will paint a more op­ti­mistic pic­ture in keep­ing with the goal of lim­it­ing glob­al tem­per­a­tures to be­low 1.5 de­grees Cel­sius.

The Fund for Re­spond­ing to Loss and Dam­age was one of the ma­jor achieve­ments of COP27 in Egypt. The fund was op­er­a­tionalised at COP28 af­ter some dis­cus­sion. In the Caribbean space, the dev­as­ta­tion that Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa has wrought as it ram­paged through the Caribbean should give im­pe­tus to ar­gu­ments to give life and sub­stance to this mech­a­nism. COP30 is al­so ex­pect­ed to act on the re­sults of the Glob­al Stock­take in 2023, which iden­ti­fied gaps in mit­i­ga­tion, adap­ta­tion, and fi­nance and in­di­cat­ed that the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty was not on course to keep tem­per­a­tures be­low 1.5 de­grees Cel­sius.

There is much rid­ing on COP30 in Brazil. The in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty is in a pe­ri­od of great tur­bu­lence and flux, and in such a pe­ri­od there is a con­stant shift­ing of fo­cus and at­ten­tion. Brazil, as a coun­try, has its own in­ter­nal and in­ter­na­tion­al chal­lenges as it at­tempts to guide this process, and the coun­try will be un­der pres­sure to show that it is equal to the task.

It is im­por­tant to ac­knowl­edge that there are loud nois­es com­ing from well-placed cli­mate scep­tics and cli­mate de­niers in some ma­jor cap­i­tals. These pro­tag­o­nists, against all ev­i­dence and avail­able sci­ence, are con­vinced that cli­mate change is a hoax and should not be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly. For Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States on the front­line of the cli­mate chal­lenge, ours is a lived re­al­i­ty, and we need to con­tin­ue to ac­cel­er­ate our ef­forts and ad­vo­ca­cy.

Change and progress are not pos­si­ble with­out strug­gle. As we ‘Sail to Belem’, we re­main hope­ful and pos­i­tive.