As this year’s UN climate summit kicks off in Brazil, the stakes are higher than ever.
The world has changed dramatically in the decade since leaders celebrated a historic climate agreement in Paris a decade ago, but not quite in ways they expected or wanted.
The warming of Earth’s climate has continued faster than society has been able to wean itself from burning the coal, oil and natural gas.
There’s been progress — more than a degree Celsius has been shaved off future warming projections since 2015 — but the lack of enough of it will be a big focus for the next two weeks as diplomats gather in Belem, Brazil, for the annual United Nations climate negotiations.
The aim is simple, but lofty: for countries to work together to stop the worst effects of human-caused climate change.
That’s a goal many experts say is slipping out of reach. Climate change is already escalating disasters that mean life or death for billions of people around the world, and delaying action will only worsen the problem.
Spotlight on Indigenous peoples
With the world’s largest rainforest on its doorstep, many have lauded Belem as well-positioned to highlight the role of Indigenous peoples and land stewardship in addressing climate change.
The government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, which includes Brazil’s first-ever Indigenous Peoples’ Ministry, expects over 3,000 Indigenous delegates to participate this month as both members of civil society and negotiators. For comparison, last year’s summit in Azerbaijan drew just 170 Indigenous people.
“This time, world leaders are coming Belem, to the heart of the Amazon, closer to our homes, our rivers, our territories,” said Olivia Bisa, leader of the Chapra nation in Peru.
Although Indigenous people cannot represent tribal nations in the talks, Bisa and others will have a greater role as delegates negotiating on behalf of their nation-states.
“We need to be in the room, not right outside of it,” she said.
Their protests have also shined a light on the contradictions of host Brazil promoting itself as a defender of the Amazon rainforest. Lula’s recent approval of an oil drilling project at the mouth of the Amazon river has set off demonstrations and outrage.
Progress on forest protections
In the days ahead of the summit’s official kickoff, dozens of countries already pledged support for an ambitious new incentive by Brazil’s Lula to support endangered forests around the world.
The fund, known as the Tropical Forests Forever Facility, drew $5.5 billion in pledges by Friday, as Norway and France joined Brazil and Indonesia in investing. Germany said Friday it would make a “considerable” commitment. The scheme eventually seeks to leverage investments into $125 billion.
Financed by interest-bearing debt instead of donations, the fund seeks to turn the economic logic of deforestation on its head by making it more lucrative for governments to keep their trees rather than cut them down.
A list of more than 70 heavily forested countries — from Congo to Colombia — will be eligible for payments as long as they keep deforestation below a set rate. Nations that fail to protect their forests will see their payouts reduced at a punitive rate for every hectare that’s destroyed.
The United States’ glaring absence
The US will send no high-level officials to the COP30 climate summit in Brazil, the White House said Friday.
US President Donald Trump has called climate change a hoax and withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords the day he entered office
“President Trump will not jeopardise our country’s economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals that are killing other countries,” Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement.
There are concerns that the absence of the US — which has at times played a key role in convincing China to restrain carbon emissions and securing finance for poor countries — could signal a broader rollblack of climate politics.
The Paris Agreement, 10 years on
Ten years ago, countries made a historic deal in the first global pact to fight climate change.
Since then, the planet’s annual temperature has already jumped about 0.46 degrees Celsius, one of the biggest 10-year temperature hikes on record, according to data from the European climate service Copernicus.
The Paris Agreement was supposed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above the historical average, but many scientists now say it’s unlikely countries will stay below that threshold.
But the world has made some progress. Renewable energy is now cheaper in most places than polluting coal, oil and natural gas. And if countries agree to do what they’ve said so far, they could stave off a little over a full degree Celsius warming. That may not sound like much, but every tenth of a degree matters when it comes to the effects on catastrophic weather.
Unlike the Paris Agreement, or even last year when negotiators were trying to get countries to agree on how much rich countries should pay poor countries to adapt to climate change, this year’s talks aren’t expected to end with any ambitious new deal.
Instead, organisers and analysts frame this year’s conference as the “implementation COP.”
“Those who go to Belem asking the question ‘what is the agreement that is going to come out of it?’ are asking the wrong question,” said Christiana Figueres, former UN climate chief.