The Brazilian diplomats who will preside over the COP30 climate summit in November say they are focused on ensuring the hundreds of climate pledges already made by governments, corporations and others at previous COP meetings are met, rather than getting them to make fresh promises.
COP30’s High Level Champion Dan Ioschpe told journalists on Thursday that, while “we are not against new initiatives”, his team are “very much focused on what has already been drawn [up] and solutions that are already coming up over time”.
He said there have been over 400 initiatives coming out of COPs over the last ten years – on everything from methane to forests and conflict-affected states – and the COP30 team wants to map them and then analyse the bottlenecks preventing their implementation.
Before COP29 last year, for example, the Azerbaijani presidency announced a plan to get fossil fuel producers to put money into a climate fund – but an event where it was due to be unveiled in Baku was quietly dropped and nothing further has been announced since. Another Azerbaijani idea for a COP29 truce was criticised as a “PR exercise” and failed to bring temporary global peace as hoped.
Global Stocktake response
In his fourth open letter this year, released on Friday, COP30 President André Aranha Corrêa do Lago said he wanted organisations around the world – including businesses, civil society and national and local governments – to help implement the key goals set in response to the Global Stocktake under the UN climate process.
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The stocktake is a 46-page document produced after months of research and consultation by the United Nations in September 2023, which summarises how far governments are falling short of their collective climate goals under the 2015 Paris Agreement.
A few months later at COP28 in Dubai, all governments agreed to respond to the stocktake by calling on each other to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems and triple renewable energy capacity and double energy-efficiency improvements by 2030 – among other measures.
Since COP28 though, some oil-dependent governments like Saudi Arabia have downplayed the commitment to transition away from fossil fuels and government negotiations on implementing it have floundered as a result, struggling to find consensus even to repeat the same language in documents.
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But Corrêa do Lago emphasised the stocktake’s continued importance, calling it “our compass for Mission 1.5”, referring to efforts to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limit warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial times.
He said the COP30 Presidency’s aim is to bring “a new dynamic to global climate action”, aligning everybody’s efforts in a global mobilisation (or mutirão) to achieve the Global Stocktake goals as a “global NDC” or “globally determined contribution”. NDCs (nationally determined contributions) are the climate plans each government is expected to submit to the UN every five years.
Corrêa do Lago announced a list of 30 “thematic areas” under six “axes” that will be pursued, including ensuring universal access to energy, improving solid waste management and tackling disinformation about climate change.
Special COP30 pavilions
COP30 CEO Ana Toni said that each axis – for example transitioning energy, industry and transport – would have its own physical pavilion at COP30 in Belém – where it can be discussed by delegates.
Kaveh Guilanpour, vice president for international strategies at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, who followed the stocktake discussions closely, said the Brazilian proposal was “a really good idea” and praised the COP30 host nation for “thinking outside of the box”.
It will help governments, businesses and other organisations interested in particular parts of the global stocktake response – like doubling energy efficiency – to find help to pursue those goals, he said.
Greenpeace has called on Brazil to get all countries to agree to a joint political statement – known as a cover decision – at COP30 which would include setting out how they will meet a global goal to halt and reverse forest destruction by 2030.
Since governments committed to that goal in 2023, the loss of tropical primary forests has increased. Toni said Brazil had not yet decided if there would be a cover decision in Belém.
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Climate campaign group 350.org said the reforms presented on Friday by the COP30 presidency offer a “useful streamlining” by addressing the proliferation of initiatives and lack of overarching coherence.
But, Andreas Sieber, the group’s associate director of policy and campaigns said the presidency should not assume that this alone “will be sufficient to respond to the glaring crisis we must address at the negotiations”. “Reforms are not enough to meet the moment,” he added.
He called for commitments to phase out fossil fuels and accelerate renewable energy to be reflected in the formal outcome at COP30 and urged leaders to offer concrete steps to “advance a just transition”.
