Andreas Sieber is the associate director of global policy and campaigns at 350.org.
It is no accident that the COP30 presidency convenes consultations on Thursday, a day after the UN Climate Summit. Wednesday’s speeches offered proof that, even amid geopolitical upheaval, the Paris Agreement still drives momentum. At the same time, the hard truth was clear well before the summit: the pledges do not add up.
COP30’s credibility rests on how it confronts this ambition gap. Attempts to spin COP30 as a success without such a response seem hollow. If COP30 must respond to this ambition gap, a cover decision emerges as the most credible path forward.
COP30 brings the ambition cycle of the Global Stocktake (GST), launched at COP28, to a close. The ambition gap is often framed through the temperature threshold, but it runs deeper, encompassing adaptation, loss and damage, and finance, all of which are falling dangerously short.
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A cover decision is surely not the only marker of success: the Belém Action Mechanism on Just Transition, an ambitious Baku-to-Belém roadmap, and a Global Goal on Adaptation are just a few among other high-stakes deliverables. But it is one decisive piece of the puzzle.
Breaking through entrenched negotiations
Why do we need one in the first place? Anyone who sat through the UAE Dialogue or Mitigation Work Programme earlier this year, will have more than serious doubts that these rooms can overcome their entrenched dynamics to deliver adequate outcomes, let alone allow the broader dealmaking required.
That is why a cover decision emerges as the most credible way to confront the ambition gap head-on – and here it is the Brazilian presidency that holds the pen.
A cover decision is no magic bullet to solve negotiation challenges, but it offers the best-placed procedural vehicle to balance different elements of the ambition package, allowing a race to the top instead of zero-sum trade-offs.
At the last COP, we saw mitigation pitted against finance, and without real commitments – especially credible new finance from wealthy countries – that history risks repeating itself. Process alone is no guarantee of success, but a misguided process is a recipe for failure. It’s also noteworthy that the COP29 presidency, due to a lack of political will or misguided strategy, refused to engage with the idea of a cover decision.
Instead of discussing several crunch issues across different rooms, a cover decision can bring topics together in the same room and the same text.
What should a cover decision include
A cover decision can anchor critical finance outcomes that otherwise lack a formal home, from the Baku-to-Belém roadmap to a meaningful scale-up in adaptation finance, with tripling as the obvious first step.
This is not about creating a procedural parking lot; it is about giving key outcomes real political and procedural weight. Linking the roadmap’s $1.3 trillion mobilisation goal for 2035 to concrete donor commitments through a cover decision would turn aspiration into accountability.
Responding to the ambition gap will also require initiatives that target the sectors driving the crisis. This could mean establishing a dedicated working group on phasing out fossil fuels, anchored in equity and 1.5°C consistent timelines, with a mandate that connects its work to COP31 under the incoming Presidency.
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It could also mean reinforcing and expanding the COP29 Grids Initiative, this time with concrete public finance commitments attached. Both initiatives could be launched through presidential declarations and then captured and formalised within a cover decision.
Finally, a cover decision must also speak beyond the negotiating halls. It should respond with grave concern to the latest NDC synthesis report, and it should build on messages from the landmark ICJ advisory opinion and the leaders’ summit to signal that the world’s governments understand the urgency of the moment.
Instruments of real progress
Critics may dismiss cover decisions as the epitome of empty words: procedural theatre about brackets and commas, offering conversation to those who are excited about “the process”, conversation rather than consequences. At times, cover decisions can be sprawling, jargon-laden texts that feel detached from real-world impact, such as in 2019. Yet history shows they can also be instruments of real progress.
It was a cover decision in Durban in 2011 that launched the Ad Hoc Working Group (ADP), the negotiating track that ultimately delivered the Paris Agreement.
Since then, their character has evolved. With the Paris rulebook now in place, cover decisions have increasingly driven forward momentum.
In Glasgow, a cover decision broke new ground by naming a fossil fuel for the first time, calling for the “phase down” of coal. However imperfect – singling out coal was very convenient for European countries and the United States at the time – this opened the door to COP28’s landmark outcome: a collective commitment to transition away from all fossil fuels and to triple renewable energy.
One could argue that the COP28 Global Stocktake decision was not technically a cover decision, but in practice it served as one. And in Egypt, a cover decision launched both the Just Transition Work Programme and the loss and damage fund, breakthroughs that continue to shape the process today. As we look ahead to COP30, where the Belém Action Mechanism on Just Transition is on the table, history suggests that a strong cover decision could again prove decisive.
COP30 and the Brazilian presidency will be remembered for whether (and how) it responds to the ambition gap in this decisive decade. A strong cover decision remains the most credible tool to anchor that response.
