As officials gather in the Brazilian city of Belem for the Cop30 UN climate change conference, which starts on Monday, global efforts to limit carbon emissions face major headwinds.
The 2015 Paris Agreement's aim of limiting global temperature rises to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels is close to being breached, while the US is exiting the treaty and dozens of nations have failed to update pledges on cutting emissions.
Cop30 is, however, set to bring the launch of a fund to help protect forests, and is expected to have a renewed focus on adapting to climate change.
A disputed choice?
Situated at the mouth of the Amazon, Belem has been a disputed choice as the host city, with concerns raised about sections of rainforest being felled before the summit so that a road could be built. The limited availability of accommodation in the city for the more than 50,000 attendees expected has also been a concern.
Ahead of Cop30, a majority of nations failed to provide new nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – commitments on how they will take action on emissions – by the September deadline, highlighting the difficulty in achieving progress to limit climate change.
The lack of enthusiasm seems palpable, given the September deadline itself was a revised extension from the previous February cut-off. Hosts Brazil and the UAE laid out robust NDCs before the initial February deadline while many others held their breath.
“The hope was that countries would come with enhanced ambition on mitigation, on emissions reductions, to this Cop,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, a senior fellow at the Asia Policy Institute and a co-founder of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
“That expectation isn’t being realised, so now it’s much more about where to go from here, basically recognising that this round of emissions targets is not delivering anything close to the Paris Agreement goals and that there needs to be a reckoning.
“That means that on the mitigation side it’s going to be challenging to make significant progress. There should be a lot more scope for progress on forests, which is a focus area for Brazil.”
Are targets being met?
The Paris deal set a target of limiting temperature rises to no more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, a threshold breached in 2024. According to the World Meteorological Organisation, last year temperatures exceeded pre-industrial levels by 1.55°C.
While results from only a single year do not represent a breaking of the Paris target, which is based on long-term averages, recent months have seen what some see as a scaling back of efforts to combat climate change.
The US is not sending senior officials to Cop30, while nations including New Zealand and hosts Brazil have been accused of diluting their efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
Edgar Hertwich, professor of industrial ecology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, said that narratives opposed to action on climate change had gained traction in public debate.
“The problem isn’t taken seriously enough,” he said. "In some sense I see it as an issue where public pressure is not there any more. There has been a lot of influence from [vested] interests.”
In a statement released last week, Simon Stiell, the UN's climate chief, said that pledges by nations were likely to cause global emissions to fall by about 10 per cent by 2035.
While he said that humanity was “now clearly bending the emissions curve downwards for the first time”, progress is “not nearly fast enough”. He also said that there is “an urgent need” to accelerate efforts to adapt to climate change.
The Trump effect
Asher Minns, executive director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, said that US President Donald Trump’s rolling back of climate initiatives by America had “certainly changed the tone” of discourse on climate change.
But he indicated that, even within the US, action may still be taken by states despite what is happening at the federal level.
“I’ve been around a really long time. Every few years whatever is happening in the United States is a bit influenced by who the next president is going to be. I haven’t seen any difference in Cops and in implementation,” he said.
“Overall there’s irreversible progress in climate action, [although] it’s not as fast as we want and it’s not as deep as we want.”
All eyes on the forests
A central part of Cop30 will be the launch of the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), an initiative spearheaded by Brazil that will provide funds for developing nations that conserve their forests, with more than 70 countries eligible for support.
Cop30 officially starts on Monday and runs until November 21, but the Belem Declaration on Hunger, Poverty and People-Centred Climate Action is set for adoption over the weekend. This will highlight the importance of ensuring equitable access to food as the world develops.
Dr Ismahane Elouafi, executive managing director of the CGIAR, a global network of agricultural research centres, said that the food systems could be more efficient, with crops sometimes exported from developing nations before being returned in processed form. This increases emissions, she said, and makes food more expensive.
A former chief scientist of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN and former head of the International Centre for Biosaline Agriculture in Dubai, she said that agriculture accounted for 33 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, most of which is because of land use changes, such as deforestation, to allow for agriculture.
Improving agricultural productivity in developing nations could ensure that enough food is produced for growing populations without more land being needed, Dr Elouafi said.
“It’s doable in the land we’re using if we provide technologies and innovations to farmers in the countries with the lowest incomes,” she said. “In Africa per hectare it’s still using 20 to 40 per cent of its potential compared to high-income countries.”
