From beginning to end, the recently-completed UN climate conference, in Belém, Brazil, failed to deliver. It is an open question, however, whether that failure is better characterized as nearly complete, or as completely abject.
I prefer the former formulation since (a) it extends the benefit of doubt to the many patently sincere international climate negotiators who typically gather in high hope at these annual COPs, and (b) acknowledges a limited (and vague) — but potentially-important — commitment by wealthier nations to triple adaptation finance to highly-impacted/ low income nations.
But in hindsight I do not think any benefit of the doubt should be extended to the COP 30 Brazilian Presidency (the “COP 30 leadership”). That is so because, to judge from a blow-by-blow accounting from Carbon Brief, COP30: Key outcomes agreed at the UN climate talks in Belém, it clearly appears that the COP 30 leadership, headed by Brazilian economist André Corrêa do Lago, was more concerned to forge a final conference statement conveying the appearance of agreement than to press the nations for more rapid and widespread decarbonization.
In my view, that papering-over of the conference’s signal point of disagreement entirely fails to advance the principal aim of the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), that is, to achieve “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” This is especially true with respect to the need to phase out the unabated use of fossil fuels in energy systems.
The US No Show
The United States did not even send an official delegation to the COP 30, consistent with the Trump II Administration’s Day One determination that we would exit the 2015 Paris Agreement[1] pursuant to a selective drive for American “energy dominance.”
Searching for a silver lining to this sordid development, at least one international diplomat I know hoped that, in consequence of the US absence, there might be less resistance to the central demand of the relevant scientific community with respect to the climate crisis — that is, that the international community acknowledge the rapid deterioration of key climate indices and rise to meet the moment with far-more stringent commitments for rapid decarbonization, among other things.
Specifically, nations could at least have (1) agreed to markedly increased their “ambition” via more stringent “nationally-determined contributions” (NDCs), that is, national plans to transition from fossil fuel to sustainable energy sources, and (2) accept the obligation to ensure reasonably strict and accountable implementation of those NDCs.
Consistent with these points, in two sets of opening speeches, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva referred to COP 30 variously as the “COP of Truth,” and the “COP of Implementation.”
But this hope of rational international action — steps that would counterbalance, to some degree, the current pell-mell rush of the US to maximize carbon emissions — proved illusory. Other oil-soaked nations filled the obstructionist void created by the US absence, and COP 30 officials appeared timidly to give in. It was not a pretty picture.
Flameout of the Mere Mention of a Fossil-Fuel Phase Out
Specifically, then, just how did it come to pass that the final communique, dated November 22, 2025 and denominated by the COP 30 leadership as the “global mutirão,” failed even to mention the terms “fossil fuels,” “oil,” “natural gas,” and “coal”?
First, note that nothing in that communique actually disputed the determination that a widespread and substantial phase out of the use of unabated fossil fuels for energy generation is necessary to protect and restore a viable climate system. Thus, there was no take-back of the international commitment, reflected in the COP 28 final communique, that nations must transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems. For more on that, see my December 2023 piece in this same space, “Was it the ‘Beginning of the End’? COP28 & the Aspirational Fossil Fuel Phase Out.”
Moreover, in Belém, at first, there was at least one serious effort by the COP 30 Presidency, at the behest of 80 nations and the European Union, to press for “increased ambition” and “truthful implementation.” Thus, in the initial mutirão draft, dated November 18, the COP 30 leadership, responding perhaps to the initial demand of President Lula, expressly recognized “the need for urgent action and support to achieve deep, rapid and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.” Going further in that draft, and using the strongest of diplomatic language, the nations would have decided “to convene a high-level ministerial round table on different national circumstances, pathways and approaches with a view to supporting countries to develop[] just, orderly and equitable transition roadmaps, including to progressively overcome their dependency on fossil fuels and towards halting and reversing deforestation.”[2]
So what happened between Tuesday and Friday?
And so, what happened between that Tuesday and that Friday? Again, we can piece it together from two timely accounts from Carbon Brief and another from Grist.
First, it is important to understand that each COP final document is approved, if at all, only by consensus. One dissenting chef, therefore, will ruin the consensus sauce.
Apparently, the COP 30 leadership told negotiators in a closed meeting that approximately 50% of participating nations opposed such a fossil-fuels “roadmap,” though that leadership declined at the time even to share the list of opposing nations. On subsequent analysis of a leaked version of that list, Carbon Brief analysts dispute the COP 30 leadership’s asserted count, both on the ground that some of the listed nations in fact had publicly backed a fossil fuel phaseout road map or else, such as in the case of Turkey, flatly denied their opposition status. [Turkey, slated to host the next COP next November 9, in theory is in position to do something to redeem itself and turn things around, but that would take courage and foresight.]
The COP of the truth cannot support an outcome that ignores science.
Colombia’s Daniela Duran Gonzalez, head of international affairs for the Colombian Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, at COP 23. From Grist.
It thus appears that the COP 30 leadership in Belém gave up too soon — perhaps, as I have indicated at the outset of this blog, for fear of ending the conference in open disagreement as to a decarbonization roadmap. All in all, it seems clear that some of the present major producing and importing nations, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Russia, and China, placed sufficient pressure on a harried and weak COP 30 leadership to abandon its own modest proposal to establish a modicum of additional international implementation accountability,
Interestingly, at the COP 30 closing plenary, a Colombia national delegate raised an objection concerning the final communique’s silence on fossil fuels. As Grist’s Toya Teirstein put it:
In his haste to end the conference, do Lago had inadvertently passed over a point of order raised by Colombia during the gaveling of the main agreement text. [Colombia’s Daniela Duran] Gonzalez, and representatives of many other nations, wanted the final agreement to include language around fossil fuels.
“Do Lago had to pause the plenary to confer with Colombia and other nations. After 30 minutes of haggling, the parties came back to the table to finish the conference with an agreement to continue conversations in the future. Do Lago also promised to launch two road maps of his own, one aimed at phasing out fossil fuels and the other in service of ending deforestation. Those efforts will take place outside the binding authority of the Paris Agreement, however, and are essentially opt-in endeavors.”
Concluding Note
My review here admittedly details only a limited but, I think, critical segment of this year’s UN climate conference, and this year my observations are necessarily second hand. The intrepid reader can learn more by reviewing the linked first-hand sources.
In closing, here, I can offer two observations:
First, the desire to maintain at least the appearance of progress in the face of obvious failure is strong and widespread — indeed, the siren call of unanimity seemed to infect not only the COP 30 leadership but country negotiators, even those who were clearly determined, at one stage, to directly address the fossil fuels juggernaut. Thus, for instance, several delegates indicated that the developing failure even to include in the final communique a procedural roadmap for more rapid decarbonization would be a redline for them. But no delegation blocked the consensus in favor of the final mutirao.
In the Grist account, one long-time negotiator summed up the proceedings as “a good day for multilateralism [but] a mixed day for the climate.” As I’ve tried to make clear in the foregoing, I could not disagree more. COP 30 was a failure of multilateralism in service to the cosmetic appearance of agreement.
Second, there is the curious case of China. In light of its flat CO2 emissions since early 2024, see here, and its burgeoning green manufacturing prowess – including with respect to solar panels and EVs – China was well-positioned to fill the void of leadership that has infected this and prior recent UN climate conferences. But, as discussed in the comprehensive Carbon Brief rundown, the Chinese delegation persistently rejected any suggestion that it assume a greater measure of leadership at COP 30 in Belém.
On the other hand, China, no less than the US and many other nations, is hard hit by mounting climate-induced extremes, and its sharp call for stronger nation-by-nation climate action during the just completed G-20 meeting in South Africa illustrates that China is not adverse to the assumption of at least a measure of climate leadership in some fora.
All in all, the situation seems to me again to implicate the unwieldy nature of the UNFCCC brand of multilateralism at each annual COP, as well as the irreplaceability, at this juncture, of great power leadership on climate. That is a topic to which we will have occasion to return.
[1] Article 2 of the Paris Agreement binds all signatories to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to “strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change, in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty, including by: (a) Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change. . . .”
[2] I will return to any evaluation of the COP’s treatment of the deforestation issue in a future blog.