What happened at COP30 and did the United States’ absence change anything?

Writer: Tom Bull

This month saw the UN’s annual climate conference, COP30, which was held in Belém, Brazil this year. Despite some causes for optimism such as the pledge to triple international adaptation finance to $120 billion and funding for Brazil’s new Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), the overall mood surrounding COP30’s outcome is one of disappointment. With less movement on an increasingly urgent climate problem than was expected and needed in addition to a notable absence of any official US delegates, the question of whether COP is still fit for purpose re-emerged. 

The most notable outcome from this year’s COP is that the countries which attended this year’s conference failed to agree on a formalised ‘fossil fuel roadmap’ in spite of hopes before the conference that this would be agreed upon. The potential for the fossil fuel roadmap’s formalisation at COP30 had been driven by support from Brazil, the host of COP this year, and had gained momentum after gaining support from various Latin American, European, and even oil-producing states such as Norway. However, this opportunity would prove to be unfruitful and talks collapsed within a week. 

Furthermore, pledges to fund the green transition and damage mitigation often do not materialise and the actual number raised often falls short of headline numbers. For example, the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD), established during COP27, reported that, of the $817 million pledged to the cause since its creation, only $397 million had actually been paid. While $397 million is certainly a lot of money, it demonstrates the lack of enforceability of these pledges and is something which is unlikely to be improved upon with the United States stepping back from the climate change debate during President Trump’s second term. 

Although the lack of commitments, let alone action, on transitioning away from fossil fuels at COP30 this month is certainly disappointing it must be made clear why no final agreement happened. When it is said that no agreement was made on formalising a fossil fuel roadmap, this does not mean that it lacked support, or even majority support. Rather, it means that the COP Decision report, a document produced by the summit to outline all the agreements made, did not mention anything about the roadmap. It is important to note that this report is made via consensus, so if even one country disagrees with one item on the list, then no agreement is made. This resulted in the COP Decision containing only elements unanimously supported, meaning that it was not necessarily surprising that no agreement on phasing out fossil fuels was made. 

This unique way of formulating the COP Decision also means that progress can happen on certain issues even if it isn’t mentioned in the final report. A good example of this is the issue of deforestation. This is a very important aspect of COPs because, despite the total forest area increasing in the last 20 years, the area covered by tropical forests have fallen. Tropical forests have more benefits than non-tropical forests such as greater biodiversity which have global effects, not just local, so progress here is vital and progress was made at COP30 even though it was omitted from the final decision due to opposition from petrostates. As mentioned before, TFFF was created by Brazil and given $6.7 billion in funding. TFFF aims to shift the economics of deforestation and address the root cause. By increasing incentives to leave tropical forests standing, deforestation can be dramatically decreased via the appropriation of ‘non-timber values’. Non-timber values refer to the value of resources that can be extracted if deforestation doesn’t occur such as fruit/nut harvesting and vegetable products. An increase in funding to reach Brazil’s $25 billion target has also seen interest from the UK and China who have demonstrated an interest in providing pledges for this at COP31. Therefore, highly promising steps were made with regards to deforestation at COP30 despite it being left out of the report. 

In addition, climate justice was another area of success for COP30. It was agreed to create a just transition mechanism which aims to increase cooperation between countries and communities to create a just outcome for the green transition, especially by providing support for people employed in industries with high emissions. This was also one of the only major landmark agreements mentioned in the COP Decision. 

So, did the absence of the US change anything? Many world leaders were absent from COP this year but delegations were sent by all but four countries (Afghanistan, Myanmar, San Marino, and the United States). For example, Xi Jinping did not attend the conference but sent the second largest delegation of 789, second to only the host, Brazil, who sent 3,805 delegates. In real terms, a country’s absence simply means that they cannot be present to disagree with points put in the final agreement which is non-binding anyway. In this way, the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on 4^th November 2020 and again on Trump’s first day back in office was far more significant than its absence from this year’s COP since the Paris Agreement is legally binding. In the end, the US did not interfere directly with COP this year but this perhaps didn’t change anything, suggests Fiona Harvey of the Guardian, since Saudi Arabia blocked many agreements from being featured in the COP Decision anyway. 

In summary, this year’s COP did make progress, especially in terms of climate justice and deforestation, though not formally as much was left out of the final agreement thanks to opposition from petrostates like Saudi Arabia. Trump’s snubbing of COP30 also seems to have not affected the outcome of COP either. Even without significant mentions of decreasing fossil fuel reliance and deforestation in the final agreement, the inclusion of a just transition mechanism is another significant step forward made by COP30 even if not legally binding. Of course, none of this is enough and the world must be prepared to make much greater commitments in future COPs in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change. A key step towards this would be the adoption of further legally binding agreements like the Paris Agreement.