COP30 success or flop?
- Tom Vermolen
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
The Conference of Parties on Climate Change is 30 years old now, the Paris Agreement was signed 10 years ago, time for an evaluation. Ten years ago, the Paris Agreement made a promise, to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and to pursue efforts “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.” It also promised that developed countries should take the lead in providing financial assistance to countries that are less endowed and more vulnerable to the dire effects of the climate crisis.
Ten years after the Paris Agreement, the forecast is that we will not achieve that 1.5°C goal, nor even 2°C. The current forecast is 2.8°C above pre-industrial levels. However, at the time the Paris Agreement was signed, 5°C was forecast, so some improvement was made, but not enough (yet). In terms of climate finance, the COP has yet to deliver. No real (or meaningful) budget was made available to climate-vulnerable countries.
The UN, global leadership, and major industries have yet to deliver on the promise made by the Paris Agreement. These parties aren’t even close to upholding the Paris Agreement, which would ensure a safe future for all.
On the brighter side, action readiness is growing once more among people. During the Covid pandemic, action readiness dropped to an all time low. Now, more and more people around the globe are ready to take it to the streets, and get their voices heard. We must demand the next COP(s) to be more successful than the last. COP needs to change.
A critical analysis:
>>COP must move beyond the marketing gimmick of “green growth” and the illusion of “carbon markets.” Climate justice cannot descend from above through technocratic conferences; it must confront the internalized structures of neo-imperialism that COP itself continues to normalize. Unless the conversation shifts away from how capitalism might continue to sustain itself under a new green façade, we must begin to listen—not merely hear—the first-nation and indigenous communities whose ancient wisdom embodies alternative ways of living: community-based coexistence, ecological food production, water sovereignty, and intimate ways of connecting with the earth.
“These so-called “primitive” or “ancient” lineages carry the ethical and practical insight needed to move toward a truly regenerative world—one that harmonizes soil, soul, and society, as Satish Kumar reminds us. The dominant model of economic “development” must be reimagined—not simply as “withdrawal” or “degrowth,” but as a radical re-rooting in place, context, and lived experience. Only then can we rethink the meaning of supply chains, and expose how the global deregulation and licensing of corporate empires—oil, gas, coal, pharma, and war—fuel the ongoing ecological catastrophe.
“This transformation cannot occur in isolation from the other crises of our time: the wars waged on humanity mirror the wars waged on nature. The realization we need is not merely that we are connected to nature, but that we are nature herself: our very own Gaiasphere. The rhetorical shift from “climate crisis” to the sanitized “climate change” diminishes urgency and obscures accountability. In an age where denialism is legitimized by powerful state and corporate actors, reclaiming the language of crisis becomes an act of truth-telling. As the Chinese symbol for “crisis” (危机) suggests—comprising both danger (危) and opportunity (机)—a crisis is not merely an end-state, but a threshold: a moment that demands transformation rather than management. To name something a crisis is to accept the danger it poses, but also to perceive the opening it offers for renewal.
“What we face is not a singular emergency but an interconnected polycrisis—eco-spiritual, political, economic and ethical. To address it, COP must transcend its market-centric framework and embrace a holistic, justice-oriented approach. Without such transformation, it risks remaining little more than a stage where the spectacle of “green capitalism” continues to justify the very system that created the crisis in the first place.<<
The COP was on fire, literally. Just like our planet, COP was burning. Luckily the incident was quickly contained and only a few people were taken to a hospital for smoke inhalation. The fire caused a disruption of the events at a critical moment, just as key negotiations were starting. The fire shows that an adequate response to an emergency is possible, even at COP.
More notable was the storming of the COP30 blue zone by Indigenous Peoples. Their message: “We want our lands free from agribusiness, oil exploration, illegal miners and illegal loggers,” which doesn’t seem unreasonable at all. It is their land after all. Not enough is being done to protect the lands of Indigenous Peoples. Even as the COP was taking place, Brazil’s state-run oil company, Petrobras, received a licence to begin exploratory offshore oil drilling near the mouth of the Amazon River.
For the first time, a roadmap for the transition away from fossil fuels was written into the draft of the final text. Only to be blocked by petrostates such as Saudi Arabia, Russia and India. The divisions between people and planet on one side, and profits on the other ran deep. But not all is lost, the COP30 delivered on the adoption of the Belém Action Mechanism on Just Transition, including tripling the adaptation fund by 2035 to address the widening adaptation finance gap. This action will maintain pressure on developed countries to scale up their financial support for climate-vulnerable nations. According to developing countries, however, this "tripling" will still not meet the financial need that developing countries had pushed for in Belem.