When COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago gavelled the closing of the 30th Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP), he officially concluded three decades of the climate negotiation process so far. The Amazonian COP30 carried a lot of significance but the final deal, called the Mutirão, delivered loopholed terms or voluntary initiatives instead. It is of course disappointing – after all, Brazil is where the whole crucial process began – but not surprising given the current state of multilateralism.
The UN treaty signed at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro set out the basic obligations of states (parties to the convention) and the European Union to combat climate change. Corrêa do Lago himself played a key role in the organising of the Earth Summit.
The Brazilian government headed by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a progressive leader lauded globally as one of the remaining hopes in this era of increasing authoritarianism and cut-throat capitalism, raised expectations from the global climate justice movement on what COP30 could deliver. On the other hand, many also criticised that his government approved offshore oil exploration close to the Amazon coast.
High hopes and expectations for the Amazonian COP
The negotiations in Belém were dominated by emissions-cutting ambitions, countries’ climate plans, finance and trade. It was also a make-or-break year for the Just Transitions Work Programme. The Belém Action Mechanism (BAM) was expected to push countries to change course by removing structural barriers such as debt, unfair trade rules and limited technology transfer that keep developing countries at the bottom of renewable supply chains.
Three decades of COPs failed to deliver the climate actions needed to justly address the climate crisis, let alone keep global temperature rise to well below 1.5 degrees Celsius as promised in the Paris Agreement ten years ago. As a result, we have seen the annual world temperature thresholds breached year after year, climate emergencies happening at alarming frequency and force, and carbon emissions at all-time highs due to continued fossil fuels use. Instead of energy transition, we are seeing energy expansion from both fossil fuels and renewables.
While all these impacts intensify, the effects in Africa are already creating havoc in people’s lives and livelihoods as the continent is heating up faster than the global average. As a woman activist from Sierra Leone shared at the third West and Central African Women’s Climate Assembly in Senegal, “Planting and hunting among women in our communities is now difficult due to climate change. Climate change is making our soils infertile. We now build [sand walls] to avoid the destruction of our crops by flooding.”
Only 60 countries or a third of parties under the 2015 Paris Agreement submitted their new climate plans or Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in September 2025. India, Saudi Arabia and the rest failed to submit. The NDCs of Global North countries, which are legally obliged to cut their emissions more than Global South countries due to their historic emissions and responsibilities, are not fit for purpose. Even if based on the already weak Paris Agreement goals, they are collectively insufficient and failed to adequately address their historical responsibility and provide necessary climate finance to the Global South. According to the UN Environment Programme report, current NDCs would lead to about 2.5°C of global temperature above pre-industrial levels.
Inadequate climate finance for the most impacted
Finance was again inadequate, the poorest countries already in debt are being told to transition faster, with fewer funds. The BAM was supposed to put workers’ rights and justice at the centre of the shift away from fossil fuels. Without adequate financing from rich countries, however, the just energy transition would be stalled. African negotiators, together with counterparts in the Global South demanded more debt-free financing that would allow them to address climate impacts and implement solutions.
While the world continues to heat up and move closer to the point of tipping into irreversible damage to humanity, other species and the planet itself, the COPs increasingly fail to meet the expectations and hopes of people who are already bearing the brunt of the climate breakdown while contributing none or too little to it. Many of them are in the resource-rich but non-industrialised countries and zones in Africa who are constrained by the sovereign debt and limited fiscal space of their economies, while rich nations continue to over-consume products and energy.
Fossil fuel lobbyists continue to influence the talks
Since the COP started, fossil fuels are considered “the elephant in the room”. Each year, parties have failed to deliver a strong, unified commitment to phasing out fossil fuels. Like the latest agreement, outcomes were often watered down by overt and covert opposition by powerful interests. At the 2023 Dubai COP28 conference, nations agreed for the first time to “transition away from fossil fuels”. The Baku COP29 failed to build from it due to opposition from Saudi Arabia and lack of finance to support it.
The primary reason for the non-commensurate climate action, especially on fossil fuels is the continuing influence of big polluters like the fossil fuel industry. Transnational hydrocarbon companies, the very same actors that have knowingly caused the climate crisis and have consistently spent billions to hide their role and present obstacles to real action to address it, continue to enjoy disproportionate presence, access, and influence on the UNFCCC and similar policymaking spaces. While they attend COPs and other climate problem-solving processes, these climate profiteers drive new oil and gas projects in Africa.
Research from Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO) shows that a minimum of 5,368 fossil fuel lobbyists attended COP26 to COP29. These lobbyists were from 859 fossil fuel organisations, which include companies, foundations, trade associations, and other organisations. At least 180 were oil & gas corporations that are duty-bound to promote fossil fuels and maximise profits for their shareholders. Despite a coalition of 90 developed and developing nations that pushed for a commitment to a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels, the core issue of a “transition away from fossil fuels” was dropped as the fossil fuel nations and most of the Western powers blocked it. The plan now is to proceed outside the UN process through a summit to be hosted by Colombia in April 2026.
A Just Transition Mechanism was agreed
A major outcome of COP30 was the agreement of a Just Transition Mechanism (JTM), a plan to ensure that the move to a green economy around the world takes place fairly and protects the rights of all people, including workers, women and Indigenous people.
Globally, the world is not on track to triple renewable capacity by 2030 – as agreed at COP28. Despite the increase of renewable energy in the energy mix of many highly industrialised countries, fossil fuel emissions remain stubbornly high. The transition to renewables is so far slow and increasingly unfair.
In Africa, communities and campaigners argue that even where renewables are rising, the benefits often flow to foreign corporations and energy access to communities are still minimal. In fact, communities are now getting increasingly critical and pushing back against renewable energy projects as it becomes increasingly clear that the anticipated progress from green extractivism are still delivering few direct benefits and creating new sacrifice zones. There is a growing public distrust as electricity is often channelled to power private utilities, while delivering very little new local jobs.
Watered down agreement on critical minerals for renewable energy
For the first time, critical minerals were discussed at a COP and included in the draft text of the Just Transition Work Programme negotiation stream to ensure that the transition to clean energy systems is just and sustainable. The G77 and China, which include 134 developing countries called for a “dedicated dialogue” on energy transition minerals.
COPs are supposed to build from previously agreed principles and recommendations, as well as proposals from UN expert panels. The UN Panel Report on Critical Energy Transition Minerals, published last year, already set out key principles to ensure that mineral supply chains benefit countries and local communities endowed with resources, create jobs, diversify economies and generate revenue for development. The exclusion of strong language and specific regulations regarding the human rights and environmental impacts of their extraction in the final agreement is problematic.
The increased mining activity globally has already fuelled environmental destruction, deforestation and conflict with communities. African countries, which hold more than 30% of the world’s mineral reserves crucial for energy transition, have time and again raised these problems. Metals such as copper, cobalt, lithium, nickel and graphite are vital for manufacturing clean energy transition technologies such as solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and electric vehicles. Key minerals found in large quantities across the continent include cobalt (especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo), manganese (in countries like South Africa, Gabon, and Ghana), and bauxite (mostly in Guinea). Other significant reserves are found in countries such as Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia, and Mali for minerals like lithium and copper. In the Opening Plenary, the African Group of Negotiators argued that Africa’s resources “must translate into tangible benefits”.
More than half of energy transition mineral reserves are estimated to be located on or near Indigenous land and a large majority of mines are in biodiversity hotspots. Indigenous Peoples are widely acknowledged to play a key role in preserving tropical forests that act as some of the world’s most important carbon sinks. Brazil as host of the Amazonian COP in Belém has seen the largest Indigenous participation in COP history, however the spaces for their participation was still limited.
For the first time, the US did not send a delegation after President Donald Trump said the country will leave the landmark Paris treaty that committed countries to act on climate change in 2015. Brazil dubbed COP30 as “implementation COP”, but the outcome of the conference left many disappointed because of the failure to produce a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels and a stronger outcome on climate finance for developing countries.
