There’s a message in holding the November 6–11 international summit on climate change at Belém, Brazil. The confabulation among nations on the state of the environment, or Conference of Parties (COP30), has been convened at the gateway of the endangered Amazon rainforests, the world’s largest, 5.5 million square kilometres of tropical forests threatened by logging and mining.
Unfortunately, Belém is not as exciting as Paris or Egypt’s seaside resort of Sharm El-Sheikh. The conference is seeing a tepid response, with only a few dozen world leaders making the trek to this Latin American outpost. Leading lights from some of the most important and populous nations are absent — India, the US, China and Russia.
The Donald Trump-led United States and China are sceptics on climate change goals, while Russia is in the midst of a terrible shooting war. But it is indeed surprising that India, a usually sane voice on environmental issues, has given COP30 low priority this round. There is no denying climate change as a global cause is losing steam.
Long Shadow on COP30
The environment movement is also facing the long shadow of Trump’s pushback. Though he is not coming to Belém, speaking at the United Nations in September Trump dismissed climate change as “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”
“The entire globalist concept, asking successful industrialised nations to inflict pain on themselves and radically disrupt their entire societies, must be rejected completely and totally,” he added.
Growing war clouds in a divisive world have also sidelined environmental goals which require a wide consensus. Currently, Venezuela and Colombia, in South America, are the latest to be caught in the US’ firing line. As Trump ratchets up his demand for regime change with left-wing governments, and bombs ‘narco’ shipping in the Caribbean Sea, the smaller regimes are struggling to survive. Saving the environment is a low priority.
The host nation, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, made no bones about Trump’s ostrich-like stance. Without naming him, he opened the conference on Thursday warning of “extremist forces that fabricate fake news and are condemning future generations to life on a planet altered forever by global warming.”
Colombian President Gustavo Petro went further, denouncing Trump as “100% wrong” for his denial of science that threatens the future of the planet and could lead to a “real apocalypse.”
Funds Drying Up
It is exactly a decade since the nations met at the Paris Summit, when concerns erupted about global warming and environmental degradation. For the first time, in 2015, a globally binding agreement to fight climate change was signed, requiring nations to set the long-term goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared to pre-industrial levels.
It established a system where each country sets its own nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to reduce emissions, to be updated every five years. It also provided a roadmap to achieve net-zero emissions by the second half of the century.
Lofty goals indeed! But they have met their Waterloo in the face of stiff resistance by the rich nations. The poor nations have rightly agitated that global warming is a spin-off from the Industrial Revolution, and it is the rich nations who have been the primary polluters. It is the developed world, therefore, that must pay for the clean-up. After much back-and-forth, a deal was reached in 2009 in Copenhagen, where the rich nations agreed to raise $100 billion by 2020.
But they reneged on their commitments. It was only in 2022 that the target was met, when funding touched $106 billion. Much of this was disguised as low-interest loans. The haggling continued last year at COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan. The poor nations demanded the rich commit $1.3 trillion. The reaction of the Global North was almost dismissive. With many walkouts and back-and-forth, the gavel finally came down at $300 billion.
Fossil fuel producers of crude oil, coal and gas have also been a drag. A year earlier, in Dubai — where COP28 was hosted — oil-producing countries led by Saudi Arabia opposed any advancement towards renewable energy that would cut back on fossil fuels. The joke at the summit was that oil producers used COP28 to network and cut supply deals!
The action is now in Belém, but most countries have not even submitted their revised plans to reduce carbon emissions. One of the prominent attendees, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, conceded global political support for the climate movement is waning.
The irony is Starmer is partly to blame. The UK has just opted out of its flagship $125bn fund to support the world’s rainforests. This is a direct blow to the hosts, Brazil. President Lula was expecting to raise $25bn to support the revival of the world’s big rainforests like the Amazon and the Congo Basin.
These forest ecosystems, which cover just 6% of the world’s land mass, absorb billions of tonnes of carbon monoxide and other gases and host thousands of animal species. But the UK and others are loath to loosen their purse strings.
Hurricane Melissa, which hit the Caribbean last week, flattened Jamaica and left a trail of destruction. It was a reminder to those at Belém that climate change is alive and kicking. Though not much is expected from COP30, the new information and deliberations will hopefully keep reminding the world of the dangers ahead.