Professional Q&A: What to Count on on the COP30 Climate Summit

While the impacts of local weather change have gotten ever-clearer, so too are the advantages of motion.

The shift towards applied sciences like renewable power and electrical autos is already cleansing the air and preventing deaths from air pollution. Countries investing in greener improvement fashions are creating millions of new jobs in areas like energy and manufacturing. Clean power is lowering electricity costs and bringing energy to these with out.

Yet this transition shouldn’t be taking place practically quick sufficient to forestall more and more harmful local weather impacts, and progress stays uneven. As some international locations forge forward on low-carbon improvement, others are pulling again. Meanwhile, the price of local weather change continues to rise: Extreme climate induced over $300 billion in damages final yr alone.

What we’d like now could be a step change. The world should transfer from setting targets to delivering them. The upcoming UN local weather summit (COP30) in Belém, Brazil is a primary alternative to take action.

WRI consultants have laid out 4 key areas the place COP30 can put the world on monitor for a safer, extra affluent future:

1. Deliver strong nationwide local weather commitments, utilizing detailed world and nation plans to shut the hole in local weather motion.
2. Transform the worldwide monetary system so that each one types of finance (private and non-private, home and worldwide) help the transition to inexperienced, inclusive, resilient economies. Ensure that funds attain the international locations and communities that want them most.
3. Step up local weather resilience by recognizing that investing in adaptation means investing in progress, safety and improvement; by delivering an formidable new adaptation finance objective; and by setting clear, measurable indicators for monitoring progress.
4. Protect nature, reform meals techniques and advance Indigenous land rights: three key components for tackling the interconnected local weather and nature crises collectively.

So, what should COP30 obtain in these areas and past to be thought of a hit? Here’s what our consultants are on the lookout for:

Embrace Climate Action as an Economic Strategy

Ani Dasgupta, WRI President and CEO

Right now, we face many headwinds for local weather motion and multilateralism. The U.S. has stepped again, and there are related discussions of slowing down in components of Europe. But that is not the entire story. Across the 50 international locations WRI works in, what we see on the bottom is that progress is occurring.

All of the leaders I communicate to from growing international locations see this transition as their finest financial alternative, not as a burden. This is very true in giant middle-income international locations. China and India are driving report renewable deployment, particularly photo voltaic. Economic progress pushed by clear power is now much more of a motivator than local weather. As COP host, Brazil can be displaying how an financial system rooted in forest safety, quite than destruction, can create over $8 billion in further GDP and greater than 300,000 new jobs within the Amazon area by 2050. For these international locations, financial prosperity, power safety and decarbonization are basically the identical factor, driving the momentum we’re seeing at the moment.

There’s a geopolitical realignment of local weather management going down. These middle-income international locations performed a key position in shaping the result [at COP29 in 2024] in Baku. With their giant populations, substantial emissions and vital shops of biodiversity, they may proceed to play an outsized position in figuring out the success of the worldwide transition for folks, nature and local weather. We are watching carefully to see what type their management will take at COP30.

Accelerate Action on National Climate Commitments, Finance and Adaptation

Melanie Robinson, Global Climate, Economics and Finance Director, WRI

All international locations are attributable to ship new nationwide local weather plans (often known as “nationally determined contributions,” or “NDCs”) this yr. Sixty-five international locations had formally submitted NDCs as of Oct. 27 — and the present plans fall far in need of what’s wanted to fulfill the Paris Agreement’s objectives. Several main emitters are nonetheless anticipated to place ahead NDCs forward of or throughout COP30, which may assist. But a considerable hole stays.

In Belém, leaders should agree on a decisive world response to handle this shortfall. This contains: 1) reaffirming the 1.5 diploma C objective and growing an “Ambition Framework” which units out methods to shut the hole to realize it; 2) accelerating sector-specific methods to chop emissions from areas like power and transport earlier than 2030, reflecting the outcomes of the 2023 Global Stocktake on climate action; and 3) clarifying pathways to realize international locations’ net-zero objectives, significantly by means of up to date long-term methods.

On the finance entrance, leaders set a goal final yr to mobilize $1.3 trillion yearly from all worldwide sources for growing international locations’ local weather motion by 2035. The forthcoming Baku-to-Belém Roadmap will lay out pragmatic methods to realize this objective, displaying how international locations can get all sources working collectively as a system to ship finance for the transition at scale. At COP30, international locations should exhibit how they may flip this plan into motion. One promising improvement to search for is the revealing of “country platforms”: numerous country-led approaches that intention to align all sources of finance behind international locations’ local weather and improvement plans, coverage reforms and funding pipelines.

As for local weather resilience, the 2021 “Glasgow pledge” to double adaptation finance expires this yr, and international locations should resolve on a brand new objective at COP30. Some growing international locations are calling for a needs-based goal whereas others are calling to triple adaptation finance by 2030. Our personal forthcoming evaluation exhibits {that a} tripling is achievable by 2035, however it might take will increase throughout all sources (together with multilateral improvement banks’ funds for the poorest, bilateral funds, new sources of concessional finance, and extra non-public finance being mobilized), and finance working higher as a system. 

COP30 additionally presents a chance to undertake a set of progress indicators underneath the Global Goal on Adaptation. This will create a typical language to trace resilience-building efforts and the help wanted. Done proper, this will help put resilience on the coronary heart of nations’, communities’ and corporates’ core financial, improvement and enterprise planning.

Strengthen Pledges that Align Action on Climate and Nature

Mariana Oliveira, Director of Forests and Land Use, WRI Brasil

We will not meet our local weather objectives — not on mitigation, not on adaptation — if forests and ecosystems aren’t a part of the plan. The science is evident that defending and restoring nature and reworking meals techniques are highly effective instruments to chop emissions, construct resilience and cut back local weather impacts. The problem? Mobilizing the assets to scale these options.

One initiative to observe at COP30 is the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) that might be launched by the Brazilian authorities. This daring proposal presents predictable, performance-based funds to international locations that preserve their forests standing, transferring away from dependence on philanthropy. Brazil has already pledged $1 billion to the fund, and different international locations, such because the U.Ok., Colombia, Norway and Indonesia, have expressed their support for it. But for the TFFF to work, it wants at the very least $25 billion to be introduced throughout COP. Whether developed international locations will step up is a key query.

Countries must also ship a powerful bundle to bolster Indigenous Peoples’ and native communities’ land tenure rights and improve funding to them. While these communities are among the world’s handiest forest stewards, their territories are underneath fixed and rising threats, and plenty of lack authorized rights to the lands they handle. COP30 will help by delivering an improved Forest Tenure Pledge 2.0 and guaranteeing that Indigenous Peoples and native communities obtain at the very least 20% of funding from the TFFF.

Equally important is unlocking investments in sustainable agriculture and land restoration. One improvement to observe is the launch of the RAIZ (Resilient Agriculture Investment for Net-Zero Land Degradation) initiative. This proposes progressive monetary mechanisms to fund the restoration of as much as 250 million hectares of degraded land by 2050 — whereas on the identical time rising world meals manufacturing.

Alongside RAIZ, complementary initiatives already underway in Brazil (such because the National Productive Forests Program and the Action Plan for Deforestation Prevention and Control in the Amazon) underscore the nation’s rising management in integrating motion on local weather, nature and meals techniques. Advancing this cohesive agenda extra broadly will help be sure that COP30 delivers not solely on local weather ambition, but in addition on resilience, fairness and shared prosperity.

Under Brazil’s Leadership, Make This the ‘COP of Implementation’

Karen Silverwood-Cope, Climate Director, WRI Brasil

In its position as COP president, Brazil is bringing a transparent and impressive imaginative and prescient to COP30: to make Belém the “COP of Implementation.” The Presidency’s central problem is to show guarantees into real-world motion — bridging divides between developed and growing international locations, ambition and fairness, mitigation and adaptation. The Brazilian Presidency has outlined three priorities that started to be articulated and applied in 2024 and can culminate in Brazil’s COP Presidency by the top of 2026.

First, Brazil has been working to align local weather and financial priorities over the past yr by means of convenings just like the G20 and BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa] summit, placing finance on the coronary heart of worldwide local weather talks. Brazil additionally launched the COP30 Circle of Finance Ministers, bringing collectively representatives from 37 international locations who developed concrete suggestions on concessional finance, multilateral financial institution reform, nation funding platforms and regulatory frameworks to unlock capital flows. This work supplied key enter to the Baku-to-Belém Roadmap and was an vital step towards higher integrating finance ministers, who’re key to scaling up local weather finance, into worldwide local weather talks.

Second, Brazil is redefining regional management, rooted in cooperation between rising economies. For instance, the Rio Declaration on the latest BRICS summit signaled a readiness amongst rising economies to guide a resilient, low-carbon transition — from inexperienced bonds and tropical forest safety to new commerce and carbon accounting initiatives.

Finally, Brazil’s presidency is working to weave collectively the broader net of actors that drive progress exterior of formal COP negotiations. It goals to ship an “Action Agenda” that may higher align all actors behind numerous local weather commitments and processes (just like the Global Stocktake, NDCs and long-term methods), selling transparency and accountability in local weather motion.

Other key deliverables to observe for at COP30 underneath Brazil’s management embrace progress on the Just Transition Work Programme and the Gender Action Plan and the event of indicators for the Global Goal on Adaptation.

Follow Along

WRI consultants are monitoring these points carefully within the lead-up to COP and might be on the bottom in Belém through the summit. To study extra in regards to the points at stake, discover associated articles and analysis, and keep abreast of the outcomes, go to WRI’s COP30 useful resource hub.