COP30: Act now or lose the planet

TIME, in the context of climate diplomacy, has always been the rarest commodity. At COP30 in Belém, on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, world leaders made that point with unusual candour. Yet beneath the speeches lies a graver truth: the window to avert irreversible climate harm is not simply closing — it is snapping shut by geopolitical drift, economic anxiety, and a retreat from responsibility by some of the world’s largest emitters.

The setting could not have been more stark. The Amazon, long romanticised as the “lungs of the world”, has lost about 17 per cent of its forest cover in the past 50 years. Wildfires, mining and cattle ranching have devastated ecosystems, and large parts of the south-eastern and eastern Amazon now act as a net carbon source rather than a sink. Against this backdrop, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that letting global warming overshoot the 1.5°C threshold — even temporarily — would be “moral failure and deadly negligence”. Every additional fraction of a degree, he stressed, means more hunger, more displacement, more loss.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, host of this year’s summit, did not mince words either. With the world’s attention consumed by conflict and election cycles, Lula reminded leaders that Amazonian peoples — those living at the sharpest edge of climate breakdown — are right to ask what the rest of the world is doing. His message was simple but essential: without rescuing the world’s tropical forests, global climate ambition becomes an illusion.

For once, however, a tangible shift emerged. Fifty-three countries endorsed the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), a new mechanism that rewards nations for keeping forests standing rather than clearing them. Built around a blended-finance investment fund, the facility promises regular, performance-based payments, independently verified through satellite monitoring. Crucially, at least 20 per cent of the funds will flow directly to Indigenous peoples and local communities — the true guardians of these ecosystems, routinely bypassed in climate finance.

Early pledges include Norway’s commitment of USD 3 billion over ten years, renewed USD 1 billion pledges from Brazil and Indonesia, and Portugal’s USD 1 million. The Netherlands has pledged USD 5 million to support the secretariat. France has said it will consider contributing up to €500 million by 2030, while Germany has fully endorsed the initiative. Yet some absences are conspicuous: India, despite being a major tropical forest nation, has not yet endorsed the TFFF.

Far more consequential, however, is the absence of the United States. President Donald Trump, who issued an order on 20 January 2025 to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, has declined to send senior officials to Belém. For decades, the US has been an indispensable broker — pressing China towards emissions restraint, shaping major finance packages, and generating diplomatic momentum when talks stalled. Its physical and political absence is therefore not merely symbolic; it weakens the architecture of global climate cooperation at a perilous moment.

Some leaders did not shy away from naming the problem. Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro called Trump’s absence “100 per cent wrong”, while Chile’s President Gabriel Boric dismissed Trump’s renewed climate denial as “a lie”. Indigenous groups warned that Washington’s climate retreat risks emboldening governments already flirting with deregulation — echoing anxieties about Argentina’s President Javier Milei, who again boycotted the summit.

This political fragmentation is unfolding amid escalating physical danger. The World Meteorological Organization reports that 2025 is on track to be the second or third warmest year on record, following the hottest year ever in 2024. Scientists now expect the world to reach 1.5°C of warming by the early 2030s — nearly two decades earlier than once feared. While a temporary overshoot is not the same as permanently breaching the target, the lived impacts are already extensive: crop failures, rising seas, uninsurable communities and climate-driven conflict. It is in this context that seven COP30 special envoys — representing regions from Oceania and Africa to Europe and South Asia — delivered a sobering message. “We are not on track,” they warned, urging leaders to close the “triple gap” in mitigation, adaptation and finance. They pressed countries not simply to revise their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) but to deliver them: to implement policies that measurably reduce emissions, strengthen climate resilience, and mobilise the USD 1.3 trillion a year envisaged in the Baku-to-Belém roadmap for developing nations.

That financial dimension is now critical. Dozens of climate-vulnerable nations remain trapped in a cycle of disaster, recovery, debt and deeper vulnerability. Without structural reforms to international finance — including debt relief, expanded fiscal space and large-scale concessional capital — even the most ambitious climate commitments risk becoming performative rather than transformative.

Yet the envoys also pointed towards a hopeful, practical frame: climate-positive policies are not merely environmental acts; they are catalysts for economic growth, national security and human well-being. The challenge is therefore not technological — the tools exist — but political.

And politics remains the great stumbling block. The energy transition is hostage to short-term economic fears. Legislatures worry about electoral backlash. Wars, trade disputes and tariffs have eroded trust between nations. A decade after the Paris Agreement, its founding spirit of shared responsibility has frayed.

That is why Belém matters. The TFFF offers a template for climate action that is collaborative, measurable and grounded in local stewardship rather than geopolitical posturing. It shows that global climate governance can still innovate.

But one promising initiative cannot offset widespread inertia. To prevent the 2030s from becoming a decade of irreversible climate loss, COP30 must not only raise ambition — it must generate new political will. Developed countries must recommit to finance without equivocation. Emerging economies must align their transitions with their global influence. And countries across the Global South must receive the investment needed to transform their economies without replicating the carbon-heavy paths of the past. Ultimately, the test of COP30 will not be the eloquence of its speeches but the clarity of its outcomes. Every fraction of a degree matters. Every year of delay matters. And every retreat from collective responsibility will register not in communiqués but in human lives.

COP30 is a reminder — perhaps the final one in this critical decade — that the climate crisis is no longer a distant horizon. It is the lived reality of millions and the defining challenge of the century. The world can still choose cooperation over collapse. But the window is snapping shut, and history will not be kind to leaders who looked away. With agency inputs.