By Climate Spotlight
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, during his speech at the United Nations General Assembly 80th meeting in September 2025, said the COP30 would be known and remembered as the “COP of Truth.”
Time will tell. What is true is that this COP will be an opportunity for multilateralism to shine some light on a very dark and uncertain world.
The biggest historical emitter of CO2 has abandoned climate justice and ramped up fossil fuel proliferation in the same breath. While the International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion provides a clear declaration that the United States of America and other big emitters will have to answer for their contribution to damaging the climate system, states cannot afford to sit aside or capitulate to the attacks from the Trump Administration.
Nearly 200 countries will converge at the Amazon forest for this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference – COP30. This COP has no clear big headline deliverable like COP29, when countries had to agree to a global climate finance goal, and COP28, where negotiators conducted the global stock take and handed down text agreeing to a phase out of fossil fuels for the first time.
Progress towards the implementation of climate goals – Brazil’s intention for this COP – will be the lasting legacy of Lula’s COP.
Nationally Determined Contributions details countries’ plans to cut emissions by 2035 and how they will achieve these goals. The US has submitted its NDC early under the Biden administration, but Trump has shelved or outrightly trashed many of the polices to achieve the climate goals.
These NDCs were due for submission at the end of September, and will be used to create a synthesis report to show where the world stands in the target to limit warming to 1.5C°. The more ambitious NDC’s are, the closer the world is pushed in the direction to achieve the Paris Agreement goals, and safegaurd the most vulnerable states.
Brazil’s diplomatic dance at COP30 must bridge the desires of highly ambitious states, which want firm commitments, like transition from fossil fuels, with traditional blockers of climate actions, that may use the global turmoil we are experiencing across the world, to step back from its promises.
In Baku, countries agreed to find $1.3 trillion from private sources to scale up climate action, but gave no roadmap as to how this would be achieved. How this will take place should be revealed at COP30. Developed countries pledged $300 billion in climate finance to developing nations and small islands to be disbursed by 2035, at the last COP.
The “Bake to Belem” roadmap is expected to contain some of the concrete proposals needed to mobilize the climate finance needed to help vulnerable states transition to clean energy and build climate resilience.
Cutting emissions is the long-term endgame; in the interim, countries on the front lines of climate change will need to continue building climate resilience to adapt to extreme weather fueled by climate change.
A new financial goal for adaptation might not be reached, but negotiators need to narrow down the list of climate resilience indicators from 400 to 100 by this COP.
What is a COP without side deals? Brazil promises a $125 billion one – the Tropical Forest Forever Facility. It aims to pay countries to keep their woodlands standing with finance gathered from capital markets. The proposed global coalition on carbon markets is another important side deal to look out for at COP30.
One of the key pillars of Brazil’s COP is the Just Transition principle, which ensures the most vulnerable countries are not forgotten.
