This was the first COP (the 30th Conference of the Parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), since global average temperatures exceeded 1.5°C in 2024 – an alarming indicator of the accelerating climate crisis. As the world approaches dangerous tipping points, COP30 needed to urgently shift from commitments to implementation, and from voluntary initiatives to coordinated global action.
At COP 30 Greenpeace was calling for:
1. A Global Response Plan to address the 1.5°C ambition gap and accelerate emissions reductions in this critical decade.
2. A new, dedicated 5-year Forest Action Plan to halt and reverse deforestation and forest degradation by 2030.
3. The establishment of a new standing UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) agenda item to drive NCQG (New Collective Quantified Goal) particularly scaling-up public finance from developed countries, and advance polluter-pays taxation to unlock scaled-up public finance for developing countries.
The first week of the climate talks in the Amazon showed cautious optimism with proposed plans of forward motion on a fossil fuel phase out and forest protection.
The occupation of Belém’s streets and waters leaves a memorable legacy for the next conference forums: the guarantee of social participation as a determining factor for concrete progress in defending the planet and the climate. At the halfway point, civil society turned out with Indigenous Peoples and allies to march in the streets of Belém, demanding change and calling on their governments to step up climate ambition during the final week of negotiations.
On 24 November The Guardian reported that this, the 30th conference of the parties (Cop30), the annual climate summit of all nations party to the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), had just ended in a whimper. Stakeholders came out in the media trying to spin the outcome as a win. Simon Stiell, climate change executive secretary for the UN praised Cop30 for showing that “climate cooperation is alive and kicking, keeping humanity in the fight for a liveable planet”. But make no bones about it, the conference was a failure. Its outcome, the decision text known as the Global Mutirão or Global Collective Effort, is, in essence, “a form of climate denial”.
In 2023, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) determined that the world had already developed, or planned to develop, too much fossil fuel to be able to halt global heating at 2C. It acknowledged that the capital assets built up around fossil fuels must be stranded – that is to say, abandoned and not used – if warming was to be limited to 2C. But the Cop30 decision text ignores all this. Indeed, it never even mentions fossil fuels.
This failure is all the more bitter because Cop30 had initially sent out so many hopeful signals that it would finally tackle the “transitioning away from fossil fuels” pledge from Cop28. Speaking ahead of the conference, the Brazilian President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said that the world needs “roadmaps that will enable humankind, in a fair and planned manner, to overcome its dependence on fossil fuels”.
Lula’s call was backed by about 90 other nations. “This is a global coalition, with global north and global south countries coming together and saying with one voice: this is an issue which cannot be swept under the carpet,” said with urgency by the UK’s energy secretary, Ed Miliband.
By Friday, the number of countries supporting the roadmap to fossil-fuel phaseout rose to 89. Yet any reference to it disappeared from the second draft that emerged on the same day. Thanks to Cop30, the fossil fuel era will simply continue.
It seems clear that the petrostates, led by Russia and Saudi Arabia, fought against fossil fuel phaseout and won. If they feel the phaseout is an existential threat to their economies and their sovereignty, perhaps they should consider how the climate crisis is rendering the Middle East uninhabitable. The very week of Cop30, Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, announced that Tehran, Iran’s capital city of 16 million, would need to be abandoned and re-established elsewhere, because, after years of climate-fuelled drought, its water supply has finally been exhausted..
There is no doubting that these states are being supported in their fossil-fuel authoritarianism by Donald Trump, who is the president of the world’s largest producer of fossil fuels and who calls the climate crisis a “con job”. Even though the US was officially absent from the negotiations, Trump’s alliance with Saudi Arabia, and seeming affinity for Russia, underwrites their ability to advance their own energy interests.
But all is not lost, my optimistic side speaks: thanks to Greenpeace:
At the end of COP30, Greenpeace sends a message from the front of the COP30 venue with a banner reading “Resist – Rise – Renew”.
© Marie Jacquemin / Greenpeace
The People’s COP as Belém’s legacy
The colours, voices and strength of the people who occupied the city of Belém during the two weeks of COP30, in the Brazilian state of Pará were a powerful positive influence. While the climate negotiations ended without presenting a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels and global deforestation, frustrating environmentalists and civil society organizations, the “outside COP” made history.
The occupation of Belém’s streets and waters as said previously is a guarantee of future social participation as a determining factor for progress in defending the planet and the climate.
The People’s Summit, held at the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), brought together thousands of people and representatives of social movements. Over the course of a week, panels and discussions on the climate crisis were held, highlighting the importance of financial support for projects and communities that keep forests standing and tackling inequality as a path to mitigating the consequences of the climate crisis.
At the end of the first week of COP30, Greenpeace joined thousands of people at the Global Climate March in Belém. Greenpeace carried messages such as “Respect the Amazon” and “Make Polluters Pay.” The Global Climate March was organized by civil society organizations and Indigenous Peoples’ groups from several parts of the world. This was also the Climate Conference with the largest Indigenous presence ever recorded. Thousands of Indigenous people and leaders brought to governments, in different spaces and circumstances, the demarcation of territories as the main demand to contain the climate crisis. The Rainbow Warrior III, Greenpeace’s ship, also joined this wave. The boat remained docked very close to the Summit, during the two weeks of COP30.
In the second week of COP30, the Brazilian government announced progress in the process of demarcating 20 Indigenous Lands. Four were ratified, ten declared and six had their boundaries established, representing millions of hectares protected. A victory that reflects years of mobilization by Indigenous peoples and reinforces the demand made during the Indigenous March at the COP: “We Are the Answer – demarcating lands protects forests and confronts the climate crisis”.
Key takeaways from the summit, Ed Miliband The Guardian 25 November 2025
“For all its flaws, the Brazil conference underlined the wish by a global majority for clean energy and climate action – and the UK will keep leading the way”
Ed Miliband is Labour MP for Doncaster North and the UK Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero
His Key Messages: 
“Sweaty, maddening, sleepless. That’s what it was like to be part of Cop30 in Brazil. And yet more than 190 countries came together in the rainforest of the Amazon and reaffirmed their faith in multilateralism, the Paris agreement and the need to redouble our efforts to keep global warming to 1.5C.
We went to Cop because working with other countries to tackle the climate crisis is the only way to protect our home and way of life. We know the UK produces just 1% of emissions, which is why, as the prime minister Keir Starmer said in Belém, our government is “all-in” on working with others to reduce the remaining 99%.
We also know there are huge opportunities from driving the transition forward, which is why in Britain we are making historic investments in renewables and nuclear, upgrading millions of homes, and acting to protect nature.
It is true that Britain wanted more from this Cop, including details of how we would speed up the global energy transition through an agreement that explicitly pledged a roadmap for the transition away from fossil fuels. This didn’t happen because some countries would not agree.
Yet on this issue, we have seen the emergence of an impressive coalition of 83 countries from the global north and global south, backed by more than 140 global businesses and civil society groups. And Brazil will launch a roadmap to help countries transition away from fossil fuels and scale up clean energy.
This offers such an important lesson: that detailed negotiations matter, but the movements we build around them profoundly influence what can be delivered. The roadmap to achieve our goal to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030 offers the same opportunity to drive forward our global efforts to tackle the nature and climate crises together.
There is also a larger picture here. This year’s summit was a test of whether, at a time of political challenge, countries would keep working together on the greatest collective threat we face or, with the US stepping out of the Paris agreement, there might be a domino effect of others departing. For all the challenges, countries chose the path of cooperation.
Cop30 therefore forms part of the long history of these negotiations that have seen the world change its trajectory from 4C of warming around a decade ago to 2.3- 2.5C. Despite that progress, our goal is 1.5C for a reason – because the science is clear that every fraction of a degree matters in limiting the impacts people will face here and around the world. That is why it is important that the world has pledged to enhance efforts to meet it through the Belém Mission to 1.5 and Global Implementation Accelerator.
Ambition on emissions reduction goes hand-in-hand with finance to make that possible, including for developing countries. Last year, countries agreed that, by 2035, we would need to mobilise at least $300bn (£230bn) of climate finance annually for developing countries. This year, as a core part of our fight against climate change, we agreed that this finance needs to be targeted at aiming to treble the support to building resilience to climate impacts.
Our Brazilian hosts were determined to make this the implementation Cop – and much progress was made outside the negotiating halls. This was, of course, the first Cop in the Amazon, and the UK was proud to work with Brazil in the two years running up to the summit to help it develop the Tropical Forest Forever Facility, which offers an incredibly inspiring solution to global deforestation.
We also worked alongside Brazil and many others on the Global Climate Action Agenda, which is about building the coalitions spanning governments, businesses, cities and civil society needed to accelerate action on the ground – on issues from reducing methane emissions and phasing out coal, to unlocking investment in clean energy. Thousands of British businesses were involved in these initiatives. Our researchers, universities, mayors and others were also deeply engaged on climate issues at this Cop. And the UK was key to delivering the final outcomes of this summit, because of our record of climate leadership at home and abroad, as well as the extraordinary skill and determination of our civil service.
The message coming out of Belém was clear: despite the noise, clean energy and climate action remain the foundation on which the global economy is being remade and rebuilt. We are up against the march of time and massive global forces that would slow down or stop action. In the face of this opposition, multilateralism is our best hope. For all its flaws, Cop has reaffirmed the belief of the vast majority of the world in this ideal. Those who would deny or prevent action are not winning the argument, they are losing.”
Our own roles in Climate recovery, my own thoughts now:
The issues of power, finance, and self-interest of nations and indeed nowadays, individual billionaires, oligarchs and modern dictators are always present at international meetings. Lobbyists, huge financial incentives etc work prior to and during such conferences to tip the balances of power and votes and disrupt change. That is why our actions are important too. That is why our own approach in our life styles is important in determining whether we can exert sufficient pressure to overcome the power of the few to work towards a safe future for our world ecosystems be that marine, land, climate and communities to reach for a better consensus. Supporting environmental goals. Perhaps less consumerism over this Black Friday weekend, and in the run up to Christmas? Less a throwaway society? More support for burning less fossil fuels? Collective action in our communities will help too. Support government initiatives, on recycling, how we travel. Waste less food. There are many ways…investigate for you and your community!
Sally Campbell
November 2025
With thanks to Greenpeace
© Filipe Bispo / Greenpeace
Carrying the message “Action, Justice and Hope” on its mast, Greenpeace’s iconic activist ship, the Rainbow Warrior, arrived in Belém, Pará, to mark its presence during the United Nations Climate Conference, COP30.