Bengaluru: The 30th Conference of Parties on climate change – COP30 – officially kicked off at Belém in Brazil on November 10. 

The 11 day-long Conference hosted this year by Brazil will witness world leaders, government representatives and environmental, climate and rights activists and groups, as well as members of civil society, engaging in discussions and negotiations on different aspects including climate finance and adaptation measures to tackle climate change. Around 50,000 delegates from nearly 200 countries will be attending this year’s climate change conference organised by the United Nations.

Brazilian officials including the country’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the president of COP30, André Corrêa do Lago, declared that the current conference would be a “COP of truth”.

A COP of solutions, truth

At the inaugural ceremony of COP30 conducted at the city of Belém situated in the Amazon rainforest, the president of the previous COP (COP29 at Baku, Azerbaijan) Mukhtar Babayev – Azerbaijan’s minister for ecology – passed on the gavel to COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago.

The 66-year-old has been working with the sustainable development agenda since 2001 for Brazil. Since March 2023, do Lago has been the vice-minister for Climate, Energy and Environment of Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“This COP has to present solutions…This action agenda will show many pathways,” do Lago said in his plenary speech on November 10. “Therefore, this is a COP of implementation, I hope it will be reminded [sic] as a COP of adaptation, a COP of advancing climate integration with the economy, activists, generation of jobs..and above all a COP which will hear and believe in science…a COP of truth,” he added.

The “action agenda” that do Lago referred to “are built on voluntary pledges rather than binding law,” per the UN. Brazil will bank on these action agendas by different countries rather than land a major climate deal, according to the AFP. 

Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the UNFCCC, also focused on the importance of solutions in his plenary speech on November 10.

He said that 10 years ago in Paris (referring to the 2015 Paris Agreement), we were “designing the future – a future that would clearly see the curve of emissions bend downwards”. That future is now here, he said. Stiell was alluding to the UN’s Emissions Gap Report released on November 6 which showed that the global temperature rise expected over the course of this century due to global warming has fallen, though only slightly (global temperatures are now predicted to reach 2.3-2.5°C if all existing NDCs are implemented: this is down from 2.6-2.8°C projected by last year’s report).

“The emissions curve has been bent downwards,” Stiell said. “Because of what was agreed in halls like this, with governments legislating, and markets responding.”

But there is more work to do, he added:

“We must move much, much, faster on both reductions of emissions and strengthening resilience. The science is clear: we can and must bring temperatures back down to 1.5°C after any temporary overshoot. Lamenting is not a strategy. We need solutions.”

President Lula defended Brazil’s decision to conduct COP30 at Belém, which is located in the Amazon rainforest. Environmentalists have raised grave concerns that this had caused deforestation across huge tracts of the rainforest. 

It would have been easier to hold the COP in a finished city but they decided to accept the challenge to conduct it in the Amazon region to prove that “if you have political will, and commitment to truth, then there is nothing impossible for men or women”, he said. To bring the COP to the Amazon was a “very difficult task but a necessary one,” Lula added.

Also read: A COP Explainer: What It Is and Why It Matters

“The Amazon is not an abstract entity,” Lula said. It is the home of more than 50 million people including indigenous peoples. Holding the COP in the Amazon would help people understand the importance of the Amazon, he said.

Lula also referred to wars, and climate deniers, in his speech:

“The men that go to war…if they were present here at the COP, they would perceive that it is much more cheaper to put one trillion, 300 billion dollars, for us to end the climate crisis, than to put two trillion dollars…to buy weapons and go to war.”

“Climate change is not a threat of the future but is a tragedy of the present time…COP30 will be the COP of truth,” he said. In the era of fake news and misinformation, now is the moment to impose a new defeat to the denialists, he said.

This was presumably a reference to Donald Trump, the president of the United States, who is a climate denier and has repeatedly made statements to this effect in the past. He has called global warming a “hoax”. The US also withdrew from the Paris Agreement after Trump came into power last year, and is not participating in COP30.

Lula said that Brazil’s call for action is composed of three parts. First, that countries meet their Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs. Second, ensure that there are actions such as transfer of technology to developing countries to adapt to climate change. And third, that the international community place people at the core of the climate agenda.  

By the end of Monday, November 10, Do Lago had cleared the agenda for discussion (which included recommending that discussions on long-term climate finance be pushed to the next COP) without much dissent from countries. According to The Guardian, Brazil had convened negotiators on Sunday afternoon and made clear their wishes to have a full agenda adopted before President Lula opened the summit on Monday morning.

Day 1 also witnessed the launch of the funding proposals by the Loss and Damage Fund: the Fund for Responding to Loss And Damage (FRLD) called for funding requests for its initial phase. The Loss and Damage Fund, launched in 2022 at COP27, aims to support poorer countries being ravaged by climate impacts. As of June 30, 2025, a total of USD$ 788.80 million has been pledged to the Fund.

The lead up to COP30

Much has been happening in the lead up to COP30. Just a few days before COP30, the COP29 and COP30 presidencies jointly released the “Baku to Belém Roadmap to 1.3T”. The Roadmap lists out ways to scale up climate finance to the developing world to USD $1.3 trillion by 2035. Its recommendations include exploring taxing the super-rich, fossil fuels, financial transactions and highly polluting and carbon-intensive activities as ways to raise the finance needed to help poor countries.

In a submission to the UNFCCC, India had responded to the Roadmap saying that it was “an opportunity to put the financial discussion on the right track in accordance with Article 9.1 of Paris Agreement”. Among the many expectations India has raised about the Roadmap include the hope that it will be inclusive, and “reflect the perspectives and concerns of developing country Parties”.

Then came the Leaders’ Summit — which took place on November 6 and 7 at Belém. At the event, world leaders met and spoke about actions being taken by their countries to tackle climate change. On November 6 at the Summit, Brazilian president/Brazil announced the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF). 

The TFFF will use initial funding from developed countries to raise money from the private sector and financial markets. These will then be spent on projects that help governments and local communities preserve their existing forests, rather than exploit them for short-term gain.

But some organisations have already raised concerns about the TFFF.

The World Rainforest Movement called it a “new trap” for peoples and forests in the Global South. It will “tap into a financial market that drives deforestation”, the Movement said in their publication in October. “As a consequence, TFFF will further deepen uncertainties and threats for forest-dependent communities, and place the future of tropical forests at risk,” the organisation said.

On November 7, heads of states also agreed to establish a new initiative for carbon market integration: the Open Coalition on Compliance Carbon Markets, which will deal with carbon pricing and international trade. 

Negotiations between member parties on agenda items — which are one of the most important events at COPs — have already begun before the official launch of COP30 on November 10. The Wire will have more updates on this in the days to come, as negotiations heat up.

What to expect in days to come? 

There was a lack of clarity about what the main outcome of this COP will be — unlike some previous COPs. The last COP at Baku in Azerbaijan, for instance, was nicknamed the “Finance COP” as member parties had to come to an agreement on the New Collective Quantified Goal, an updated amount that developed nations must mobilise annually to support climate action in developing countries, beginning in 2025. At COP29, it was finally agreed that developed countries will take the lead in mobilising USD $300 billion per year to help developing countries fight climate change by 2035.

Here are some aspects that this year’s COP and its negotiations aim to target:

Member parties will try to agree on a roadmap (the Baku to Belém Roadmap to 1.3T) to increase the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance from US $ 300 billion a year to US $ 1.3 trillion. There will also be numerous discussions on Article 9 of the Paris Agreement – which says that developed country parties shall provide financial resources to assist developing countries for both mitigation and adaptation activities.

Global Goal on Adaptation: Parties will have to reach an agreement on shortlisting 100 indicators of adaptation to measure progress towards the Global Goal on Adaptation that was established in the Paris Agreement. This would be the culmination of a process meant to narrow down a set of 100 indicators that match the 11 targets of the 2023 GGA Framework. In particular, the indicators relating to means of implementation remain a subject of much debate, leading the relevant experts to outline options for political decision makers to sort out.”

More progress is expected in the Just Transition Work Programme (an initiative under the UNFCCC to ensure that climate action is equitable and inclusive), and there’s also talk of developing a gender action plan. 

It is significant that COP30 is happening in the Amazon and 10 years after the Paris Agreement, said Harjeet Singh, global engagement director of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative.

“We are seeing record temperatures and rising climate impacts. At the same time, countries are backtracking from their climate ambition,” he commented. “It is absolutely important that we establish a Belem Action Mechanism on just transition so that we move away from fossil fuels in a just and equitable manner.”

We need to scale up renewable energy, scale up adaptation and address loss and damage, he told The Wire. We must also make sure that adequate finance is available in trillions in the form of grants and non-debt creating instruments so that developing countries can take ambitious climate action. And finally, we must protect multilateralism, he said.

“If developed countries do not take sufficient action at home based on their fair share, and support developing countries there is going to be a big question mark on the multilateral process which is something we cannot afford at COP30,” Singh added.

India at COP30

On November 7, India gave its statement at the Leader’s Summit. Global ambition is inadequate when it comes to climate action, and developed countries have “disproportionately appropriated the global carbon budget” while they continue to take “decisive climate action”, India remarked. The global carbon budget tracks global carbon emissions and sinks annually, and uses this data to specify a fair and equitable ‘carbon budget’ that each country can use up given specific climate targets.

But India also asserted that it is committed to multilateralism, and is ready to collaborate with nations to implement solutions and transition to sustainability in ways that are “ambitious, inclusive, fair and equitable”.

India’s ambassador to Brazil Dinesh Bhatia presented this statement. He also said that India would join the TFFF as an observer.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to give COP30 a miss; union environment minister Bhupender Yadav will lead the India contingent at the COP in its second week. India, meanwhile, has still not submitted its updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) which it should have done in February this year. 

The UNFCCC asked parties to submit late NDCs by September, but India hasn’t done that either. 

However, data from the latest, updated synthesis report on NDCs offers some hope. UNFCCC executive director Stiell said at the press conference on Day 1 at COP30, that all new NDCs – including many that came in recently – will reduce emissions by 12% in 2035.

“That’s a big deal,” Stiell said at the press conference that he chaired along with COP30 president do Lago on the afternoon of November 10.

The update shows projected emissions in 2035 now expected to decline 12%, based on 86 new NDCs submitted by 113 Parties this year (22 of these 86 NDCs were submitted after this year’s Synthesis Report was published on October 28).

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