COP30: Implementation, Inclusion, Innovation in Climate Action

The Times Kuwait Report

This year’s United Nations Climate Summit (COP30) held in Belém, Brazil from 10–21 November marked the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement—the global treaty adopted by the international community in 2015 to combat climate change. This Agreement seeks to limit global warming to well below 2°C, preferably to 1.5°C, above pre-industrial levels, primarily by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

Additionally, the agreement aims to increase the ability of countries to deal with the impacts of climate change through adaptation and mitigation measures. The agreement also calls for mobilization of financial resources to support climate action in developing and vulnerable countries, through their own national objectives, and consistent with a low greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and climate-resilient pathways.

This year’s COP30 talks were held under the positive theme of global ‘mutirão’, a word used by indigenous communities in Brazil to denote ‘collective effort’. The term highlighted the need for the global community to unite and mobilize against climate change. However, the COP30 Declaration, issued at the end of an extended day of talks to reach agreement on the document, revealed the deep divisions prevailing among member states on key climate change issues.

The COP30 Declaration that eventually emerged was a classic COP compromise; pushing contentious issues into future climate talks. Pragmatism led to outcomes essential to lowering GHG emissions and mitigating global warming being shelved, in order to pen a consensus declaration. This dilemma was reflected in the closing remarks by UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell, who said that although many countries wanted to move faster on fossil fuels, finance, and responding to climate disasters… “we also needed to be realistic.”

Since the first Conference of Parties (COP1) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), was held in Bonn, Germany in 1995, the topic of energy transition, through phasing out fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas) and scaling up renewable energy sources, has been embroiled in discussions and controversies over the rights of fossil-fuel producers and the needs of the world for cleaner energy sources.

Phasing out fossil fuels is inevitable if we are to credibly rein-in GHG emissions, which evidence-based data has identified as the main catalyst behind global warming, the precursor to climate change. Fossil-fuel producers acknowledge the dangers of global warming, but insist that in the absence of a reliable energy source to drive the global economy, it would be more effective to tackle GHG emissions by using natural carbon sinks and carbon removal and storage technologies.

However, latest data from the UNFCCC show that the burning of fossil-fuels is overwhelmingly the largest contributor to GHG emissions, and attempts to mitigate global warming without reducing use of this energy source will be futile. Over 68 percent of GHG emissions and nearly 90 percent of all carbon dioxide (CO2), the main constituent in (GHG) emissions, comes from the burning of fossil fuels.

The first ‘Global Stocktake (GST)’—a process mandated under the Paris Agreement to periodically review collective progress on goals of the agreement—published in 2023, concluded that while there had been progress on climate actions, the world was still not on track to meet the long-term temperature goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C. The GST called for more ambitious action to close the gap, and provided guidance for the next Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) in 2025.

The NDC is another process under the Paris Agreement that requires countries to periodically submit national action plans on reducing GHG emissions, and promoting climate adaptation and mitigation. Countries were to submit their upgraded NDC 3.0 in February 2025. Due to weak compliance, the date was extended to September, but even midway into COP30, only 113 countries had lodged their NDCs, of which only 86 are NDC 3.0, Kuwait is not one of them.

Representing Kuwait at the COP30 Climate Summit, Minister of Oil Tariq Al-Rumi emphasized Kuwait’s support of international efforts to address the challenges of climate change and achieve sustainable development. He also reaffirmed Kuwait’s commitment to responsible environmental policies in line with UN climate and clean energy goals. In its last NDC 2.0 submitted in 2021, Kuwait had stressed its desire to avoid increases in GHG emissions,and said it would seek to avoid GHG emissions equivalent to 7.4 percent of its total future emission by 2035.

Ten years into the Paris Agreement, discussions at COP30 still flounder around the same three interrelated elements essential to meet the targets and aims set in the 2015 agreement—energy transition, climate finance, and social justice. Consensus on these initiatives have remained largely elusive at COP gatherings, with talks on energy transition and financing consistently hindered by pressures from vested interests and recalcitrance of members.

Ironically, it was at the 2023 COP28 held in UAE, a major fossil fuel producer, that the first agreement on a transition away from fossil fuels was reached. However, the issue of energy transition did not receive continued support at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, nor in Belém, where the issue was not even on the main agenda. Brazil contended that there was not enough support to include this as a formal agenda item, and the topic would instead be discussed at informal sessions.

The focus of COP30 presidency was on forests; the very choice of Belém as host city was significant, as it lies on the fringe of the Amazon basin, underscoring the central theme of the conference—the role of forest ecosystems as carbon sinks to address the climate crisis. The Amazon is estimated to contain 150-200 billion tons of stored carbon, which is critical to global climate stability.

Cutting down forests to create farms, pastures, or living spaces generate emissions, as cutting trees releases the carbon they store and reduces nature’s ability to keep emissions out of the atmosphere. Brazil launched its initiative to establish a US$125 billion ‘Tropical Forest Forever Facility’, which aims to finalize investments from sovereign funders to reward forest conservation efforts in tropical countries.

Another priority at COP30 was boosting climate finance, with delegates calling for innovative approaches at resource mobilization. As part of scaling up climate finance for developing nations, the presidencies of COP29 and COP30 initiated the ‘Baku-Belém Roadmap to T1.3’—a plan to generate US$1.3 trillion annually by 2035 to support developing countries in their adaptation and mitigation strategies.

The world is fast approaching climate ‘tipping points’ that could precipitate irreversible damage. Since the 1980s, each decade has been warmer than the previous one, with 2024 being the hottest recorded so far. Higher temperatures are both a cause and effect of the sustained feedback loop resulting from interplay of GHG emissions, higher temperatures, and climate change. The persistent warming pattern is immensely worrying, as sustained temperature of 1.5°C, and its potential increase to 2°C or higher, could result in irremediable consequences.

Initiating rapid, transformative, and sustained GHG emission reductions; markedly boosting efforts to build resilience and adaptation in vulnerable states; and urgently reforming international financial systems to mobilize financial flows aligned with climate goals are critical, if the world is to remain consistent with the 1.5°C temperature goal.

Climate-driven droughts, floods, storms, and wildfires are impacting nations harder with each passing year, destroying infrastructure, claiming lives, and wrecking livelihoods, of millions of people worldwide. While the impacts of climate crises have never been clearer, the need for more speed in transforming policies into actions, mobilizing funding for building resilience, and ensuring an equitable energy transition, have never been more imperative.