A toothless COP30

With just the right build-up in the shape of a significant milestone of ‘4thInternational Conference on Financing for Development’ (FFD4) taking place earlier in the year during June-July that presented a lot of focus, and useful recommendations to improve global financial architecture, particularly the serious issue of debt facing developing countries, it was hoped that after a disappointing COP29 in terms of quite poor show on two important aspects for effectively dealing with climate change crisis – no timeline for phasing out fossil fuels, after it was decided in COP28 that there was a need to transition away from fossil fuels and committing around one-fourth of what was roughly required at USD 300 billion, and not USD 1.3 trillion in terms of climate finance by 2035 – the so-called ‘Solutions COP’ or COP30 will show significant progress on both these aspects, including internalizing lessons from FFD4 to help developing countries with regard to debt distress.

Nothing of the sort happened, and COP30 rather than being a significant path breaker from an otherwise highly disappointing ‘Implementation decade’ since the seminal 2015 Paris Agreement — which had come with so much fanfare after a ‘Diplomacy decade’, and in fact, the negotiating efforts went all the way back to 1992, when ‘United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’ (UNFCCC) was signed, that is after years of deliberations – yet this year’s COP has once again, like many before it, has unfortunately not been much effective in dealing with major issues with regard to the climate change crisis.

Although 80 countries had made a dash during the last few days of COP30 to get into the final resolution of the meetings a timeline for the phased removal of fossil fuel usage, under reportedly strong lobbying by countries with lot of stakes in oil and gas, it is not that no timeline was given, unlike the communique that appeared from COP28 in Dubai that showed consensus on transitioning away from fossil fuels, there is not even mention of words ‘fossil fuel’ in the ‘Draft decision —/CMA.7’ released on November 22.

Here, while the draft decision called for reduction of greenhouse gases, and keeping global temperatures from crossing 1.5 degrees Celsius on any consistent basis as ‘Recognizing that limiting global warming to 1.5 °C with no or limited overshoot requires deep, rapid and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions of 43 per cent by 2030 and 60 per cent by 2035 relative to the 2019 level and reaching net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050’ some of the most potent ways to reduce carbon footprint in terms of moving away from fossil fuel under some meaningful phase-out plan, and to significantly enhance fiscal envelope of developing countries – especially those like Pakistan, which are highly climate change vulnerable, and are witnessing much more frequent, and increasingly intense climate catastrophes, along with being highly debt distressed – in terms of effectively reforming global financial architecture to effectively deal with debt related issues, and to make available ample climate finance to developing countries for them to meaningfully invest to significantly adapt overall economy to green technology.

Moreover, while the draft decision did indicate that it ‘Welcomes efforts to reform the international financial architecture, calls for continued efforts in this regard…’ there is no mention of any specific recommendation for reforming global sovereign debt restructuring framework, or annual release of International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) special drawing rights (SDRs) allocation for highly climate change vulnerable countries over any meaningful timeframe.

Highlighting a rather lukewarm COP30 in terms of consensus document, a November 22, New York Times (NYT) article ‘Oil Producers, but Maybe Not the Planet, Get a Win as Climate Talks End’ pointed out: ‘Global climate negotiations ended on Saturday in Brazil with a watered-down resolution that made no direct mention of fossil fuels, the main driver of global warming.

The final statement, roundly criticized by diplomats as insufficient, was a victory for oil producers like Saudi Arabia and Russia. It included plenty of warnings about the cost of inaction but few provisions for how the world might address dangerously rising global temperatures head-on. Without a rapid transition away from oil, gas and coal, scientists warn, the planet faces increasing devastation from deadly heat waves, droughts, floods and wildfires.’

On a positive note, though, climate finance did receive meaningful boost in terms of its prospects, whereby the COP30 draft decision indicated in this regard: ‘Decides to urgently advance actions to enable the scaling up of financing for developing country Parties for climate action from all public and private sources to at least USD 1.3 trillion per year by 2035…’ In this regard, the same NYT published article pointed out: ‘The deal did bolster promises of funding to protect communities from the impacts of climate-fueled disasters.

Small island nations in particular wanted more assurances that nations would triple adaptation finance, and the final agreement does that, calling for “efforts to at least triple adaptation finance by 2035.”’ It is important to note that neither any binding timelines were provided, nor any specific major sources from developed countries – especially those that have had deep, prolonged carbon footprint – and from multilateral institutions were agreed upon.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025