Behind the scenes at COP30

A dispatch on the debates driving the U.N. climate summit.  
  
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| **Catherine Osborn** is a Rio-based columnist and the author of FP’s Latin America Brief.  
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| **Catherine Osborn** is a Rio-based columnist and the author of FP’s Latin America Brief.   
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| | Dear FP Insiders, In the humid Amazon rainforest city of Belém, Brazil, this year’s United Nations climate summit is providing a glimpse of what multilateralism looks like without direct U.S. involvement. The conference, known as COP30, may become one of the most attended U.N. climate summits in history, with more than 50,000 delegates registered to take part in person. I traveled from Rio de Janeiro to Belém last week to cover the summit. The convention center’s main hallway was lined with country-specific pavilions touting climate action by actors including Brazil, China, and India. The United States had no pavilion; President Donald Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement this year and declined to send a delegation to COP30.Thousands of Indigenous people from around the world were also present. Some were credentialed participants in high-level talks; others were demonstrators in at least two protests that temporarily shut down traffic at the entrance. At first glance, COP30 seemed alive and boisterous. But my conversations with participants quickly revealed strains on the decades-old U.N. climate regime. One senior diplomat from a G-7 country told me that it would be a success if the talks reached any kind of consensus, even if it did not break major new ground. Usually, the COP summits feature a decision unanimously backed by more than 190 countries. In the past, these have included commitments for rich countries to contribute $100 billion per year to poorer ones by 2025 and for countries to set national climate targets with the goal of reaching net-zero emissions by or around mid-century.  The United States, a major emitter and fossil fuel exporter, has often been a conservative actor in U.N. climate talks—so much so that some observers hypothesized that progress would get easier after Washington withdrew from the Paris Agreement. But Trump’s broad attacks on climate action may have emboldened other major fossil fuel exporters, such as Saudi Arabia, to dig in their heels. On Monday, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore wrote on social media that Riyadh was trying to block a broadly supported measure at COP30 for countries to phase out fossil fuels. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is due to meet with Trump at the White House on Tuesday. Worried about such potential gridlock, the Brazilian summit organizers have for months emphasized that their main goal was to urge countries, companies, and other actors toward implementing still-unmet targets from past U.N. climate summits rather than negotiating a major new pact. More than halfway through the conference, some progress is visible. Brazil and the United Kingdom announced support for seven countries to better track and reduce methane emissions, a global coalition of mayors debuted a partnership to better manage extreme heat, and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) launched a new program to channel money from private investors to climate projects in the developing world. IDB chief climate advisor Avinash Persaud designed the program based on real-world data about what wealthy asset managers would actually buy, he told me. On climate, he said, “people have been very glibly saying we need to get private sector mobilization as if saying it will make it happen”—but it has not occurred at the scale needed. Altogether at the summit, “as we see quite limited engagement from some countries, other countries have really truly stepped up,” as have subnational governments, said Thomas Froyland, an executive at global engineering firm Ramboll. California boasts the world’s fourth-largest economy. The state is still fully committed to its climate goals, Gov. Gavin Newsom told crowds at COP30. “Donald Trump does not represent Americans on climate change,” U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said at a side event that I attended. Multiple U.S. lawmakers had planned to attend the summit to boost that message but canceled their trips due to the government shutdown. No country has a greater power to shape the direction of talks than host Brazil. Its choice to hold this summit in Belém was controversial due to a shortage of affordable accommodations, and other countries called for the conference to be moved to a larger city such as Rio de Janeiro. But Brazil’s government stuck to the plan, arguing that it was important to foreground the rainforest setting. Domestic politics help explain the calculation. Belém is the capital of the state of Pará, whose governor is an important member of the coalition that is expected to support Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s reelection bid next year. Belém’s environmentalist community generally backed hosting COP30, too. “The world needs to step into reality. Belém is a microcosm of global inequality, and that’s exactly why its choice is so strong. Here, in addition to vibrant culture and human warmth, visitors will see the climate emergency and the need for environmental justice up close,” architect Lucas Nassar wrote this year in _Amazônia Vox_. I’d been to Belém before, though last time I arrived on a riverboat. Belém is among Brazil’s poorest state capitals on a per capita basis. On this visit, riding in from the airport past working-class cinderblock houses, Belém’s poverty was visible. I asked my Uber driver what he thought of COP30. He launched into a common criticism of environmental regulations in Brazil, claiming that they hold the country back from economic development. In international talks, Brazilian diplomats have similarly argued that the global energy transition should not deepen inequalities but rather counter them. For many years, climate advocates have called for rich countries to provide grants and loans to poorer ones for their green transitions. But that alone is not enough to ensure that developing countries have high-quality green jobs. To do so, they need to build green up technologies and industries, too. China has vastly outperformed other countries’ abilities to do this. Its technology exports have spread decarbonization but also prompted new worries that other countries could be missing out on green economic gains. On my ride into Belém, we passed a showroom that was under construction for Chinese auto giant BYD, underscoring the far-flung reach of Chinese green technologies here.  As I wrote in a dispatch from COP30 last week, Brazilian organizers introduced a green industrialization agenda to the conference, with new declarations, panels, and initiatives on the topic. It’s just one example of how—even if negotiators do not reach a flashy headline decision by Friday—the talks are advancing some areas of climate debate and potentially climate action. In fact, countries are considering a draft decision to transition the focus of future U.N. climate summits away from negotiating new deals to implementing existing agreements. That may be the only kind of climate multilateralism that is still possible in today’s fractured world. One last note: If you’re reading this, you are part of FP’s highest tier of membership. We’re grateful for your support. Hit reply to send me some feedback on this letter. We’ll keep them coming from other summits around the world that FP staff and contributors attend.Wishing you and yours a great holiday season!Warmly,Catherine Osborn  
Rio-based columnist and the author of FP’s Latin America Brief  
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