As we enter the final stretch of COP30, Stuart Brocklehurst, Exeter’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Business Engagement and Innovation) reflects on the challenges of reaching an agreement that goes far enough
When last night the Brazilian presidency published their proposed final texts out of this COP30 conference, they were very rapidly rejected by 29 countries.
They a mix of European and Latin American countries predominantly, who were saying that what’s proposed just doesn’t go far enough, it’s not sufficiently ambitious, has no reference to a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels, and it’s not addressing the climate-nature nexus, and in particular the need to protect rainforests.
After all, the whole point of COP being held here in Belem was so that the proximity to the Amazon rainforests would inspire us to greater heights.
There’s a natural challenge in multilateral summits such as this. On the one hand, climate change is clearly a global issue, and we will require all countries across the world to take action.
On the other hand, when you have a process that works by a unanimous agreement, any one country can veto an individual suggestion, and that raises the risk that we only progress at the pace of the slowest.
In practice, what tends to happen is a process now of cajoling, encouraging, strong-arming, sweet talking, call it what you will – where those who are opposed to more forceful action have some of the more ambitious countries working with them to encourage them to go further than they might wish.
We’ve seen that, for example, at COP28, where there was language saying that we must stop using fossil fuels, which a number of countries were clearly not happy with, but ultimately were persuaded to sign up to by those who were in favour of it.
It is a challenge, and the UK is one of the leading voices, saying that this agreement doesn’t go far enough, but for example, on the rainforest point, the UK was strongly involved in designing the Tropical Forest Forever Fund. Germany has put in a billion pounds to that fund.
But the UK is in the awkward position of saying, ‘Actually, because we’ve got a really tricky domestic budget about to happen next week, we can’t announce any financial commitments to that ourselves.
So things like that probably have hurt our credibility a bit, but these discussions will go on, I suspect, through most of the weekend, unless there is a sudden dramatic breakthrough, and we’ll see where they end up.