Reporting from Belém, Exeter’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Business and Engagement) Stuart Brocklehurst writes that the goals and priorities of COP30 are still unclear at the halfway stage
We’re halfway through COP30 and talking to various of the negotiating teams the general refrain is that things are going as you’d expect.
This means that things are difficult, that nothing’s been agreed and that we’re waiting for the return of Ministers to fix the difficult questions towards the end.
Another refrain, though, is that people don’t really know what this COP is about.
Last year, it was very clear. It was the finance COP, and the question was how that issue might be fixed and agreed.
This year, is it the COP of gender, the COP of implementation, of adaptation, of NDCs, the COP of truth?
It worries me a bit that if we don’t know what it is we’re trying to achieve, we may be more likely to reach a non-existent or unclear goal.
Brazil’s President Lula wanted COP30 to be held in the Amazon so that people could be inspired by the surroundings, and that it would drive us all to higher goals.
Hopefully, that will be the case, but at this mid-way point, we don’t seem to be making that much progress as of yet.