Why COP30 is like a game of Risk

As a kid, I sometimes played a game called Risk, which is all about countries seeking geopolitical advantage, and there’s probably some parallel with COP30, now underway here in Belém in Brazil.

For our hosts Brazil, this is an opportunity to take global leadership, to emphasise their position within the BRICS (an alliance of major developing countries) and perhaps, looking in particular at the resignation of the leadership role by the United States, to see an opportunity for them and other countries to step up.

Another member of the BRICS is of course China, now probably past peak emissions, and by far the biggest investor in decarbonisation, which they’re doing because of the threat of climate change, but also for strategic reasons: they want to have independence from other countries’ supplies of fossil fuels.

Then you have countries worrying about trade. The EU is looking at some restrictions on the import of some green transitional technologies, because they’re concerned about the impact on their existing industrial base. But some developing countries are saying, ‘Hang on, this isn’t playing fair. You had the chance to get ahead in these new industries. You simply didn’t take it.’

But of all these different countries, the ones which have the most to lose, the most at risk, and the ones who are most focused on climate tend to be the poorest, and in the agenda wars, which happen at the start of every COP, with arguments over what should be discussed and what it shouldn’t, it the poor, low-lying, small island states, which are saying very firmly: ‘We have to focus on ambition.’

Almost certainly, limiting emissions to 1.5C is now dead as an ambition, but every fraction of a degree we go over that can have a tumultuous effect, particularly in some of the world’s countries which are least well positioned to respond to that threat.