Indigenous protests at COP30
The “mutirão” was a central concept during the 30th Conference of Parties (COP30). A term borrowed from Brazilian Indigenous people, it refers to coming together to work on a task, in this case, climate action [1]. In the 3rd letter of the COP Presidency, they emphasised the importance of the knowledge and participation of Indigenous people, stating: “Indigenous Peoples and local communities are essential allies in the global response to climate change, drawing from generations of knowledge and stewardship of nature”. As we approach COP30, the Brazilian Presidency underscores the importance of further strengthening their meaningful participation [2].
Yet, when Indigenous people engaged in peaceful protest in the first week, the response they got was the arrival of the army to reinforce security and a statement that they should meet with the minister of Indigenous people [3]. Later that week, when they entered the venue to protest, the UN Climate Change Executive Secretary, Simon Stiell, simply criticised the Presidency for a lack of security and sent out a letter, calling it “a serious breach of the established security framework” [4]. In response, 201 human rights and environmental groups criticised Stiell for creating “a chilling effect and a feeling of unsafety for Indigenous peoples, environmental and other human rights defenders, civil society, and activists standing up for their rights” [5]. While it is true that the protestors did not have badges and that minor damage was caused, as the Global Youth Coalition said, “ they were not doing this because they were bad people. They’re desperate, trying to protect their land, the [Amazon] river” [6].
They have a right to be heard and to be included. While COP30 Executive Director Ana Toni emphasised that there are already 900 Indigenous participants compared to 300 in COP29, this is still significantly less than 1600 fossil fuel lobbyists that were present at COP30 [3, 7]. And while she also said that “the purpose of holding a conference in the Amazon is precisely to listen to these demands,” clearly, this meant listening to these demands when they were on the Presidency’s terms [3].
At least in the end, the Indigenous peoples’ pressure paid off to an extent, with the Brazilian government adding the new Indigenous territories [8]. However, it is clear that action was not taken on the merit of the government. It was solely an accomplishment of Indigenous peoples not giving up and letting their voices be heard, even when some are trying to silence them.
Next, this article will address three key negotiations during COP30 NDCs, and a Very Bumpy Transition
On November 17th, COP President do Lago signalled a desire for rapid progress and proposed that, by prioritising key interrelated agenda items, the Parties could finalise a draft text that covers all the major, most complex – and most existential – concerns of COP30 and vote it through by Wednesday November 21st [9]. This level of ambition is surprising given the slow start to negotiations; the substance of the Presidency’s first draft was similarly ambitious.
It is fascinating that many Parties seemed – at least on face – to support this sudden push. Party representatives at the High-Level Segment on November 18th expressed their support for urgent action, many of them name-checking “1.5 degrees” in their addresses to the Presidency.
The first Mutirão draft text proposed introducing annual NDC reviews. [10] This would be a massive improvement the current system of assessing and making countries’ NDCs stricter only every five years.
Across the international community, many Parties’ commitment to NDCs has left a lot to be desired: 90% of countries failed to submit their updated NDCs in February at the deadline set out by the Paris Agreement, suggesting a real lack of momentum [11]. Then, Secretary Stiell announced that 50 Parties had either updated or turned in their NDCs since the deadline, and that those new data points suggested we could reduce global emissions by 12% in 2035 [12]. Of course, 12% is simply not enough – and that’s assuming that parties actually stick to their NDCs, which is hard to believe given how many countries failed to even turn them in on time. Implementing an NDC review annually would turn up the heat; it would also force countries who under-promised in their NDCs two years ago to up their game in the years to come.
However, attempts to accelerate action were not achieved in the following days. The final Mutirão document released on the final day of COP30 made no change to how NDCs are implemented or reviewed; instead, it proffered vague statements that encourage Parties to do their best.
The final text released this Friday disappointed further in how it addresses the idea of transitioning away from fossil fuels. The first draft referenced transitioning away from fossil fuels, [13] phrasing that proved so controversial last year that it gained its own acronym: “Taff” [14, 15]. This controversy has not waned since COP29; if anything, it has become more divisive.
Some Parties would prefer softer alternatives such as “transition to low-carbon solutions”[16], which would not imply any expectation to actually phase out fossil fuel use. No less than twenty-nine countries signed a letter calling for inclusion of a roadmap that would lay out the transition away from fossil fuels, and eighty countries joined the initiative, with a press conference announcing their phase-out ambitions [17]. However, any references to a roadmap were removed from the final draft texts of November 21st after pressure from a large number of Parties, including key petrostates.
The EU announced, in a speech that won lengthy applause, that “under no circumstances” would they accept anything “that is remotely close to” the Mutirão decision if it did not include a transition away from fossil fuels. Meanwhile, the Arab Group declared that discussions would collapse if any part of the final document “targeted” their energy industries. A massive bloc of countries would not agree to anything that includes “taff”; a massive bloc of countries would not agree to anything that does not include “taff”. Neither side would budge. The final compromise at the closing plenary was to create a working group, to create a roadmap for the phase out of fossil fuels, to convene in spring 2026; in other words, to kick the can further down the road.
Climate Finance
If the Mitigation discussions at COP30 stalled on the fossil fuel phase-out, the Climate Finance negotiations stalled on a figure or rather, the lack of one.
The main financial expectation for Belém, following the partial fulfillment of the initial $100 billion annual goal, was the agreement on a New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG). The need for this goal to reach approximately $1.3 trillion per year by 2035 to meet global needs for mitigation, adaptation, and just transition [18]. This figure was further mandated by new legal precedents emphasising developed countries’ binding duty to finance climate action as reparations for historical emissions.
Unfortunately, the final Mutirão Decision dodged the central issues, failing to deliver the necessary scale or clarity.
Instead of a concrete figure, Parties agreed on a compromise range for the NCQG that was structurally dependent on scaling up private finance. While the NCQG was formally set in the hundreds of billions of USD, progressing into the trillions by 2035, the actual public finance commitment was weaker. The NCQG framework, finalized at COP29, set a floor of only $300 billion per year in public finance, leaving the remaining trillion-gap to be filled by ambiguous private sector funds [19]. This outcome effectively allows developed nations to shift their legal and moral obligations onto the private sector, evading their historical responsibility and financial duty.
Developing nations rightly pointed out that this mechanism guarantees an unreliable, and inequitable goal. Finance Minister representatives stressed that private funds are not a substitute for predictable, grant-based public finance, especially for adaptation projects, which offer low returns and therefore attract minimal private investment. The result is a goal that is quantified in name only, failing to meet the scale of the climate crisis or the legal responsibilities of the wealthiest nations.
The Brazilian Presidency had also strongly championed the reform of Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), aiming to unlock cheaper, faster finance for the Global South by reducing debt burdens and improving access to capital. While there was rhetoric around shifting MDBs’ focus from Country to Climate strategies, the final text contained little beyond a commitment to a “further review” of their capital adequacy frameworks [22].
This failure to achieve a radical financial restructuring ensures that developing nations remain caught in a debilitating cycle: they need to take on high-interest debt to fund adaptation and mitigation, while simultaneously being denied the grant-based public finance required for a truly Just Transition. In essence, COP30 failed to change the financial rule, leaving the most vulnerable to pay the price for inaction.
Just Transition
The gaveling of a text establishing a Just Transition mechanism for the first time was pointed to by many Parties and commentators as one of the biggest victories coming out of COP30. Although the first week of negotiations dragged on, in line with the historic rift between “developed” and “developing”, in the second week, things heated up. Activists and civil society groups, with YOUNGO a leading figure, began to push harder in their statements and in conference halls for decisive action; chants of “BAM”, and “BAM now” – meaning “Belém Action Mechanism”, the other name for the Just Transition mechanism – could be heard during negotiation sessions. [23] One chief reason this particular mechanism is so significant is the language it uses, referencing the principles of human rights, labour rights and those of Indigenous peoples – too often left out of the final versions of UNFCCC decisions. [24]
If the momentum we built at COP30 can be sustained, Parties will spend this spring working on their official views and recommendations on the proposed Mechanism in order to adopt a draft decision at COP31. This rate of progress can’t be taken for granted: negotiations at Belém were bogged down by disagreements between parties on the inclusion of references to 1.5 and transitioning away from fossil fuels. The operationalisation of the full mechanism itself will not begin until COP31, and the final document offered up at COP30 has been criticised for omitting key demands that groups like the Like-Minded Developing Countries, or LMDCs, called for throughout the conference. [25] Primarily, there is nothing in the decision calling on developed countries to provide means of implementation for the Just Transition mechanism itself.
Though this flaw can easily be waved away in the wider context of Just Transition moving from the sidelines to centre stage, it’s important to think about the ramifications of this in the long term. UNFCCC decisions are infamously non-committal. Given the lack of hard numbers for climate finance and the massive, seemingly inescapable, dependency on private funding for climate adaptation, the fact that this mechanism doesn’t yet commit the wealthiest countries to making any tangible material contribution to developing countries’ transitions is worrisome. Developing countries stressed over and over that they will not be able to achieve their climate goals without the funding being debated in Belém. The infrastructure needed to achieve net-zero requires massive amounts of investment; plans will take years to finalise. If it’s unclear for at least another year where the money will come from – if it even comes at all – that doesn’t just undermine the principle of the Just Transition, but also significantly delays the transition itself, despite the fact that climate-change induced extreme weather events will only make these projects more costly over time. This may have been a momentous first step, but we’re still miles away from where we need to be.
Conclusion
This may have looked to onlookers like a very dramatic COP – where Indigenous people took to the streets to fight injustice, where the Presidency made major changes to the Agenda in the name of efficacy, where a building actually caught fire – but the end result looks like a disappointment. The most contentious points that Parties came into COP30 with – divided along predictable fault lines regarding CBAMs, NDCs, and 1.5 – were not resolved. The Belém Mechanism seems to have disappointed almost everyone involved, and the political fault lines along which climate policy has been discussed at this COP have become impossible to ignore. The Arab Group accused one unnamed Party of attempting to withhold adaptation finance for political reasons and undermining their sovereignty. Discussions constantly referenced whose “fault” emissions really are, as a way for developing countries to hit back at developed economies attempting to push for stricter climate measures.
At the final discussions on Friday, major actors and negotiating groups implied that a no-deal – where they refused to sign any collective agreement – would be possible. If we cannot even address the cause of the climate crisis (fossil fuels), then it is difficult to see full progress. Although Parties were eventually able to compromise and vote through watered-down texts at the close of COP30, thousands – ministers, delegates, civil society groups – will be going home from Brazil disappointed by the outcomes.
