A Decade after Paris, COP30 Needs Less Argument over Climate Change, More Action
With the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) about to start in Belem, Brazil, the world needs less argument and more action, environmental experts say
The 12-day conference, which opens on Monday, 10 November, comes ten years after the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement, but delegates at this year’s meeting face the same stalemate over who pays for the damage of climate change and the lack of dramatic steps toward implementation.
The 1.5°C Threshold
The Paris Agreement set a goal of limiting global warming by the end of the century to no more than 2 degrees Celsius (2°C) above pre-industrial levels, and preferably no more 1.5°C.
But in an Emissions Gap Report released this week, UNEP, the United Nations Environment Programme projected that the world will not meet that goal. Its models predict that if all countries live up to their pledged reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, global warming this century will reach between 2.3 and 2.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Under current emission levels, temperatures are expected to rise 2.8 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level, the agency added.
UNEP further predicted that global temperatures will likely exceed the 1.5°C threshold within the next decade. The world has already crossed that threshold for a single calendar year, 2024, which multiple international agencies have confirmed was the warmest year on record. The figure in the Paris Agreement refers to an average over decades, not what happens in a single year.
Health and Economic Effects
Other groups have also issued reports sounding climate and environmental alarms in the days ahead of COP 30.
The recent Lancet Countdown report on health and climate change, produced by the British medical journal The Lancet and the World Health Organisation, found that continued dependence on fossil fuels and inadequate adaptation to rising temperatures were causing widespread human health problems, straining health systems, and undermining economies.
The report said 12 out of 20 key indicators of health threats had reached record levels. Among them, it said, the heat-related mortality rate had risen by 23 percent since the 1990s, averaging 546,000 deaths annually.
Among its examples of economic costs of climate change, the report said droughts and heatwaves had caused 124 million people to experience moderate or severe food insecurity in 2023 and contributed to the loss of 640 billion working hours, with productivity losses equivalent to more than $1 trillion. At the same time, it noted, governments spent $956 billion on net fossil fuel subsidies in 2023—more than three times the annual amount pledged to support countries most vulnerable to climate change.
Greenpeace: Plea for Equitable Funding
Hanen Keskes, political campaigns lead for Greenpeace Middle East and North Africa, part of the international Greenpeace environmental organisation, told Al-Fanar Media that since the 2015 Paris Agreement, global debate had shifted from setting ambitious goals to the real challenge of putting climate action into effect on the ground.
She said not enough was being done and there was a wide gap between what countries were pledging in their climate-action plans, called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and what climate science demands to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Keskes said the Middle East-North African region was warming at nearly twice the global average, making the need for action urgent. While previous U.N. climate change conferences—such as COP28 in the United Arab Emirates in 2023, with its pledges to reduce the use of fossil fuels—have introduced important initiatives, they have also exposed weak implementation and financing and a lack of accountability among wealthy nations of the global north, which bear the greatest responsibility for the climate crisis and its financial burdens on the global south, she said.
Keskes said fair climate finance would be the mark of genuine progress and that the Brazilian conference’s top priority should be to secure direct support from industrialised nations for vulnerable nations in the global south. This support must cover projects related to mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage, she said, and must ensure that financial mechanisms are transparent, just, and guided by the “polluter pays principle”, holding major emitters of greenhouse gases accountable.
She warned that any delay or backtracking on these commitments would widen the climate justice gap and heighten the vulnerability of communities across the region, which are already burdened by overlapping environmental, economic, and social pressures.
Keskes added that despite the global discussion of energy transition, progress in phasing out fossil fuels remained slow and fragmented, with most governments still backing new coal, oil, and gas projects.
Towards Equitable Financing
Jauad El-Kharraz, coordinator of the TeraMed Initiative and an expert on renewable energy, told Al-Fanar Media that climate finance topped the agenda at COP30, with discussions centred on finalising the “Baku to Belém Roadmap to 1.3T”. The plan aims to establish an accountability framework for reaching the ambitious climate finance goals agreed at last year’s U.N. climate change conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, COP29.
Those goals include raising a total of $300 billion in annual climate financing that developed countries by 2035, and scaling up contributions from all public and private sources to $1.3 trillion by the same year. Even though the new goals represent major increases over previous commitments, representatives of developing countries where climate change is putting lives and livelihoods at risk have said they believe the amounts are insufficient and unfair.
El-Kharraz also said funding and resource allocation was urgently needed for the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage. Existing commitments amounted to less than $800 million, he said, and only about half of that has been disbursed so far—a figure far below actual requirements. Adaptation financing reached $28 billion in 2022, only about 5 percent of global needs, he said.
El-Kharraz also said countries should submit ambitious, updated Nationally Determined Contributions plans outlining actions they will take by 2035 that align with meeting the 1.5°C target. He observed that by the start of October, only 62 out of 194 countries had submitted their updated NDCs.
“This situation is further compounded by other challenges, such as the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, European hesitation, Brazil’s expansion of oil production despite hosting COP30, and the ongoing reliance on fossil fuels despite the transition commitments made at COP28,” El-Kharraz said.
Noting the “warmest year” record reached in 2024, he said it was urgent that COP30 should be an “implementation conference”, after what he called a “disappointing” COP29.
Funding for Local Priorities
Amgad Elmahdi, regional manager for MENA at the Green Climate Fund, told Al-Fanar Media that climate finance must be delivered at speed, equity, and scale.
Elmahdi said that in the MENA region, the fund reduces risks through new investments in integrated water, energy, and food systems through a mix of grants, concessional loans, and financing guarantees.
This approach connects local priorities with global investors while simplifying access to finance and strengthening national ownership of climate projects, he said.