Alice C. Hill and Angus Soderberg
The thirtieth Conference of the Parties (COP30) will present a stress test for multilateralism and the greater climate effort when it kicks off on November 10 in Belém, Brazil. Negotiators from around the world will gather to curb global emissions and strengthen climate ambition, but they will face substantial headwinds. While countries have made progress since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015 and projected warming for this century has fallen, according to the United Nations, the Paris Agreement goal of keeping global average temperature rise well below 2°C—and preferably at 1.5°C below the pre-industrial era—is moving out of reach. In 2024, global average annual temperature rise breached 1.5°C for the first time, while atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide increased by a record amount since measurements began.
The current commitments made by countries are not enough to rein in accelerating warming, and some are stepping away from the effort despite a need for greater implementation. The Donald Trump administration, for one, does not appear interested in honoring any promises that the United States—the world’s second-largest emitter and historically greatest emitter—has made at previous summits. Against this backdrop and the heightened stakes of a warming world, COP30’s ability to address and help the globe navigate the climate crisis will be challenged.
Brazil wants to capture the ambition evident during the first climate summit it hosted, the Rio Earth Summit, thirty-three years ago. But the world looks vastly different than it did in 1992—economically, politically, and environmentally—and climate efforts have only managed to grow incrementally in recent years. Brazil has framed COP30 as the COP of implementation and adaptation, which has invited the burden of expectation. The question now is whether it lives up to that name.
At its core, the COP process relies on countries to voluntarily choose to engage in ambitious collective action. After three decades of meetings, the COP process has faced mounting criticism for stalled negotiations, weak implementation, and an inability to spur sustained climate ambition. Perhaps the best measure of ambition is the expectation under the 2015 Paris Agreement that nations will submit their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) every five years to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Fewer than 10 percent of countries managed to meet the February 2025 deadline for submission of their latest commitments. The NDCs that subsequently trickled in generally lack ambitious targets.
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