The United Nations’ global climate summit has finished for another year. Some progress was made in Brazil on climate finance and adaptation. But efforts to end reliance on fossil fuels were stymied by – you guessed it – fossil fuel powers.
It left many observers with a question: is this really the best we can do? Nearly every country (except the United States) joined the COP30 summit in the Brazilian city of Belém. The meeting showed the best and the worst of multilateralism – when countries try to address global problems beyond the capacity of an individual nation.
On one hand, COP30 managed to draw world leaders to the heart of the Amazonian rainforest to highlight the global issue of deforestation. And it maintained political momentum on climate action despite an unprecedented year of geopolitical turbulence, wars, finance cuts and UN job losses.
