Catherine Osborn in Polycrisis:
Last month, the humid Amazonian rainforest city of Belém, Brazil was alive with all the usual signs of a United Nations climate summit except one: a US negotiating team. Tens of thousands of participants from more than 190 countries and dozens of Indigenous groups staged two weeks of meetings, protests, and negotiations during this year’s summit, known as COP30. Though no US diplomats were present, a handful of conference-goers weaved through the crowds with white-and-green “Make Science Great Again” hats. California Governor Gavin Newsom made a defiant appearance.
This year’s conference was the first since Donald Trump returned to the White House and triggered the United States’ second exit from the 2015 Paris Agreement. This time, Trump had gone beyond withdrawing from international climate diplomacy and was actively working to undermine it. Sanctions threats in October against envoys from countries on the verge of reaching a landmark deal to limit global shipping pollution succeeded in blocking the agreement.
The threat of potential US sabotage hung over Belém as countries negotiated if and how they would speed up climate action. Trump’s pressure offered potential political cover to delegations that were already dragging their feet on climate issues for any number of reasons. Saudi Arabia, for example, had moved in lockstep with the United States to torpedo the shipping pollution deal.
Against this adverse political backdrop, a key pillar of Brazil’s approach to COP30 was what some climate strategists have called “coalitions of the doing.” Rather than waiting for absolute consensus among UN member states, Brazil tried to move in smaller groups to push action forward and emphasize how climate action can lead to economic development. By conventional metrics of COP summits, this one yielded incremental progress rather than any big breakthrough—showing the UN climate regime is surviving, but only barely.
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