Ten Years After the Paris Agreement, COP Has to Change

Ten years ago, nearly 200 nations agreed to confront the existential threat of climate change together as one planet with the historic Paris Agreement.

As years pass, there is a danger of losing sight of the not so minor miracle the agreement represents. Several years earlier, developing nations had stormed out of climate talks in Copenhagen, leaving the future of international climate efforts very much in doubt.

But in Paris, at the UN’s COP 21 summit, against so many odds, the world chose hope. Because in between all the UN bureaucratese, tortured qualifications, and never-ending clauses, at its most fundamental level, what the Paris Agreement does is tell a stunning story about the collective power of humanity to do incredible things. To look at the climate crisis and say, as one planet, “We can do this.”

Ten years on, this story is inching closer to reality. The clean energy technologies critical to cutting planet-warming emissions have become the cheapest form of electricity in history. Renewables provided over 92% of new electricity worldwide last year. And in 2025, global investment in clean energy reached a staggering $2.2 trillion – double that of fossil fuels.

And yet. Despite the incredible growth in renewables, surging energy demand worldwide has seen emissions smash all records and the temperature goals enshrined in the Paris Agreement slip further and further away.

Meanwhile rising energy demand and factors like the election of Donald Trump and backlash against green policies in the EU has turned the fossil fuel industry positively bullish on long-term growth, with the Saudi Aramco CEO telling insiders they’re more likely to see Elvis enter the room than energy transition succeed.

In a nutshell, progress. But not nearly enough.

For anyone with a vested interest in a livable planet, the question now is how this picture changes. At least significantly enough to bring the hope of Paris back within reach.

An answer of sorts was clear at recent global climate talks at the UN’s COP 30 summit in Belém, Brazil. But so were the powerful forces combining to block progress.

Ahead of COP 30, Brazil’s President Lula called for summit to be “the moment of truth,” and it certainly lived up to the billing. Only maybe not exactly as Lula likely intended.

One truth was that the conference failed to produce the ambitious commitments needed to get the planet back on track to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement, a testament perhaps to a uniquely challenging year for the climate movement.

But that wasn’t all. In between torrential rain, sweltering heat, and a fire breaking out on the supposed last day of negotiations, COP 30 made two other truths crystal clear.

COP 30 reminded the world how critical COP summits are for climate progress.

Ahead of COP 30, many commentators wondered if the US administration’s no-show would undercut negotiations. Instead, what we saw in Belém was COP’s singular power to focus global attention on climate and open new windows of possibility.

Case in point, the push for a plan to phase out fossil fuels, which in just two weeks went from wishful longshot to perhaps the central fight of COP 30.

Two years ago, calls for a phaseout became a flashpoint at COP 28 in the UAE. But petrostates maneuvering (more on that below) ensured the idea all but disappeared at last year’s summit in Azerbaijan. And in a year when climate denial is increasingly repackaged as "climate realism" and think piece headlines proclaim a global souring on climate politics – few expected to see the issue take center stage in Brazil.

But then the magic of COP began. Looking ahead to talks, Brazil’s environment minister, Marina Silva, began raising the idea of a “roadmap” for fossil fuel transition in June. Opening the summit, Lula himself made it a demand. Colombia and a few other nations began circulating proposals for what this could look like and a ball was rolling. Soon, 88 countries at every stage of development were demanding a transition roadmap and the EU was threatening to walk out without one. Suddenly, what seemed impossible months earlier was now imaginable and appearing in headlines.

That’s what COP can do.

COP 30 also showed just why the COP process has to change. 

The fact that COP 30 ended without a transition roadmap – or even any mention of fossil fuels in the final agreement – underscored the truth of how successfully industry interests have captured the entire COP process.

The numbers tell the story.  As a new report reveals, a record 1,600-plus fossil fuel lobbyists registered to attend talks Belém. Together, the industry accounted for roughly one in 25 participants at COP 30 and a larger delegation than any country except Brazil. Many came on official badges as part of national delegations.

Joining them were a handful of petrostates like Saudi Arabia, hailed as a “wrecking ball” in negotiations, whose primary objectives at COPs seems to kill any talk of energy transition. Their remarkable success in doing so comes down in large part to UN rules requiring a consensus vote on final outcomes, enabling even a single holdout to effectively sink any ambitious agreement. Which petrostates have done again and again.

At COP 30, it was the same story. Once again, a small group of petrostates lead a charge to block any explicit mention of the fossil fuels in the final agreement.

If the rest of COP had been united in pushing back, it would’ve been one thing. But after years of watching wealthy countries like Australia and Norway talk big at COPs while both expanding fossil production at home and falling short on financing for energy transition abroad, many developing countries decided to sit this one out. And once again, the world’s primary forum for mobilizing international action on climate change ended without directly mentioning its primary cause.

The same consensus requirement also produced an unprecedented (and bizarre) agreement for next year’s summit, with Turkey hosting the main event while Australia will oversee negotiations and Pacific Islands will host a pre-COP event.

As a popular line on the internet goes, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the very definition of insanity. If we want future COPs to produce different results, we have to strengthen the process to sideline fossil interests and prevent a few nations from blocking progress for the planet.

A huge ambition gap.

The Paris Agreement schedule calls for all parties to submit stronger national climate plans (known as “nationally determined contributions” or “NDCs”) with a target year of 2035 this year. By the end of COP 30, only 122 of the 194 remaining parties to the agreement had done so, and the commitments made collectively remain far below the emissions cuts necessary to limit warming in line with the Paris Agreement.

Negotiations included numerous proposals on how to respond to this ambition gap and the final decision invites countries to develop “implementation and investment plans” for their NDCs and establishes a “Global Implementation Accelerator” and the “Belém Mission to 1.5,” two related tracks aimed at accelerating implementation.

The final decision also encourages countries to strengthen their NDCs, but without any mechanism to compel nations to aim higher.

A roadmap for climate finance

Ahead of the summit, the Azerbaijani COP 29 presidency and Brazilian COP 30 presidency released “The Baku to Belém Roadmap to $1.3T,” a plan for mobilizing trillions of dollars to finance clean energy development and adaptation in developing nation.

The final decision in Belém noted and effectively adopted the roadmap as a goal, calling on nations to scale up climate efforts to meet the $1.3 trillion goal by 2035, but offering no concrete requirements for individual nations. The COP 29 and COP 30 presidency teams will continue working together through 2026 to identify specific financing pathways to turn the roadmap goal into delivered finance.

Some flickers of hope on fossil fuels after COP 30.

While COP 30 failed to produce any kind of ambitious agreement or commitments, it did open doors for progress in the year ahead.

The Brazilian COP 30 presidency team, which continues in the role until next year’s summit opens in Turkey, announced a series of high-level consultations with the goal of developing a draft roadmap for fossil fuel transition by next spring.

Alongside this effort, Colombia and the Netherlands – two of the leaders in the push for a transition roadmap in Brazil – are set to host a conference to plan out and accelerate energy transition worldwide.

The good news is that these moves involve high-profile individuals and nations with the numbers and influence to build on the momentum for transition we saw in Belém. This time, maybe the genie really has gotten out of the bottle. The not-so-good news is that these efforts are happening outside the official COP process and making their outcomes – and any roadmap – part of the discussion at COP 31 will hinge on continued pressure from civil society and leading nations.

A call for climate leadership from COP presidencies.

With the current obstacles to progress abundantly clear, a movement is growing for structural reforms to enable the COP process to meet the moment.

One proposal from Climate Reality and partners including Global Witness, the Center for International Environmental Law, the Club of Rome, and Transparency International is the concept of a climate leadership pledge for all nations hosting and leading COP negotiations.

In a nutshell, the pledge aims to establish a baseline of commitments from future COP presidents to lead the world’s pre-eminent climate forum by example. Among other elements, the pledge calls on the COP president to:

1. Submit an ambitious NDC for their own country.
2. Commit to leading the energy transition in a just and equitable manner.
3. Commit to sidelining fossil fuel interests.
4. Strengthen the role of science across COP.

After all, the honor of leading global climate talks should go to nations committed to leading on climate. The climate leadership pledge calls on aspiring hosts to agree to minimum benchmarks the world can monitor and hold them to. In the months ahead, we’ll be calling on Australia, Turkey, and Pacific Island nations to honor their roles and pledge to lead accordingly.

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