Sign In
By signing in or creating an account, you agree with Associated Broadcasting Company's Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.
By signing in or creating an account, you agree with Associated Broadcasting Company's Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.
New Delhi: The 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC (COP30) is currently being held in Belém, Brazil, from 10 to 21 November 2025. The city's candidacy was announced by Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva during his visit to the COP27 in Egypt. It was made official in January 2023.
The 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) currently being held in Brazil is an extremely high stakes event. With escalating real-time climate disasters and compounding geopolitical tensions, progress towards equitable climate goals need to be realised soon.
The “Conference of the Parties,” or COP, is the UN’s annual climate summit, bringing together nearly every nation on Earth to coordinate action under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The first COP took place in Berlin in 1995. Today, the COP 30 being held in the heart of the Amazon, one of the planet’s most vital ecosystems, marks its as one of the most important of such summits in recent memory.
The 2015 Paris Agreement set out an ambitious goal, keeping global temperature rise ‘well below’ 2°C above pre-industrial levels, ideally capped at 1.5°C. This, one of the most important climate goals, is still unrealised. The principal thing to do in the current COP 30 would be to make sustained collective efforts to try to reach this.
Another important point pertains to the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which according to national climate plans were to be submitted every five years. The formal deadline for new submissions was 10 February 2025, but 95 per cent of governments missed it, including major economies such as China and the European Union. The COP has, in front of it, the difficult task of bringing most countries to submit their NDCs as soon as possible.
Ideologically, the most important goal remains to reignite ambition and accountability in regard to the fight against climate change among various countries. Scaling up finance for the climate fight and accelerating the global energy transition towards greener forms would also be key.
The United States’ recent withdrawal from the Paris Agreement for a second time has also cast a long shadow over global cooperation. Juggling climate diplomacy at such a crucial moment, and to make sure other powerful economies like China and the EU do not go the US way and put in more effort and finance for the global fight against climate change is important.
Climate financing, that is ensuring that developing countries have the resources to mitigate emissions and adapt to the developing consequences of climate change is important. As COP29 in 2024 laid out, developed nations should take the lead in mobilizing USD 300 billion per year by 2035 to support developing countries. This goal too has to be realised and stressed at the COP 30 in Brazil.
