https://arab.news/wdg8h
COP30 in Belem, Brazil, was marketed as the moment when global climate diplomacy would finally move from promises to delivery. Instead, it revealed how the world can gather 80,000 people in the Amazon, produce pages of decisions, announce dozens of initiatives, and still walk away without the one thing that matters: a credible plan to cut emissions fast enough to maintain warming near 1.5 C.
Despite a record-setting year in which global temperatures hit 1.55 C above pre-industrial levels, the summit again became a study in delay. Essential decisions were postponed, watered down, or outsourced to future work programs. For a process now three decades old, this pattern raises a difficult question: Why do these meetings keep coming up short when the problem grows more dangerous every year?
The clearest measure of underperformance lies in the numbers. By the time COP30 ended, 119 countries had submitted new climate plans for 2035. Together they account for 74 percent of global emissions, but their proposals reduce emissions by less than 15 percent of what is needed by 2035 to keep 1.5 C within reach.
Put differently, countries promised only one-quarter of the reductions required for even a 2 C world, and a tiny slice of what is needed for 1.5 C. The UN had already warned that the world remains on track for 2.3-2.8 C of warming even if every new pledge is fulfilled. That projection alone should have forced countries into uncomfortable but necessary decisions. It did not.
