The Brazilian diplomats who will preside over the COP30 climate summit in November say they are focused on ensuring the hundreds of climate pledges already made by governments, corporations and others at previous COP meetings are met, rather than getting them to make fresh promises.
COP30’s High Level Champion Dan Ioschpe told journalists on Thursday that, while “we are not against new initiatives”, his team are “very much focused on what has already been drawn [up] and solutions that are already coming up over time”.
He said there have been over 400 initiatives coming out of COPs over the last ten years – on everything from methane to forests and conflict-affected states – and the COP30 team wants to map them and then analyse the bottlenecks preventing their implementation.
Before COP29 last year, for example, the Azerbaijani presidency announced a plan to get fossil fuel producers to put money into a climate fund – but an event where it was due to be unveiled in Baku was quietly dropped and nothing further has been announced since. Another Azerbaijani idea for a COP29 truce was criticised as a “PR exercise” and failed to bring temporary global peace as hoped.
Global Stocktake response
In his fourth open letter this year, released on Friday, COP30 President André Aranha Corrêa do Lago said he wanted organisations around the world – including businesses, civil society and national and local governments – to help implement the key goals set in response to the Global Stocktake under the UN climate process.
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The stocktake is a 46-page document produced after months of research and consultation by the United Nations in September 2023, which summarises how far governments are falling short of their collective climate goals under the 2015 Paris Agreement.
A few months later at COP28 in Dubai, all governments agreed to respond to the stocktake by calling on each other to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems and triple renewable energy capacity and double energy-efficiency improvements by 2030 – among other measures.
Since COP28 though, some oil-dependent governments like Saudi Arabia have downplayed the commitment to transition away from fossil fuels and government negotiations on implementing it have floundered as a result, struggling to find consensus even to repeat the same language in documents.
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But Corrêa do Lago emphasised the stocktake’s continued importance, calling it “our compass for Mission 1.5”, referring to efforts to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limit warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial times.
He said the COP30 Presidency’s aim is to bring “a new dynamic to global climate action”, aligning everybody’s efforts in a global mobilisation (or mutirão) to achieve the Global Stocktake goals as a “global NDC” or “globally determined contribution”. NDCs (nationally determined contributions) are the climate plans each government is expected to submit to the UN every five years.
Corrêa do Lago announced a list of 30 “thematic areas” under six “axes” that will be pursued, including ensuring universal access to energy, improving solid waste management and tackling disinformation about climate change.
Special COP30 pavilions
COP30 CEO Ana Toni said that each axis – for example transitioning energy, industry and transport – would have its own physical pavilion at COP30 in Belém – where it can be discussed by delegates.
Kaveh Guilanpour, vice president for international strategies at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, who followed the stocktake discussions closely, said the Brazilian proposal was “a really good idea” and praised the COP30 host nation for “thinking outside of the box”.
It will help governments, businesses and other organisations interested in particular parts of the global stocktake response – like doubling energy efficiency – to find help to pursue those goals, he said.
Greenpeace has called on Brazil to get all countries to agree to a joint political statement – known as a cover decision – at COP30 which would include setting out how they will meet a global goal to halt and reverse forest destruction by 2030.
Since governments committed to that goal in 2023, the loss of tropical primary forests has increased. Toni said Brazil had not yet decided if there would be a cover decision in Belém.
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Climate campaign group 350.org said the reforms presented on Friday by the COP30 presidency offer a “useful streamlining” by addressing the proliferation of initiatives and lack of overarching coherence.
But, Andreas Sieber, the group’s associate director of policy and campaigns said the presidency should not assume that this alone “will be sufficient to respond to the glaring crisis we must address at the negotiations”. “Reforms are not enough to meet the moment,” he added.
He called for commitments to phase out fossil fuels and accelerate renewable energy to be reflected in the formal outcome at COP30 and urged leaders to offer concrete steps to “advance a just transition”.
The post Brazil: Let’s deliver on our old climate promises before making new ones appeared first on Climate Home News.
Brazil: Let’s deliver on our old climate promises before making new ones
The case shows that climate change is a fundamental human rights violation—and the victory of Bonaire, a Dutch territory, could open the door for similar lawsuits globally.
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Climate Change
Greenpeace organisations to appeal USD $345 million court judgment in Energy Transfer’s intimidation lawsuit
SYDNEY, Saturday 28 February 2026 — Greenpeace International and Greenpeace organisations in the US announce they will seek a new trial and, if necessary, appeal the decision with the North Dakota Supreme Court following a North Dakota District Court judgment today awarding Energy Transfer (ET) USD $345 million.
ET’s SLAPP suit remains a blatant attempt to silence free speech, erase Indigenous leadership of the Standing Rock movement, and punish solidarity with peaceful resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Greenpeace International will also continue to seek damages for ET’s bullying lawsuits under EU anti-SLAPP legislation in the Netherlands.
Mads Christensen, Greenpeace International Executive Director said: “Energy Transfer’s attempts to silence us are failing. Greenpeace International will continue to resist intimidation tactics. We will not be silenced. We will only get louder, joining our voices to those of our allies all around the world against the corporate polluters and billionaire oligarchs who prioritise profits over people and the planet.
“With hard-won freedoms under threat and the climate crisis accelerating, the stakes of this legal fight couldn’t be higher. Through appeals in the US and Greenpeace International’s groundbreaking anti-SLAPP case in the Netherlands, we are exploring every option to hold Energy Transfer accountable for multiple abusive lawsuits and show all power-hungry bullies that their attacks will only result in a stronger people-powered movement.”
The Court’s final judgment today rejects some of the jury verdict delivered in March 2025, but still awards hundreds of millions of dollars to ET without a sound basis in law. The Greenpeace defendants will continue to press their arguments that the US Constitution does not allow liability here, that ET did not present evidence to support its claims, that the Court admitted inflammatory and irrelevant evidence at trial and excluded other evidence supporting the defense, and that the jury pool in Mandan could not be impartial.[1][2]
ET’s back-to-back lawsuits against Greenpeace International and the US organisations Greenpeace USA (Greenpeace Inc.) and Greenpeace Fund are clear-cut examples of SLAPPs — lawsuits attempting to bury nonprofits and activists in legal fees, push them towards bankruptcy and ultimately silence dissent.[3] Greenpeace International, which is based in the Netherlands, is pursuing justice in Europe, with a suit against ET under Dutch law and the European Union’s new anti-SLAPP directive, a landmark test of the new legislation which could help set a powerful precedent against corporate bullying.[4]
Kate Smolski, Program Director at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “This is part of a worrying trend globally: fossil fuel corporations are increasingly using litigation to attack and silence ordinary people and groups using the law to challenge their polluting operations — and we’re not immune to these tactics here in Australia.
“Rulings like this have a chilling effect on democracy and public interest litigation — we must unite against these silencing tactics as bad for Australians and bad for our democracy. Our movement is stronger than any corporate bully, and grows even stronger when under attack.”
Energy Transfer’s SLAPPs are part of a wave of abusive lawsuits filed by Big Oil companies like Shell, Total, and ENI against Greenpeace entities in recent years.[3] A couple of these cases have been successfully stopped in their tracks. This includes Greenpeace France successfully defeating TotalEnergies’ SLAPP on 28 March 2024, and Greenpeace UK and Greenpeace International forcing Shell to back down from its SLAPP on 10 December 2024.
-ENDS-
Images available in Greenpeace Media Library
Notes:
[1] The judgment entered by North Dakota District Court Judge Gion follows a jury verdict finding Greenpeace entities liable for more than US$660 million on March 19, 2025. Judge Gion subsequently threw out several items from the jury’s verdict, reducing the total damages to approximately US$345 million.
[2] Public statements from the independent Trial Monitoring Committee
[3] Energy Transfer’s first lawsuit was filed in federal court in 2017 under the RICO Act – the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a US federal statute designed to prosecute mob activity. The case was dismissed in 2019, with the judge stating the evidence fell “far short” of what was needed to establish a RICO enterprise. The federal court did not decide on Energy Transfer’s claims based on state law, so Energy Transfer promptly filed a new case in a North Dakota state court with these and other state law claims.
[4] Greenpeace International sent a Notice of Liability to Energy Transfer on 23 July 2024, informing the pipeline giant of Greenpeace International’s intention to bring an anti-SLAPP lawsuit against the company in a Dutch Court. After Energy Transfer declined to accept liability on multiple occasions (September 2024, December 2024), Greenpeace International initiated the first test of the European Union’s anti-SLAPP Directive on 11 February 2025 by filing a lawsuit in Dutch court against Energy Transfer. The case was officially registered in the docket of the Court of Amsterdam on 2 July, 2025. Greenpeace International seeks to recover all damages and costs it has suffered as a result of Energy Transfers’s back-to-back, abusive lawsuits demanding hundreds of millions of dollars from Greenpeace International and the Greenpeace organisations in the US. The next hearing in the Court of Amsterdam is scheduled for 16 April, 2026.
Media contact:
Kate O’Callaghan on 0406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
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