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Ben Marshall is a teaching fellow at Harvard University and Aditya Bhayana is a climate fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.

The dust is settling after COP30, and two things have become clear. First, the outcomes of the world’s most important climate conference were disappointing. Secondly, those outcomes had less to do with the limits of climate science and more to do with geopolitics.

If they want to meaningfully push for better climate agreements, future COP presidencies will need to take a more proactive role in orchestrating climate negotiations and do so in a way that accounts for the new geopolitical reality. If they don’t, climate action will remain mostly talk.

The shortcomings in Belém

Brazil’s COP30 presidency placed three big bets on the 2025 climate summit: it would be “the COP of implementation;” the rainforest setting would unify actors; and wider participation would unlock new avenues for progress.

Instead, the summit – held in Belém (the “gateway to the Amazon”), in the most deforested country on earth – ended with no roadmap for fossil fuel phaseout, an agreement that only briefly mentions deforestation, and an institutional apparatus less trusted than it was at the start.

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In part, these outcomes reflect rare missteps by COP President André Aranha Corrêa do Lago, who pushed contentious issues like unilateral trade measures (including the EU’s carbon border tax) into a separate negotiation track and dedicated only a small part of the agenda to political conversation.

But COP30 also suffered from broader issues that are straining multilateralism. Conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have made it harder to form cross-regional coalitions, record debt distress in developing countries has weakened trust in global institutions, and collaborative efforts to regulate global shipping emissions and reform international taxation have stalled.

How geopolitics show up at COP

Climate diplomacy is becoming less insulated from these geopolitical pressures. Observers noted this during COP28 (Dubai), and since then, it has become more pronounced, while COP hosts have done little in response.

Great-power rivalry is now shaping even technical negotiations, trust in the idea of COP is waning, and the lines between climate and trade are increasingly blurred. At COP30, we saw this firsthand in the form of three key shifts compared to past summits:

Feasibility is no longer the binding constraint. The scientific, technical, and policy cases for rapid decarbonisation have never been stronger – pathways to limit warming to 1.5°C have been well mapped by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; onshore wind and solar power are respectively 60% and ~80% cheaper than in 2015; and each year of inaction measurably raises the costs of mitigation.

But inside the negotiation rooms in Belém, we saw countries not only weighing climate commitments against fiscal, trade, and energy priorities, but also calibrating their positions to avoid antagonising key international partners (chiefly the United States) or empowering domestic political rivals in upcoming elections.

Narrative power has reached its limits. Narratives once turbocharged climate deals, from stories of shared purpose building momentum at COP21 (Paris) to discussions of climate justice pushing “loss and damage” to the fore at COP27 (Sharm-el-Sheikh). But while Brazil saw some of the most compelling storytelling of any COP – with President Lula framing the Amazon as a global commons to be protected, indigenous flotillas on the river, and even the Pope pushing for concrete action – it was not enough to overcome structural blockages to progress on fossil fuels, climate finance or forests.

Emerging powers have gone from adapting to institutions to reshaping them. China, India, Brazil, and the Gulf states are no longer negotiating at the edges of a Western-designed system, but actively redesigning climate governance to reflect their strategic interests. This showed up in a desire to compartmentalise discussions on trade and emissions, and in resistance to overly prescriptive language on mitigation. Red lines will likely continue to harden as developing countries flex – especially if the US stays away from the table.

    Action options for future COP presidencies

    COP presidencies historically acted as conveners, focusing on the agreement text – largely with the interests of major developed countries in mind. Convening power and elegant drafting are necessary but no longer sufficient. To be successful in the new reality, COP presidencies must act as orchestrators – managing political interdependencies, sequencing issues strategically, and brokering alignment across rival blocs.

    Below are four options available to Türkiye and Australia for 2026, and Ethiopia for 2027, to help set up climate negotiations for greater success:

    1. Invest in the pre-work to build momentum and trust. The landmark Paris Agreement was achieved in part because ministers were engaged early and often, and expectations were disciplined. COP presidencies should engage political stakeholders throughout the 12 (or ideally, 18) months leading up to the summit and keep a tighter lid on public ambitions. They should also push countries to make good on their commitments if they are to overcome a growing sense of mistrust. This year, more than 70 new national climate plans for 2035 were still missing by the end of COP, including top-10 emitters India, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

    2. Explicitly engage with influential blocs. The COP presidency can play a much more proactive role in brokering agreements. With China, that will mean focusing on implementation (e.g., clean manufacturing, grid-scale deployment and technology diffusion) rather than rehashing mitigation targets.

    With other ‘Like-Minded Developing Countries’, including India, it will mean moving from abstract calls for “ambition” toward specific packages that link mitigation to predictable finance, technology access, and transition timelines – especially in hard-to-abate sectors. And with progressives like the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance and AOSIS, it will mean translating “climate leadership” into real economic signals, with the COP presidency pushing existing multilateral institutions to provide access to transition finance in response to ambitious climate commitments.

    3. Use creative approaches, but carefully. Brazil offered a response to brittle relationships in the form of mutirão (Portuguese for “collective effort”) sessions. These included closed-door meetings, informal consultations and sidebars, typically without technical staff present, where ministers and high-level delegates could have off-the-record conversations and negotiate political trade-offs that would not survive plenary scrutiny.

    Mutirão showed some promise, but its overuse at COP30 degraded transparency and highlighted a paradox in climate diplomacy that the means of identifying compromise and building consensus among some parties also damages trust with others. Future COP presidencies should be careful not to over-use mutirão itself, but instead to design other approaches that structure informal bargaining and connect it to the formal process.

    This could include: making political huddles mandatory; baking in more inclusiveness by inviting fixed or rotating representatives from large coalitions (as happens in the G77 and WTO “Green Room” meetings); withholding details on the deliberations themselves but publicly communicating what issues are in scope and any red lines (akin to the forward guidance issued by central banks); and requiring closed-door sessions to feed outcomes back into open negotiating tracks (which helped rapidly translate ministerial consultations into draft text at COP21 in Paris). The combined candour and accountability of these and other approaches could help COP presidencies broker alignment among blocs with fundamentally different political economies.

    4. Acknowledge climate governance is entering a post-consensus era. The assumption that all 198 parties to the UNFCCC can converge on a single, high-ambition pathway is no longer credible. Progress will increasingly depend on coalitions of the willing and plurilateral arrangements that complement the multilateral system. COP presidencies should feel comfortable speaking hard truths to power and pushing for stronger, narrower agreements than broader, weaker ones.

    The challenge of climate negotiations is no longer knowing what needs to be done or how to do it, but aligning the interests, power and institutions needed to make it possible.

    Responding to these dynamics requires a different kind of COP presidency – one focused less on targets and text, and more on managing real-world political priorities. Until geopolitics becomes the starting point of climate action, rather than an inconvenient backdrop, real world implementation will remain a promise deferred.

    The opinions expressed in this article the authors’ own and do not necessarily represent those of Harvard or any other institution.

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    Indigenous groups warn Amazon oil expansion tests fossil fuel phase-out coalition

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    May 8, 2026

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    Indigenous leaders from across the Amazon have warned that stopping the expansion of oil drilling into their territories will be a crucial test for a growing international coalition committed to transitioning away from fossil fuels.

    As 60 countries discussed at a landmark conference in Santa Marta, Colombia, pathways to end the world’s reliance on fossil fuels, Indigenous groups said the process risks losing credibility if governments continue opening new oil frontiers in the Amazon.

    Their central demand was the establishment of fossil fuel “exclusion zones” across Indigenous territories and biodiverse areas of the rainforest, permanently barring new oil and gas expansion in one of the world’s most critical ecosystems. Indigenous representatives proposed establishing protected “Life Zones”, which they said would provide legal safeguards against governments and companies seeking to expand extraction into their lands.

    But Indigenous delegates left the conference frustrated as the final synthesis report drafted by co-chairs Colombia and the Netherlands failed to include the proposal.

    In a statement at the end of the conference, Patricia Suárez, from the Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon (OPIAC), said formally declaring Indigenous territories – especially those inhabited by peoples in voluntary isolation – as exclusion zones for extractive industries was “an urgent measure”.

    “If the heart of the conference does not begin there, it risks remaining a set of good intentions that fails to respond to either science or our Indigenous knowledge systems,” she added.

    Pushing for a new oil frontier

    Campaigners say the pressure on the Amazon is intensifying just as scientists warn the rainforest is nearing irreversible collapse. Around 20% of all newly identified global oil reserves between 2022 and 2024 were discovered in the Amazon basin, fuelling renewed interest from governments and companies seeking to develop the region as the world’s next major oil frontier.

    Ecuador has moved ahead with the auction of new oil blocks in the rainforest, while the country’s right-wing president Daniel Noboa has promoted the region as a “new oil-producing horizon” and backed efforts to expand fracking with support from Chinese companies.

      In Santa Marta, a coalition of seven Indigenous nations from Ecuador issued a declaration condemning the government, which did not participate in the conference.

      “While the world talks about energy transition, our government is pushing for more oil in the Amazon,” said Marcelo Mayancha, president of the Shiwiar nation. “Throughout history, we have always defended our land. That is our home. We will forever defend our territory.”

      Indigenous groups also warned that Peru – another South American nation absent from the conference – plans to auction new oil blocks in the Yavarí-Tapiche Territorial Corridor, a highly sensitive region along the Brazilian border that contains the world’s largest known concentration of Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation.

      COP30 host under scrutiny

      Indigenous leaders also criticised Brazil, arguing that despite its international climate leadership, the country is simultaneously advancing major new oil projects in the Amazon region.

      Luene Karipuna, delegate from Brazil’s coalition of Amazon peoples (COIAB), said the oil push threatens the stability of the rainforest. Not far from her home, in the northern state of Amapá, state-run oil giant Petrobras is currently exploring for new offshore oil reserves off the mouth of the Amazon river.

      Brazil participated in the Santa Marta conference and was among the countries that first pushed for discussions on transitioning away from fossil fuels at COP negotiations. Yet the country is also planning one of the largest expansions in oil production in the world, according to last year’s Production Gap report.

      Veteran Brazilian climate scientist Carlos Nobre told Climate Home that the country’s participation at the Santa Marta conference contrasted with its oil and gas production targets. “It does not make any sense for Brazil to continue with any new oil exploration,” he said, and noted that science is clear that no new fossil fuels should be developed to avoid crossing dangerous climate tipping points.

      He added that the Brazilian government faces pressures from economic sectors, since Petrobras is one of the countries top exporting companies. “They look only at the economic value of exporting fossil fuels. Brazil has to change.”

      The COP30 host also promised to draft a voluntary proposal for a global roadmap away from fossil fuels, which is expected to be published before this year’s COP31 summit.

      “In Brazil, that advance has caused so many problems because it overlaps with Indigenous territories. Companies tell us there won’t be an impact, but we see an impact,” Karipuna said. “We feel the Brazilian government has auctioned our land without dialogue.”

      For Karipuna and other Indigenous leaders, establishing exclusion zones across the Amazon is no longer just a regional demand, but a prerequisite to prevent the collapse of the rainforest.

      “That’s the first step for an energy transition that places Indigenous peoples at the centre,” she added.

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      Kenya seeks regional coordination to build African mineral value chains

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      May 8, 2026

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      African leaders have intensified calls for governments to stop exporting raw minerals and step up efforts to align their policies, share infrastructure and coordinate investment to add value to their resources and bring economic prosperity to the continent.

      In a speech to the inaugural Kenya Mining Investment Conference & Expo in Nairobi this week, Kenyan President William Ruto became the latest African leader to confirm the country will end exports of raw mineral ore. The East African nation has deposits of gold, iron ore and copper and recently launched a tender for global investors to develop a deposit of rare earths, which are used in EV motors and wind turbines, valued at $62 billion.

      Kenya is among more than a dozen African nations that have either banned or imposed export curbs on their mineral resources as they seek to process minerals domestically to boost revenues, create jobs and capture a slice of the industries that are producing high-value clean tech for the energy transition.

        “For too long we have extracted and exported raw materials at the bottom of the value chain, while others have processed, refined, manufactured and captured the greater share of economic value,” Ruto told African ministers and stakeholders gathered at the mining investment conference in Nairobi.

        As a result, Africa currently captures less than 1% of the value generated from global clean energy technologies, he said. To address this, Kenya, in collaboration with other African nations, “will process our minerals here in the continent, we will refine them here and we will manufacture them here”, he added.

        Mineral export restrictions on the rise

        Africa is a major supplier of minerals needed for the global energy transition. The continent holds an estimated 30% of the world’s critical mineral reserves, including lithium, cobalt and copper. The Democratic Republic of Congo produces roughly 70% of global cobalt, a key ingredient in lithium-ion batteries, while countries such as Guinea dominate bauxite production, and Mozambique and Tanzania hold significant graphite deposits.

        But African governments have struggled to attract the investment needed to turn their vast mineral wealth into a green industrial powerhouse. Recently Burundi, Malawi, Nigeria and Zimbabwe are among those that have resorted to banning the export of unrefined minerals to incentivise foreign companies to invest in value addition locally.

        Outdated geological data limits Africa’s push to benefit from its mineral wealth

        This week, Zimbabwe exported its first shipments of lithium sulphate, an intermediate form of processed lithium that can be further refined into battery-grade material, from a mine and processing plant operated by Chinese company Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt.

        After freezing all exports of lithium concentrate – the first stage of processing – earlier this year, the government introduced export quotas and will ban all exports from January 2027.

        Export restrictions on critical raw materials have grown more than five-fold since 2009, found a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published this week. In 2024, a more diverse group of countries, including many resource-rich developing economies in Africa and Asia, introduced restrictions, including Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Angola.

        Zambia copper mining
        Artisanal miners look for copper in mining waste

        This is “a structural shift in the wrong direction,” Mathias Cormann, the OECD’s secretary-general, told the organisations’ Critical Minerals Forum in Istanbul, Turkey, this week.

        “We understand the motivations: building local industries, managing environmental impacts, capturing greater value domestically. But our research is quite clear. Export restrictions distort investment, reduce volumes and undermine supply security often while delivering limited gains in value added,” he said.

        In-country barriers to success

        Thomas Scurfield, Africa senior economic analyst at the Natural Resource Governance Institute, told Climate Home News that export restrictions “can look like a promising route to local value addition” for cash-strapped African mineral producers but have “rarely worked” unless countries already have reliable energy, infrastructure and competitive costs for processing.

        “Without those conditions, bans may simply push companies to scale back mining rather than scale up processing,” he said.

        Alaka Lugonzo, partnerships lead for Africa at Global Witness, identified gaps in practical skills and infrastructure as other major barriers. “You need engineers, geologists, marketers,” Lugonzo said, warning that graduates are increasingly unable to match the pace of industry change.

        On infrastructure, she said that plentiful and stable energy supplies are vital and while Kenya has relatively robust road networks, they are insufficient for industrial-scale operations.

        “Meaningful value addition and real industrialisation requires heavy machinery… and you will need better infrastructure,” she said, highlighting persistent last-mile challenges in mining regions where “there’s no railway, there’s no electricity, there’s no water”.

        Export capacity is another concern, she said, particularly whether existing port systems could handle increased volumes of processed minerals.

        Regional approach recommended

        Scurfield said that through regional cooperation – including pooling supplies, specialising across different stages of refining and manufacturing, and building larger regional markets – “African countries could overcome many domestic constraints that make going alone difficult”.

        That’s what close to 20 African governments are working to deliver as part of the Africa Minerals Strategy Group, which was set up by African ministers and is dedicated to foster cooperation among African nations to build mineral value chains and better benefit from the energy transition.

        Africa urged to unite on minerals as US strikes bilateral deals

        Nigerian Minister of Solid Minerals Dele Alake, who chairs the group, said “true collaboration” between countries, including aligning mining policies, sharing infrastructure, coordinating investment strategies and promoting trade across the continent, will create the conditions for long-term investments that could turn Africa into “a formidable and competitive force within the global mineral supply chain”.

        “The time has come for Africa to redefine its place within the global mineral economy and that transformation must begin with regional integration and regional cooperation,” he told the mining investment conference in Nairobi.

        Lugonzo of Global Witness agreed, saying that value-addition would benefit from adopting a continental perspective. “Why should Kenya build another smelter when we can export our gold to Tanzania for smelting, and then we use the pipeline through Uganda to take it to the port and we export it?” she asked.

        To facilitate that, there is a need to operationalise the Africa Free Trade Continental Agreement (AFTCA), she added. “That agreement is the only way Africa is going to move from point A to point B.”

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        Key green shipping talks to be held in late 2026

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        May 8, 2026

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        The future of the global shipping industry – and its 3% share of global emissions – will be decided in three weeks of talks in the third quarter of this year, after a decision taken in London on Friday.

        At the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) headquarters this week, governments largely failed to substantively negotiate a controversial set of measures to penalise polluting ships and reward vessels running on clean fuels known as the Net-Zero Framework. The green shipping plan has been aggressively opposed by fossil fuel-producing nations, in particular by the US and Saudi Arabia.

        This week, countries delivered statements outlining their views on the measures in a session that ran from Wednesday into Thursday. Then, late on Friday afternoon, they discussed when to negotiate these measures and what proposals they should discuss.

        After a lengthy debate, which the talks’ chair Harry Conway joked was confusing, governments agreed to hold a week of behind-closed-door talks from 1 September to 4 September and from 23 November to 27 November.

        Following these meetings, which are intended to negotiate disagreements on the NZF and rival watered-down measures proposed by the US and its allies, there will be public talks from November 30 to December 4.

          Last October, talks intended to adopt the NZF provisionally agreed in April 2025 were derailed by the US and Saudi Arabia, who successfully persuaded a majority of countries to vote to postpone the talks by a year.

          Those talks, known as an extraordinary session, are now scheduled to resume on Friday December 4 unless governments decide otherwise in the preceding weeks. While this Friday session will be in the same building with the same participants as the rest of the week’s talks, calling it the extraordinary session is significant as it means the NZF can be voted on.

          Em Fenton, senior director of climate diplomacy at Opportunity Green said that the NZF “has survived but survival is not a victory” and called for it to be adopted later this year “in a way that maintains urgency and ambition, and delivers justice and equity for countries on the frontlines of climate impacts”.

          NZF’s supporters

          The NZF would penalise the owners of particularly polluting ships and use the revenues to fund cleaner fuels, support affected workers and help developing countries manage the transition.

          Many governments – particularly in Europe, the Pacific and some Latin American and African nations – spoke in favour of it this week.

          South Africa said the fund it would create is “the key enabler of a just transition” and its removal would take away predictable revenues from African countries. Vanuatu said that “we are not here to sink the ship but to man it”.

          Australia’s representative called it a “carefully balanced compromise”, as it was provisionally agreed by a large majority after years of negotiations, and warned that failing to adopt it would harm the shipping industry by failing to provide certainty.

          Santa Marta summit kick-starts work on key steps for fossil fuel transition

          Canada’s negotiator said that if it was weakened to appease its critics like the US and Saudi Arabia, this would disappoint those who think it is too weak already like the Pacific islands.

          A large group of mainly big developing countries like Nigeria and Indonesia did not rule out supporting the framework but called for adjustments to help developing countries deal with the changes. Nigeria called for developing countries to be given more time to implement the measures, a minimum share of the fund’s revenues and discounts for ships bringing them food and energy.

          According to analysis from the University of College London’s Energy Institute, the countries speaking in support of the NZF include five countries which voted with the US to postpone talks in October and a further ten countries which did not take a clear position at that time. Most governments support the NZF as the basis for further talks, the institute said.

          Opposition remains

          But a small group of mainly oil-producing nations said they are opposed to any financial penalties for particularly polluting ships.

          They support a proposal submitted by Liberia, Argentina and Panama which has proposed weakening emission targets and ditching any funding mechanism for the framework involving “direct revenue collection and disbursement”.

          Argentina argued that the NZF would harm countries which are far from their export markets and said concerns over that cannot be solved “by magic with guidelines”. They added that, as a result, the NZF itself needs to be fundamentally re-negotiated.

          The UCL Energy Institute said that just 24 countries – less than a quarter of those who spoke – said they supported Argentina’s proposal.

          While this week’s talks did not see the kind of US threats reported in October, their delegation did leave personalised flyers on every delegate’s desk which were described by academics, negotiators and climate campaigners as misleading.

          One witness told Climate Home News that junior US delegates arrived early on Wednesday and placed flyers behind governments’ name plates warning each country of the costs they would incur if the NZF is adopted.

          The figures on a selection of leaflets seen by Climate Home News ranged from $100 million for Panama to $3.5 billion for the Netherlands. “They are trying to scare countries away from supporting climate action with one-sided information”, one negotiator told Climate Home News.

          A flyer left on Pakistan’s desk, shared by a witness with Climate Home News

          They added that the calculations, by the US State Department’s Office of the Chief Economist, ignore the fact that the money raised would be shared to help poorer countries’ transition as well as ignoring the economic costs of failing to address climate change.

          Tristan Smith, an academic representing the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology, told the meeting that the calculations were “opaque” and flawed as they overstate the contribution of fuel cost to trade costs.

          A US State Department Spokesperson said in a statement that they “firmly stand behind our estimates” which were shared “in good faith” and to “provide an additional tool to policymakers as they contemplate the true economic burden over the NZF”.

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