The world expects too much from the annual COP climate summits, said the CEO of COP30 to be held in Brazil this November, stressing the importance of implementing climate action all year round and outside of the UN climate talks.
Brazil’s National Secretary for Climate Change Ana Toni told a conference at Chatham House in London on Tuesday that “COPs are not silver bullets – people are expecting COPs to deliver things that COPs cannot deliver, because change happens every day.”
“We don’t need to wait for COP to start implementing,” she added, emphasising the crucial roles of the private sector and sub-national governments like provinces and cities. She also recommended celebrating green measures as a way of inspiring more such action.
One limitation of COPs, she said, is that country delegations are usually led by their climate or environment ministers whereas a lot of key climate decisions are made by ministers of finance, transport, agriculture and energy who “are not there”. “We have to go beyond the walls of the Paris Agreement,” she urged.
Brazil decides leaders will speak before COP30, easing logistics crunch
At COP29, where governments agreed a collective annual finance target of $300bn by 2035, the UK’s delegation was led by climate minister Ed Miliband. Three months after that COP last November, the UK cut the aid budget, which is its main source of climate finance, despite Miliband’s reported unease.
Emissions still rising
COP30 CEO Toni’s words this week contrast with the grandiose rhetoric of some previous COP leaders. At the opening of COP26 in Scotland in 2021, then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the Glasgow summit “must mark the beginning of the end” of climate change, and in his closing speech in Dubai, COP28 President Sultan Al-Jaber proclaimed that the summit “set the world in the right direction”.
But global greenhouse gas emissions have yet to peak and temperatures look set to breach the lowest 1.5C warming limit in the Paris pact, leading many campaigners and climate-change sceptics to question the value of UN climate negotiations and their flagship annual conferences. COPs attract tens of thousands of government officials, business executives, activists and journalists each year.
Rich nations ignore polluting past to claim climate plans are 1.5C-compatible
Sitting beside Toni in London, the UK’s climate envoy Rachel Kyte said that, in hindsight, governments had been too slow to act on the 2015 Paris Agreement. “A lot of countries went OK, we’ve done Paris” – and have put little effort into aspects of the agreement like Article 2.1c, which says finance flows should be “consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development”.
Two key tasks for Brazil’s COP30 presidency team will be to encourage governments to publish more ambitious climate plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), and to oversee the development of the “Baku to Belem Roadmap” which aims to mobilise $1.3 trillion a year from all sources, including the private sector, for climate action in developing countries by 2035.
The post “Not silver bullets”: COP30 CEO downplays impact of yearly climate summits appeared first on Climate Home News.
“Not silver bullets”: COP30 CEO downplays impact of yearly climate summits
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SYDNEY, Monday 23 March 2026 — Greenpeace Australia Pacific has labelled the Federal government’s new expectations for data centres and AI infrastructure released today as seriously inadequate, failing to address the massive impacts of the facilities on our energy systems and society, and enabling US-style Big Tech overreach and deregulation.
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Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “The frenzied build out of AI data centres in Australia is breathtaking, and following a dangerous US-style path where Big Tech corporations have carte blanche to drain local energy and water, and build new, polluting gas and diesel-powered plants to fuel their operations.
“Australia is following the US down the same dystopian path of unregulated AI data centre expansion and overreach by Big Tech corporations that are at best driving significant climate and environmental harm and at worst, generating illegal explicit images or supporting the US military to bomb civilians in Iran.
“These billionaire-run companies like Amazon, Open AI, Meta have time and again shown themselves to be morally impaired, with not even the best interests of humanity, let alone Australians, at the core of their decisions. Expecting them to just do the right thing because we ask nicely is baffling.
“We’re also seeing vested-interest lobby groups like the newly formed Data Centres Australia aggressively pushing to cut regulations that would protect Australians from the climate, environmental and social impacts of data centres.
“Last year, the Albanese government abandoned its own recommended AI guardrails when it announced its National AI Plan — a move applauded by these lobby groups.
“The gas lobby has also now seized on data centre growth to justify extracting more gas, just as the world needs to rapidly phase out fossil fuels for energy security and to tackle the climate crisis.
“We have a short and closing window to choose a different path in Australia — without strong guardrails, we risk replicating the US pattern where Big Tech corporations make huge profits at the expense of locals. The government must not roll out the red carpet to these corporations without adequate, legislated protections and scrutiny — not just ‘nice-to-haves’.”
ENDS
Media contact:
Kate O’Callaghan on 0406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
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