COP30 has opened with fierce calls for both stronger action and some of the starkest warnings yet for the urgency of our climate crisis.
In a fiery speech, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres scolded world leaders for failing to act faster and for doubling down on fossil fuels.
Speaking at the opening of the Leaders’ Summit, Brazilian President Lula labelled COP30 the “COP of truth”. Guterres mirrored this theme with some hard truths for leaders, calling their failure to act in line with limiting warming to 1.5ºC a “moral failure – and deadly negligence”. He labelled those who obstruct progress as “not just short sighted [but] self-destructive”, saying “a bet on fossil fuels is a bet against humanity”.
At Greenpeace, we couldn’t agree more. Corporate greed and government inaction has brought us to the brink of climate chaos. COP30 must be the ground where we hold big polluters accountable, and in doing so turn the tide on fossil fuels and climate destruction.
Climate change can seem very complicated, but often the solutions are beautifully simple. The single most effective policy to accelerate climate action, force a fair and fast fossil fuel phase out, and ensure that all communities are supported, is making big polluters pay.
By putting a levy on fossil fuel extraction, we can level the playing field, ensuring fossil fuels are forced out of the energy system and that we accelerate the transition to renewable energy. Revenue raised can be used to support vulnerable communities adapting to the devastating impacts of climate change, as well as support workers through the transition and drive the energy transformation in less developed countries.
In Belém, the campaign to make big polluters pay is one of our three top priorities, alongside a global response plan to address the 1.5C emissions gap, and a new plan to end global deforestation and forest degradation by 2030.
Our team is fired up and ready to take action, and we’ll be using the Rainbow Warrior and every other tool at our disposal to get this demand in front of leaders and to the heart of the negotiations.
At this decisive moment for the planet’s climate, the ship returns to the Amazon alongside traditional peoples and social movements to call on world leaders for ambitious climate targets, an end to global deforestation by 2030, and a just energy transition — now! © Filipe Bispo / Greenpeace
Last night, on the bus back to our hotel, I sat with Trixy Elle, a member of our Greenpeace team in Belém and a survivor of Super Typhoon Odette, which nearly destroyed her small island in the Visayas archipelago in the Philippines in 2021. Right now, as Trixy prepares to speak truth to power at COP30, her two boys, husband and parents are in an evacuation centre as yet another powerful typhoon—the second in as many weeks—bears down on her island.
Trixy’s small fishing community has done nothing to cause the climate crisis. Her family struggled to rebuild their lives after Super Typhoon Odette, and they now face the real possibility of losing it all again.
Trixy’s story epitomises the injustice at the heart of the climate crisis, and is the very reason we are here at COP30. She will be with us throughout this week, courageously sharing her story with the media and decision makers.
You can be part of this mission by adding your name to Polluters Pay Pact.
Next week, diplomats from around the world will descend on Yerevan, Armenia, to negotiate a series of decisions under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
Between 19 and 30 October, 196 parties will gather to hammer out the precise wording of the dozens of legal texts that make up the decisions under the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the CBD.
This year’s summit is particularly significant, as it marks the halfway point between the agreement of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the deadline for achieving its targets.
The CBD has found that countries are currently not on track to meet 22 out of the framework’s 23 targets.
During the fortnight, delegates will also be negotiating decisions relating to the two supplemental protocols to the CBD: the Cartagena Protocol, which covers biosafety; and the Nagoya Protocol, which covers access and benefit-sharing for the use of genetic resources.
(The Cartagena and Nagoya Protocols, which are each governed by a “meeting of the parties”, or “MOP”, have fewer parties than the CBD as a whole, with 173 and 141, respectively.)
Carbon Brief is tracking the progress of countries towards consensus on dozens of negotiating texts using the interactive table below.
The tracker includes texts from the COP, as well as the MOPs for the Cartagena and Nagoya protocols. It also includes draft decisions from the most recent subsidiary body meetings, as these form the starting point for the negotiations in Yerevan.
The CBD has three subsidiary bodies: the subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice (SBSTTA), the subsidiary body on implementation (SBI) and the subsidiary body on article 8(j) and other provisions (SB8J).
SB8J focuses on issues related to the Indigenous peoples and local communities. It was established at COP16 in Cali, Colombia, in 2024.
The first two columns of the interactive tracker list the topic of each agenda item and the relevant body, with subsequent columns including dates, page counts and links to the original documents.
The table is searchable and can be sorted using the arrows in the header.
Areas of disagreement in UN draft texts are denoted by square brackets. Counting the brackets in a particular iteration of a text therefore gives a sense of how far parties are from reaching consensus.
The bracket column is colour-coded, with dark green indicating a low number of brackets and red indicating a high number of brackets remaining.
Texts can also present parties with choices using “options” or alternatives (“alt”), which are counted together in the sixth column of the table.
The key discussions in Yerevan will centre around two agenda items in particular. The first is the global review, which will assess progress towards the GBF and make recommendations for accelerating action.
The second is finance, which can be separated into two parts: resource mobilisation and the financial mechanism. On resource mobilisation, biodiverse global south countries are likely to push for an increased amount of international finance for conservation.
Disagreement over the creation of the financial mechanism led to the suspension of COP16 in Cali in October 2024, as parties failed to find agreement on the mobilisation of finance before the end of the summit.
Global south countries want the establishment of a separate financial mechanism under the control of the CBD; global north countries largely prefer to maintain the existing mechanism, which sits under the Global Environment Facility.
At the resumed session of COP16 in Rome in early 2025, countries agreed on a roadmap that would lead to the establishment of a permanent mechanism.
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The post Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP17 biodiversity summit appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP17 biodiversity summit
A beacon of love
On an outer island of Fiji, two thousand nautical miles from Sydney, is a shining light of hope and resilience for our troubled world.
The island of Kioa is home to a Tuvaluan community who migrated from their atoll of Vaitupu in the late 1940s. It is a land of warm hearts, big smiles, and deep cultural roots; a place where the sound of a conch still summons the island together, where islanders paddle out to fish in carved outrigger canoes, and healthy happy children walk barefoot to school.
Here, culture is life. Kioans live sustainably through their traditional knowledge and practices. The island is alive with song, dance and the rhythms of a life tied to the tides, the winds, and the seasons.
Facing the future
Greenpeace has been lucky to have a relationship with Kioa for a number of years now, and we are continually learning from this remarkable community.
Last week, as part of our Voyaging Oceania project, we returned to the island. Our purpose was twofold —- to carry messages from the island to leaders gathering in Nadi this week for the Pacific Pre-COP, and to support the Kioa community in their efforts to improve water security for the island.
Unlike Tuvalu itself, with its eight atolls, Kioa is a mountainous, forested and richly fertile island. It will remain habitable far into the future. Kioans did not initially migrate from Vaitupu due to climate change, but the move was prophetic. They now have a lifeboat.
However, even Kioa faces challenges on our rapidly warming planet, in particular when it comes to water. Climate change is shifting once reliable rainfall patterns. On top of this, the island is already feeling the effect of this year’s intensifying El Niño event, which for Fiji means reduced rainfall and prolonged dry spells.
Right now, fresh water has to be carefully rationed, and is only available for a few hours a day. During last week’s visit aboard our campaigning ship Oceania, Greenpeace was privileged to work with the Kioa community on a new solar-powered water distribution project for the island.
Designed and led by the island, the project involves using a solar pump to move water from a reliable source to a storage tank and then using gravity to distribute the water around the village.
It was a lesson in how local knowledge and ingenuity can be the backbone of today’s climate solutions. To build a dam around the source, the local community knew the exact spot where they could gather gravel at low tide to mix with the cement. They took only what was needed, knowing that all resources must be carefully conserved. Kioa has no roads and no machinery, and it was an all-of-island effort to carry the materials up to the project site, including many heavy bags of sand and rock.
Such projects truly bring to life the vision of a resilient, locally-led, fossil fuel free Pacific.
Gallery photos taken by Raeed Ali, Pacific Community Mobiliser at Greenpeace Australia Pacific
Voices of wisdom
During our four precious days on Kioa, Greenpeace’s Pacific team sat with the island’s elders as they shared stories and experiences for us to carry with us to the Pre-COP. During a fun filled morning at the island’s school, Kioa’s children shared what they love about their life on Kioa and what they want to see nourished and protected. They wrote these messages on flags which will fly proudly from Oceania in Nadi.