Manuel Pulgar-Vidal is WWF’s Global Climate and Energy Lead, former Minister of Environment for Peru and COP20 President.
As we approach the latest UN climate summit, COP29, we find ourselves once more demanding faster progress, greater ambition and redoubled commitments from governments to meet the urgency of the climate crisis. We also, once more, face calls for the COP process to be reformed and participation curtailed.
These calls are partly a response to COP28, held in Dubai last year, which was attended by 83,884 people – indeed an exception. More delegates means, for example, that negotiating rooms are fuller, compromising participation for some who are deeply engaged in the process. The growing pressure to reform COPs is also partly an expression of frustration with the process and with slow advances over many years on solving the world’s most pressing environmental crisis.
Not just governments
But suggestions that COPs should become more exclusive, or less frequent, or that negotiations should be separated from civil society participation, are misguided. It is essential that the COPs continue to be transparent and inclusive, especially for Global South governments and civil society, if they are to build the broad-based support we need to transition to a net-zero world.
Each COP – or Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to give the full title – is, as the name suggests, an intergovernmental negotiation. However, the COPs have evolved over time to become much more than that, reflecting the perspectives and needs of a much wider range of stakeholders.
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An important development in that direction took place almost 10 years ago, at COP20 in Lima, where I served as COP president. There, we launched the Lima-Paris Action Agenda, to bring non-state actors – cities, business, NGOs, Indigenous communities – into the COP process. It allowed them to organise, define targets and actions, and create campaigns within the formal machinery of the COP.
This Action Agenda has given non-state actors a role – alongside the UNFCCC Secretariat and the Climate Champions appointed by COP host countries – in supporting the climate ambition of governments. It has spawned initiatives such as the Race to Zero, Race to Resilience and the Sharm-El-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda.
Five rings of negotiations
I see the COPs as operating in five ‘rings’ – which are concentric, influence each other, but allow different constituencies to operate and make their voices heard.
The innermost ring is the most important: the negotiations themselves. This is the forum in which decisions are made, in the context of mandates set by preceding COPs. For COP29, these include the New Collective Quantified Goal for finance, the Global Goal for Adaptation, implementation of the UAE Consensus, and the new cycle of national climate plans (or Nationally Determined Contributions, NDCs). These processes must be transparent and accountable to the global public.
The second ring is formed of the high-level thematic events, organised by the presidency of each COP. These events – such as those on health, fresh water, and climate and nature held in Dubai – take place outside the negotiations, but can help initiate processes that inform future negotiations and create political momentum.
The third ring comprises the Action Agenda, as discussed above. The fourth ring is often dismissed as a mere trade fair, but the pavilions at COP provide a place for business, NGOs, Indigenous Peoples, academia and other stakeholders to meet, share ideas and create new partnerships. New ideas and concepts are launched, contested, and sink or swim – which can have a profound impact on global debates throughout the year and all over the world.
Finally, the fifth ring is that of bilateral and plurilateral relations between key state actors, which is a vital connective point to advance decision-making on key climate issues.
Balanced and equitable participation
These five rings depend on the participation of many thousands of people. Making the process more efficient by reducing participation of key actors will undermine the collective nature of the climate negotiations.
This is a multilateral process in which every voice, not just those of governments, must be heard, through a bottom-up, democratic set of interlinked discussions at many levels. We recognize the need for balanced and equitable participation – especially from the Global South – and the need to limit the influence of fossil fuel and other corporate lobbies aimed at inhibiting rapid progress towards climate goals. But neither of these necessarily means less people overall participating in COPs – although there can be logistical difficulties in managing large conferences.
The annual climate summits must also be as accessible as possible, including to participants from least-developed countries and marginalised communities, who may not have the resources to readily travel to the talks. Host governments have a role to play, whether by financially supporting participation from those who can least afford it, or by capping the costs that hotels and service providers charge delegates. Some recent COPs have been characterised by rampant profiteering and price–gouging, with hotels dramatically increasing their rates to take advantage of delegates.
The real cause of sluggish progress
Some critics of the COP process have blamed the high numbers of attendees for slow progress in the process. That blame is misdirected. The real culprits are governments around the world that have not set ambitious targets or are not doing enough to reach the targets they have committed to – and the entrenched polluting interests that undermine political will and commitments to strong climate action.
Proposals for reducing participation at COPs are a distraction from the main task at hand: finding mechanisms that make NDCs more ambitious, and targets within them more enforceable. Without that, we will not have a multilateral process that is equal to the climate emergency that we face, no matter how many people are in the room.
The post Why we need to keep climate COPs inclusive appeared first on Climate Home News.
Governments at the COP17 nature summit in Armenia agreed on Saturday to scale up their policies to protect the planet’s shrinking biodiversity, and for the first time invited large emerging economies like China and Gulf states to take on donor responsibilities to help fund those efforts.
For the past two weeks, countries held talks in Yerevan under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity to outline a plan to ramp up currently “insufficient” policies to conserve land and marine ecosystems. A recent UN progress report found the world is off track to meet 22 out of 23 global targets aimed at reversing species loss and protecting 30% of land and seas by 2030.
While a response plan, called the “Global Review of Collective Progress”, was expected to be the main outcome of COP17, negotiations struggled to advance amid a deadlock over the controversial subject of how to finance the boost in conservation measures needed.
After an all-night session on Friday, delegates agreed to invite developing countries to voluntarily signal their interest in assuming donor funding obligations alongside developed nations. Negotiators repeatedly warned that any stronger provisions on expanding the donor base would collapse the deal.
COP president: Results beat expectations
An exhausted COP17 president Hambardzum Matevosyan, Armenia’s environment minister, told journalists in the early hours of Saturday that “we’ve achieved more than we could’ve expected” given the “importance” of the decisions being taken.
“It was 100% possible that those items did not made it through. 100% possible,” he said, adding that the conference had made progress on “all the most important items”.
Speaking at the closing plenary, the group of Pacific Islands said that, while the summit had achieved “great outcomes”, delegates are also departing Yerevan “with realities not reflected in the official text”, such as the low replenishment of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), a key funder of nature projects.
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Some observers also said the deal did not go far enough. Steven Guilbeault, a former Canadian environment minister who helped broker the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), said the Yerevan package of action is “an important step forward”, but still “falls short of what is needed to meet our 2030 commitments”.
An Lambrechts, biodiversity politics expert at Greenpeace International, said COP17 had kept things moving forward and set well-intentioned promises, but added that these “won’t remove major roadblocks to implementation” such as insufficient finance and debt constraints in developing countries.
WWF chief conservation officer Daudi Sumba noted that financial issues were not fully resolved. Despite the deal in Yerevan, “I fear finance will remain the key issue that continues to haunt the UN biodiversity summits,” he said in a statement.
‘Yerevan Pathway’ tackles nature plans and subsidies
In the lead-up to the summit, the UN assessment report showed countries are falling short on virtually all targets in the GBF, the 2022 global deal often referred to as the ‘Paris Agreement for nature’.
They include a landmark target to protect at least 30% of the planet’s land and sea by 2030. If countries all stick to their current national goals, about 26% of land would be protected and only about 12% of marine ecosystems would be under conservation measures.
The main COP17 decision – named the Yerevan Pathway by the presidency – calls for countries to revise their biodiversity plans, subject to available funding, with a particular focus on addressing the gap in coverage of “marine, coastal and inland water ecosystems”.
It also urges the over 60 countries who have not submitted a biodiversity plan yet to finalise them “as soon as possible” and taking into account the gaps identified by the UN progress report.
Countries also agreed to tackle the drivers of biodiversity loss by “accelerating” the reduction of subsidies for activities that damage nature. Subsidy reform, covered by Target 18 of the GBF, is where countries have made the least progress so far, according to the assessment report.
Jill Hepp, director of nature and marine policy and incentives at green group Conservation International, said singling out subsidies in the Yerevan Pathway “gives a strong signal” that closing the gap for biodiversity action requires “more urgent efforts to reform harmful incentives and scale up positive incentives”.
“Timid” steps to expand base of donors
Having failed to meet a target to channel $20 billion for biodiversity conservation by 2025 and faced with shrinking aid budgets, the EU pushed a proposal to expand the list of which countries count as donors, so that wealthy emerging economies like China and Saudi Arabia could also voluntarily contribute. The group of Arab nations strongly opposed this.
During the talks, Irish minister of state for nature, Christopher O’Sullivan, whose country holds the EU presidency, said the bloc wanted the world’s “new realities” to be reflected in the donor list.
Negotiations remained gridlocked for most of the two-week talks, until a last-day compromise was struck to invite developing countries that may want donor status “to indicate to the [Convention on Biological Diversity] secretariat their interest in being included in the corresponding list”.
Countries also asked the secretariat to send an invitation to emerging economies wanting donor status at each subsequent COP, and requested a technical report on “the implications of inclusion in the list” for emerging economies.
Swiss lead negotiator Gabriela Blatter said during one of the sessions that her country had expected greater steps towards expanding the base of contributing countries, but added that “if we’re mutually unhappy, it’s probably the closest we can get on these very delicate political compromises”. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, also noted their dissatisfaction but said it had expected “a lot less”.
The fragile deal was approved in a package of decisions together with the Global Review, after some delegations including Brazil and China appealed to the plenary not to make further changes to the text at the risk of collapsing the whole agreement.
In a statement delivered to the closing plenary, the EU said the finance outcome had delivered “timid” progress towards fully broadening the base of donors.
Cali Fund still not operational
Adopted two years ago at COP16, the Cali Fund was seen by some observers as a way to channel private-sector finance into biodiversity conservation, as governments struggle to find public funds. But it is still struggling to get up on its feet.
The fund allows big corporations to access certificates for the use of genetic material found in biodiversity in return for a financial contribution, which experts estimate has the potential to raise up to $6.9bn for biodiversity. While voluntary, companies are encouraged to pay 1% of their profits or 0.1% of revenue into the fund.
But since its creation, the fund has received little more than $10,000, which Guilbeault argued is because the rules for disbursements to local communities and the operation of the fund had yet to be fleshed out. This was due to happen at COP17.
Yet, while the final decision on the fund laid out some of the rules – including how companies can earn “Cali Fund certificates” – some key technical details were left to the next COP in 2028 in Ecuador. This includes the issue of whether companies can pay a lower rate if they use genetic data for only a small portion of their products.
“By punting essential decisions to two years from now, parties have all but ensured the fund remains empty until then,” said Pakhi Das, a public policy advisor at NGO Plant-for-the-Planet.
The post COP17 delivers fragile deal to boost conservation and funding for nature appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP17 delivers fragile deal to boost conservation and funding for nature
SYDNEY, Thursday 30 October 2026 — In response to reports that the Albanese government is set to introduce draft legislation this year that would seek to ban data centres in Australia’s suburbs, Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said:
“These reports are a testament to the growing community opposition to these completely inappropriate AI factories that have sprung up across our suburbs, and Big Tech corporations should take heed — the data centre build-out must not happen without the endorsement of the Australian people.
“But the government can’t simply ship this problem out to regional Australia without addressing the fundamental issues with this extractive new industry.
“We’re already seeing a trend of AI data centre proposals moving to the regions, in areas that are more water-scarce, more environmentally sensitive, and next to sources of fracked and coal seam gas to support their massive BYO gas-fired power plans — a pattern we’ve seen play out in the United States.
“From the Beetaloo Basin in the NT to the Western Downs in Qld, we’re seeing a wave of AI data centre proposals that would see new gas fast-tracked to support their massive energy demand, and threaten to completely derail Australia’s energy transition.
“Just as suburban Australians are asking, “what for?”, regional communities like Berry Springs and Dalby do not want dirty data centres setting up shop with absolutely no benefit to their communities. Greenpeace is calling for a moratorium on AI data centre developments until strict and enforceable safeguards are in place to protect our climate and our communities.”
-ENDS-
Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
AI data centre ban in suburbs would not address fundamental issues: Greenpeace
In the thick of the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in 2024, the UN climate talks were rattled by what can only be described as a major PR disaster. The BBC, Reuters and The Guardian all carried headlines, attributed to leading climate policy experts, that the COPs were “no longer fit for purpose”.
The articles outlined a series of reforms called for in an open letter signed by 22 eminent scientists and politicians, including a former UN secretary-general and previous UN climate chief, with a further 150 lending their support. The headlines shook confidence in the COP process, just as governments were wrestling over a new climate finance goal.
The Club of Rome – which handled the media relations for the letter – hurried to say that its “constructive, supportive ideas” had been “misinterpreted”. Negotiators kept calm(ish) and carried on, in the end landing the finance goal after some high-stakes drama on the final day.
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To my surprise, when I went back this week to read the letter again, I could not find the offending line about the COPs not being fit for purpose. The Club of Rome has yet to respond to my query about its disappearance.
Whatever happened to the wording, that sentiment has been widely shared. COPs have ballooned in size while the importance of their outcomes seems to have diminished since the 2015 Paris Agreement (with the exception of the 2023 COP in Dubai where countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems).
The same on the surface
Two years on from those painful headlines in Baku, has anything changed for the better? You might be forgiven for thinking not. Official decisions are still made by consensus rather than the majority voting some have called for to stop blockers.
Tens of thousands of officials, activists and business execs still scurry around the halls to an ever-growing list of side events, roundtables and dialogues, while deals still come down to rows, all-nighters and jargon-filled texts adopted to rounds of applause.
But it would not be true to say that COPs have completely failed to respond to the very real need to translate the words of the Paris Agreement into action in the outside world.
Global warming is projected to be around 1.3C lower this century than it would have been if the world had not committed to tackle the climate crisis under that accord. Developing countries have a valued space at COPs in which their voices have equal weight in decision-making, unlike in many other international fora. And most importantly, perhaps, there has been a subtle shift, tipping the balance away from negotiating towards doing.
Brazil branded last year’s summit in Belém as the “COP of Implementation”, corralling the sprawling Action Agenda into six axes. This was a bid to impose some structure on the mushrooming efforts between governments, UN agencies, cities, businesses and civil society to set targets and spur faster results on their pet issues, from methane emissions to health and adaptation in conflict zones. COP30 alone saw the launch of 120 “plans to accelerate solutions”.
COP30 roadmaps off the cuff
Meanwhile, as the formal negotiations drew to a close, it was clear that consensus decision-making was evolving into something a little more improvised.
With only around half of all countries on board with the idea of a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago announced his team would put one together over the coming year, along with another on how to meet a global goal to halt deforestation by 2030. Those roadmaps will be launched next week, presented and discussed at COP31, though it’s still unclear whether or how they’ll be incorporated into the formal negotiating agenda.
