An ordinary human’s guide to COP30 🌍

If you keep up to date with environmental/sustainability/political news in any way, then you may have heard about the recent COP30 global meeting. Billed as the meeting that would finally bring together global action on climate change – 30 is a lovely round number, it is 10 years on from the 1.5 degree commitment of the Paris Agreement, 5 years left to meet 2030 targets – this years COP once again missed the mark in some style. However the ideas and direction of many of the worlds leaders are pointing in the right direction. Here are some of the key takeaways and what we can use of this in our own lives…

• First of all, what is COP? Standing for ‘Conference of the Parties’, COP meetings have been annual international meetings since 1995 to review global progress on mitigating and adapting to climate change, including key targets such as global warming limits. They usually make the news a lot because they sound great, but after 30 years, in the face of rising emissions, increasing loss of nature, and more social upheaval around the world, have achieved very little. Leaders usually make the news for not attending, and a large proportion of people who profit from a business as usual approach usually enjoy making the most of a convenient global networking event and having fun causing chaos. As you might be able to tell, they are quite divisive events.

• Team work makes the dream work – This COP the focus was on implementation. We’ve been chatting about this climate malarky for a while now, they thought, why don’t we try doing something about it? Well, have you ever tried to pick an activity/film/song/food that everyone in the family will like at Christmas? Then you’ll know you can rarely get anyone to agree. COP30 was a bit like that, if your Uncle profited by the millions from preventing you from watching The Holiday and your grandparents straight up refuse to get you what you asked for and remain committed to the faithful satsuma in the stocking approach. Despite being the driver of planetary warming and underpinning issue of the climate change topic, the world’s leaders could not agree together to phase fossil fuels out. For some countries, committing to this goal was a core reason for attending, and on a more positive note, many countries – in fact more than 80 of them – pushed for a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels. But for others whose whole economy was built on them, letting go and embracing a new era was still just too big of a step. Nostalgia is a powerful emotion. With agreements only coming at the final moment and disappointment on all sides, can this method of global decision making be the best method for the future? Should we really create global deals that impact everyone’s future by stopping to the lowest standard, rather than taking them with us on the ambitious pathway?

• Words Vs Actions – We are all told that our actions are louder than words, but unfortunately at COP30, words and grammar must have been absolutely fascinating because they were a big part of discussion. For a global issue so physical in its causes and impacts, trying to solve it through clauses and word choices seems quite a disparity. Maybe the lesson here is to act positively albeit imperfectly, then perfect strategy in combination or once action has built momentum. Either way, it would be useful at this point to just do something.

• Hope – On a personal note, while words like disappointing, heartbroken, angry and appalled do not do justice to just how frustrating the news of another failed deal was, I do feel motivated by the fact that deals are now failing because the minority of countries are holding deals back, rather than most countries being unwilling or dismissive of climate science. With over 80 countries backing the transition to move away from fossil fuels, there is hope they will honour this in their own national targets, actions and progress. Many countries are also having their own sustainability wins that aren’t always given the spotlight as huge events like COP. The very fact that leaders were exhausted from trying to push through an action focussed deal and were disappointed by the outcome shows that commitment to climate change action is still a priority across the globe, and despite the political noise isn’t going anywhere. It doesn’t make it great, but it is marginally better than world leaders going on a 2 week holiday, agreeing that global warming is a hoax and going to the pub.

• What does this mean for me and you? We may not be attending global conferences, but keeping the momentum on climate action going lives on in all of us. We all know people of different opinions to us, who we can engage in the transition to sustainability in different ways, by appealing to their likes and values. We can focus on the local, get involved in community projects near us and look after our natural environment around us. Just because world leaders couldn’t pick a phrase they can all agree on doesn’t stop the amazing work going by ordinary people all across the globe. So keep doing good things, keep positive news alive and don’t stop the hope or the fight in the face of this deal. It will be the accumulative impact of every individual’s actions that shape our future, so keep making your difference a positive one.

Another year, another COP, another blog article with key takeaways. While the outcome was undesirable to say the least, what goes on at COP is just one part of the global agenda on climate change. Every year will we be pushing for more radical action, but for now, this should only spur us on to keep making change, and ultimately showing that community power can achieve more than these grand conferences. Feel let down, feel angry, then channel that into something good 💪

Resources:

• BBC
• IISD
• Client Earth