Less than a year ago I posted a short article asking the above question, but about COP29. Although it may seem a little early to post this, there’s so much going on in the world regarding climate issues today, not least the implications of Trump’s arrival in the White House, posting this now would seem to be appropriate. Indeed, there are already some COP30 related items appearing on the COP29 thread.

As I said last year, having studied climate issues going back to the 1950s, I’ve followed UN climate negotiations in detail since 2007. My conclusion is simple: if global greenhouse gas emissions are to be cut substantially – as we are told is necessary if humanity is to avoid potential catastrophe – the overriding issue, far more important than any domestic concern, is whether or not the governments of major non-Western economies are willing to act accordingly. Yet they’ve shown, and continue to show, scant in interest in so doing. Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement is hardly going to help.

I set out the evidence and reasons for this failure in an essay published in 2020. Nothing that’s happened since 2020 changes my conclusion. The ‘Dubai Stocktake’ agreed at COP28 in 2023 for example if anything reinforced it: the opening paragraph of its item 28 stating that Parties’ ‘global efforts’ should take ‘into account the Paris Agreement and their different national circumstances’ and item 38 repeated the Paris Agreement’s Article 4, unambiguously confirming developing countries’ exemption from any emission reduction obligation. That’s a perfect example of what always happens at these conferences: words are inserted in the concluding communiques or agreements letting developing countries off the hook. And COP29 turned out to be a total failure with nothing of substance or even of much interest being agreed.

So what’s going to happen at COP30?

Well, it’s supposed to be an especially important Conference as it will be held ten years since the adoption of the ‘landmark’ Paris Agreement. Moreover, 2025 is the year when Parties are required to submit their updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) – setting out targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 and showing how they will reach them. These new NDCs have been described by Simon Stiell, executive director of UN Climate Change, as ‘among the most important policy documents governments will produce this century’.

The deadline for submission was 10 February. However only ten countries (all of which, apart from the USA, Brazil and the UK, are relatively insignificant) will achieve that. And, as the USA is no longer relevant and Brazil is the COP30 host, the whole thing would seem to be getting off to a particularly poor start. The plan now is to defer the deadline until September. But that will leave very little time for the UN to produce its planned assessment of expected emission reductions, which is supposed be the key document informing the Conference.

Will the Parties – especially big emitters such as China, India and Russia – meet the new deadline? And, if they do, will they produce NDCs that include credible emission-cutting targets? We’ll see – but, in view of past experience, it’s hard to be especially optimistic.

Robin Guenier – February 2025