COP30: Between Breakthroughs and Broken Processes

 During the second week of the annual UN Climate Conference (Conference of the Parties) hosted in Belém, Brazil, I was on the ground as part of civil society (representing University College Cork), following negotiations at a moment of unusual symbolic weight. This was the first UN climate conference ever hosted in the Amazon, a region that has long been treated as both a global carbon sink and a geopolitical afterthought. The setting alone underscored a central tension of this COP: the gap between climate ambition and political will.

Like many recent COPs, the agenda was crowded and the atmosphere intense. Negotiations were dominated by familiar fault lines: persistent finance gaps, deep disagreements over responsibility and capacity, and a growing reluctance among some parties to commit to concrete fossil fuel phase-out language. At the same time, the urgency of delivery was unmistakable. With the Paris Agreement now a decade old, this COP was widely seen as a litmus test for whether multilateral climate governance can still translate commitments into action.

My focus throughout the week was the Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP), building on my engagement at the Subsidiary Bodies meetings in Bonn earlier this year. At its core, just transition is about ensuring that climate action does not deepen existing inequalities. It asks who bears the costs of transition, who benefits from new green economies, and whether workers, communities, and vulnerable countries are supported rather than sidelined in the shift away from fossil fuels.

One of the key demands pushed by civil society was the establishment of a dedicated Just Transition Mechanism, referred to at COP30 as the Belém Action Mechanism (BAM). The aim was to create a structured framework to support countries undergoing economic and social transitions, through finance, technology transfer, and capacity building. For many countries, particularly those with limited fiscal space or high climate vulnerability, the absence of such support has made “transition” feel like an empty directive rather than a viable pathway.

The adoption of BAM was one of the most meaningful outcomes of COP30. It did not solve the structural inequities embedded in the climate regime, but it demonstrated that sustained civil society pressure can still shape outcomes. It also reaffirmed that just transition is no longer a peripheral concept, but an emerging pillar of climate governance.

That said, COP30 also exposed serious weaknesses in process and trust. The final text did not include any explicit commitment to transitioning away from fossil fuels, a striking omission given the scale of the crisis. While an International Conference on Phasing Out Fossil Fuels was announced for 2026, the lack of binding language at this COP was deeply disappointing.

The closing plenary was particularly unsettling. Multiple countries raised formal objections to the Mitigation Work Programme, questioning both substance and procedure. Flags were raised, points of order were made, and yet the gavel fell regardless. Watching objections be visibly ignored forces uncomfortable questions about whose voices count in multilateral spaces and how consensus is manufactured under pressure.

Outside the negotiating rooms, moments of disruption mirrored the fragility of the process itself. A fire inside the conference venue led to a full evacuation midway through the summit, halting negotiations already strained by time and politics. The irony was not lost on anyone, but beneath the jokes was a shared frustration with a system struggling to respond proportionately to the crisis it was designed to address.

COP30 was neither a clear failure nor an unqualified success. It delivered a real institutional gain through the Belém Action Mechanism, while simultaneously exposing the limits of current climate governance. What it reinforced, above all, is that progress is rarely linear. It is driven by people who refuse to disengage, who keep pushing for fairness, and who insist that climate action must be grounded not only in science, but in justice.

As we look ahead to the next phase of global climate negotiations, the task for networks like SDSN is clear: to strengthen the bridge between policy, lived experience, and long-term vision, and to ensure that the transition we are building is one that people can actually stand on.

This blog entry was written by Sumaya Muhammad who was an Official Observer at COP30 and is currently a Law Student at UCC