"As the world gathered in Belém, Brazil, for the COP30 United Nations climate conference, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reignited an old but urgent debate: whether the multilateral process that has sustained climate diplomacy for three decades is still fit for purpose. His proposal for a global climate council - a smaller, more agile entity to lead negotiations and ensure that climate commitments are implemented - reflects mounting frustration with the slow pace of outcomes from the annual Conference of the Parties (COP)."
"That design has proven remarkably resilient. If someone had told me in 1992 that the world would still be negotiating climate action at COP30, I might have sighed. Yet, if they had told me that every nation would still be adhering to the same framework, guided by science and law, I would have been profoundly hopeful - as I am today."
Lula proposed creating a global climate council: a smaller, more agile body to lead negotiations and ensure implementation of commitments. The COP process has become sprawling, performative and at times politically paralysed, prompting calls for faster outcomes. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was designed as a durable legal scaffold flexible enough to evolve with science and national capacities. That framework allowed protocols, decisions and mechanisms to develop over time and has proven resilient. Climate diplomacy remains slow because nations must reconcile development, decarbonisation, growth, justice, responsibility and capacity. The recommended path emphasizes reforming the existing architecture rather than abandoning it.
Read at Nature
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]