The \u2018people\u2019s Cop\u2019 that wasn\u2019t<\/p>\n
Brazil promised this would be the \u201cimplementation Cop\u201d \u2013 one with more action than words, focused on the people most affected by climate change. But Simon Chin-Yee, who was at the negotiations in Bel\u00e9m, and his colleagues at UCL say it failed on that count<\/a>. <\/p>\n They note that over 5,000 indigenous people were at the summit, but that \u201conly 360 secured passes to the main negotiating \u2018blue zone\u2019, compared to 1,600 delegates linked to the fossil fuel industry\u201d.<\/p>\n With the US having withdrawn from the Paris agreement (again), China became \u201cone of the loudest voices in the room\u201d in an attempt to cement its status as a green technology superpower. The absence of America came as a relief for some delegates, say Chin-Yee and colleagues: <\/p>\n \u201cWithout the distraction of the US attempting to \u2018burn the house down\u2019 \u2026 the conference was able to get on with the business at hand: negotiating texts and agreements that will limit global warming.\u201d<\/p>\n But, nonetheless, they say the agreement reached \u2013 the Bel\u00e9m package \u2013 is \u201cweak\u201d and won\u2019t get us anywhere near limiting warming to 1.5\u02daC. <\/p>\n \u201cMost striking,\u201d they write, \u201cis the absence of the words \u2018fossil fuels\u2019 from the final text even though they were central to the Glasgow climate pact (2021) and the UAE consensus (2023).\u201d<\/p>\n Read more: The Amazon speaks<\/p>\n If the main negotiations were disappointing, perhaps Cop30 will be mostly remembered for its location<\/a>. \u201cThe pivot from the two previous conferences in petrostates Azerbaijan and UAE \u2026 was jarring.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s according to Alexander Lees, who researches tropical ecology at Manchester Met and has lived in Bel\u00e9m for many years. Lees, with two colleagues, says the city\u2019s climate even \u201cbecame a protagonist in its own right\u201d. \u201cA huge thunderstorm during one afternoon flooded many roads and brought down trees across the city, causing power outages.\u201d<\/p>\n Mundukuru indigeous protesters in Bel\u00e9m. Meanwhile, Bel\u00e9m\u2019s oppressive heat and humidity was noticeable even in the negotiating rooms: \u201cThis catalysed an official complaint from UN climate chief Simon Stiell about the climate conditions in the Cop venue, asking for \u2018a clear delivery plan on how temperatures will be brought down within the next 24 hours\u2019. The parallels to the goals of the wider negotiation process were hard to miss.<\/p>\n Read more: Stories cut through the noise<\/p>\n The image of climate diplomats wiping sweat from their brows as they struggle to focus in a stuffy room is compelling. And it\u2019s this sort of stuff that often gets people interested. <\/p>\n Until the final few days of Cop30, the biggest stories to emerge from the summit all had a human angle: the floods, an indigenous protest, a fire that briefly evacuated the negotiations. <\/p>\n That makes sense. The negotiators speak in mitigation pathways and emissions curves, while people speak in memories, anecdotes and daily struggles shaped by a changing climate. The latter is just much more compelling. <\/p>\n Indeed, stories of personal experience cut through “climate fatigue\u201d<\/a> in ways that global negotiations can\u2019t, according to climate psychologists Gulnaz Anjum of the University of Limerick and Mudassar Aziz of the University of Oslo. <\/p>\n \u201cPsychology research consistently shows that people engage more deeply when they can recognise themselves, their families, their fears and their hopes in climate stories. Without that human connection, climate messages often become background noise.\u201d<\/p>\n One problem is that people are often exhausted by gloomy climate news. This isn\u2019t them being disengaged, say Anjum and Aziz, it\u2019s a sign they are overwhelmed. \u201cYears of catastrophic headlines, stalled policies and political gridlock create a sense of powerlessness. This \u2018climate fatigue\u2019 is often mistaken for apathy, yet it is more accurately a form of emotional self-protection.\u201d<\/p>\n What works, they say, is \u201cgrounded hope\u201d, and \u201cstories that reflect their own struggles and resilience: a family rebuilding after a hurricane; neighbours sharing water during heatwaves; young people restoring mangroves to protect coastlines; mothers comforting frightened children as storms approach.\u201d<\/p>\n Read more: We gambled and lost<\/p>\n With all that said, let\u2019s end on a gloomier note. Our final story doesn\u2019t open with a personal narrative, but it does have a nice metaphor: the lost gamble. <\/p>\n Ten years ago the world placed a bet<\/a>, say James Dyke of the University of Exeter and Johan Rockstr\u00f6m of the Potsdam Institute in Germany. The Paris agreement, and its system of voluntary emissions cuts and agreement by consensus, would put humanity on a path to avert dangerous climate change.<\/p>\n A decade on, after another underwhelming summit, they reckon \u201cwe can definitively say humanity has lost this bet.\u201d<\/p>\n Referring to scientific attempts to map out plausible scenarios for the future, they say the best on offer is now \u201ca future where peak warming reaches 1.7\u00b0C before returning to within 1.5\u00b0C in 75 years\u201d.<\/p>\n That\u2019s certainly better than the scenario in which we do nothing. But even that modest win will require \u201cimmediate action\u201d on multiple fronts: a fossil fuel phase out; a food system that absorbs carbon instead of emitting it; removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere on an unprecedented scale.<\/p>\n Bel\u00e9m may have failed politically but it highlighted something academics have been saying for years: narrative and symbolism can sometimes be as powerful as facts and laws. If Cop30 taught us anything, it\u2019s that the era of negotiating climate change at arm\u2019s length is hopefully coming to a close. The crisis is no longer outside the venue \u2013 it\u2019s flooding the streets and overheating the negotiating rooms. Whether world leaders listen is one question hanging over the road to Cop31 host Turkey<\/a>, and beyond.<\/p>\n Read more: Don\u2019t have time to read about climate change as much as you\u2019d like?
\n Cop30: five reasons the UN climate conference failed to deliver on its ‘people’s summit’ promise<\/a><\/p>\n![\"people](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/file-20251127-56-6f2z3d.jpg\")
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\n Antonio Scorza \/ shutterstock<\/p>\n
\n Why hosting the UN climate summit in the Amazon was so important, despite the disappointing outcome<\/a><\/p>\n
\n How stories of personal experience cut through climate fatigue in ways that global negotiations can\u2019t<\/a><\/p>\n
\n Turkey will host the next UN climate summit \u2013 here’s how it plans to use its moment in the spotlight<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Imagine](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1764762567_942_file-20250110-17-yge7uv.png\")
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Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead.<\/a> Every Wednesday, The Conversation\u2019s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 47,000+ readers who\u2019ve subscribed so far.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This roundup of The Conversation\u2019s climate coverage was first published in our award-winning weekly climate action newsletter, Imagine.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172769,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[246,61,60,82],"class_list":["post-172768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}