“In this arena of COP30, your job here is not to fight one another – your job here is to fight this climate crisis, together,” UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell said on the first day of the summit. He warned that those opting out of climate action risk stagnation while “other economies surge ahead.”
Addressing representatives from 195 countries gathered in Belém, Brazil, Stiell stressed that cooperation is critical, claiming that the Paris Agreement is “delivering real progress” a decade after its adoption at COP21.
However, he acknowledged a “temporary overshoot” in achieving the agreement’s key goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, expressing hope in renewable energy — which, for the first time in 2025, outpaced coal.
“The economics of this transition are as indisputable as the costs of inaction,” Stiell said, calling climate action the greatest economic opportunity of the century.
In a letter to countries bound by the Paris Agreement, Stiell noted that global greenhouse gas emissions in 2035 are projected to be around 12% below 2019 levels, based on 86 nationally determined contributions (NDCs) submitted by 113 Parties. Before the Paris Agreement, emissions for 2035 were projected to rise between 20% and 48% over 2019 levels.
Still, Stiell cautioned that the progress so far is “not nearly enough.”
Overseeing his fourth COP summit as Executive Secretary, he urged nations to translate negotiations and commitments into tangible action at COP30.
Beyond individual national commitments, Stiell underscored the need for multiple streams of international cooperation to reduce emissions efficiently.
Last year, countries agreed to mobilise at least $300 billion in climate finance for developing nations bearing the brunt of climate disasters, to empower them to implement solutions.
“Humanity is still in this fight. We have some tough opponents, no doubt, but we also have some heavyweights on our side. One is the brute power of market forces as renewables get cheaper,” he said. “Lamenting is not a strategy.”
Climate Action Award 2025
Alisa Luangrath of Laos PDR won the AI for Climate Action Award 2025 for harnessing Artificial Intelligence (AI) to drive climate solutions in Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS).
She developed Smart AI-based Farming and Irrigation for Resilience (SAFIR), an irrigation monitoring system that helps farmers improve water efficiency and climate resilience.
Wake-up calls
The gathering of world leaders also drew activists who argued that the climate crisis demands far greater urgency.
“Global leaders are taking such small steps, like they’re sleeping and not seeing what’s happening. So we thought, that’s it. They’re sleeping, taking a nap, slowly awakening — and we need to rush, wake up. We need these people to wake up to the urgency of the climate crisis,” said Viviana Santiago, Executive Director of Oxfam Brazil, in an interview with AP.
Some activists came dressed in puppet heads representing Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and former US President Donald Trump—the latter depicted lounging with a newspaper carrying the headline “Make rich polluters pay.”
The US absence from COP30 echoes its earlier withdrawal from another major global climate effort—the Paris Agreement—under Trump’s leadership, despite the country being one of the world’s biggest polluters. Trump pulled the US out of the agreement twice, each time he assumed office: first in June 2017 and again in January 2025.
