Why COP 30 must be implemented

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OPINION

By Adonia Ayebare

The Climate Summit in Brazil, COP30 in Belém, has arrived not as just another climate summit, but as a decisive moment where the world must choose between ambition and slow erosion, between planetary survival and managed decline.

In this regard, in mid-August this year, the President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, invited heads of state and government to participate in the World Leaders Climate Action Summit that took place on Tuesday and Wednesday, November 6-7, 2025, when the first part of the High-Level Segment took place — I represented President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni.

The invitation of Uganda to the leaders’ summit in Brazil during COP 30 signifies the importance for world leaders and in particular President Museveni’s visionary leadership in championing environmental governance and willingness to engage and enhance ambition, enable action to reduce emissions, adapt to climate change, and address loss and damage, to implement and transform key climate related decisions into concrete actions and credible plans to tackle climate change.

This is the hallmark of the Climate Convention that we signed exactly 33 years in Rio de Janeiro, and the landmark Paris Agreement we signed in 2015.

The question then becomes: how much of what we signed have we been able to achieve, within the climate process and practical action on the ground, and to what extent can we ensure country obligations are met?

The annual conferences COPs and or negotiations play a central part in helping counties achieve that, in part by engaging with each other for the common good, and to advance first positions of interests and later finding common ground to address tomorrow’s climate today — and the delicate role to balance those interests solely lies on the shoulders of subsidiary body chairs; SBI and SBSTA.

So, on Monday, November 10, the formal opening plenary of the 30th session of the Conference of the Parties, the 20th session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol and the seventh session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Paris Agreement (COP 30/CMP 20/CMA 7), also referred to as the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2025 was officially gavelled at 10:00am here in Brazil.

Ahead of the opening, late at night on Sunday, November 9, the COP presidency and SB chairs had to deal with the issue of additional agenda items raised by parties for inclusion on the supplementary agenda — the UN rules of procedure are that any country is free to raise an agenda item for inclusion on the provisional agenda.

The suggested agenda items included: Implementation of article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement on finance — proposed by Bolivia on behalf of the like-minded developing countries — with the implication that this introduces mandatory obligations for developed countries to support developing countries to implement climate action.

The second suggested agenda item responding to the synthesis report on nationally determined contributions NDCs and addressing the 1.5-degree ambition and implementation gap, AOSIS, promoting international co-operation, and addressing the concerns with climate change-related trade-restrictive unilateral measures, proposed by China on behalf of BASIC. And the synthesis of biennial transparency reports BTRs as well as separately on special needs and special circumstances of Africa, proposed by the Africa group.

This paved the way for the COP30 to start as planned in the morning of November 10, with President Lula in attendance, who emphasised the importance of implementing obligations and NDCs, mobilising means of implementation for developing countries, and accelerating climate action, so as to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and reverse biodiversity and forest loss.

Procedurally smooth agenda adoption is a key highlight for any UN meeting, in part because the absence of consensus or lack of it thereof causes procedural deadlocks that border on having no concrete outcome.

However, all this is happening at the hindsight of science, noting that the world will most certainly overshoot 1.5-degree temperature rise in the near term, due to insufficient climate action. Except the IPCCC reassures that bringing temperatures down to below 1.5 °C before the end of the century is still possible. Solutions already exist to do that now. The science is clear that every incremental increase in temperature will have significant negative impacts, with greater loss and damage and economic impacts.

What then must countries do to address this gap during COP 30? Parties must agree to the global goal on adaptation — experts under the two-year UAE Belém Work Programme developed and refined a potential set of indicators for consideration and adoption at COP30. This is a mandate carried from Dubai in COP 28.

However, ongoing differences remain on whether the indicators should be adopted at COP30 or postponed to a later session and whether further work is needed after COP30.

Several parties said they cannot accept the expert group’s current list of indicators in their current form.

Advancing the global stock take: The COP28 global stock that the decision called for parties to consider refining the procedural and logistical elements of the overall global stock-take process based on experience from the first global stock-take (the second global stock-take will take place from 2026-2028).

Parties have been considering refinements since June 2024.

On the alignment of financial flows through Article 2.1(c), there are calls for making financial flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.

On guidance to the funds GEF, AF and loss and damage fund — what’s coming through is a definite push by developed countries to push the onus of responsibility of making contributions of climate finance to developing countries.

The emphasis of many developing countries is that this should be done within the CBDR roles. The legal gymnastics notwithstanding, Uganda must leave Belém not only with decisions written on paper, but with commitment to implementation at home: accelerating the transition to cleaner technologies, strengthening climate governance, mobilising investment, and ensuring that every community — from Mt Elgon, Karamoja to Kasese — feels the impact of global climate decisions. COP30 is a defining chapter, and history is already watching. The world now needs delivery. Uganda, like Africa, has done its share with limited resources. It is time for the global system to match Uganda’s ambition with action, investment, technology transfer, and genuine partnership.

The world cannot wait for the next disaster to take climate change seriously. COP30 must be the COP of implementation — because the cost of inaction is far greater than the cost of doing what is needed now.

The writer is Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Uganda to the United Nations