COP30 held in Belem, Brazil and attended by more than 190 countries and over 55000 people including scientists, climate activists and, of course, corporate lobbyists of all hues, despite high expectations in the beginning, could not make any breakthrough in the direction of a concrete global climate action plan. In spite of the resolute demand from more than 80 countries and more than 100 organisations for a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, the final agreement utterly failed to put forward anything on the most threatening fossil fuel question. Belem Summit is remarkable as it is marked by the disruption and protest through a human barricade created by the Indigenous Peoples from Amazon, who entered the COP30 venue demanding an end to environmental destruction.
At the same time, amid sharpening inter-imperialist contradictions and geopolitical tensions, official withdrawal of US, historically the largest greenhouse gas emitter, and persistent move from a few countries like France to whitewash western imperialist powers after identifying Russia along with Saudi Arabia, India and other developing countries as the main obstacles to fossil fuel phase-out deal, also made it difficult for a consensus on the issue. Due to such geopolitical divisions, though the host country Brazil, after suspending the closing ceremony for an hour, tried to sort out serious differences and objections, the Action Agenda finally ended up as a mere widow-dressing including the nominal consensus that would finance poorer countries to adapt to climate impact. As such, while elaborating on COP30, the UN Climate Chief Simon Steill said: “Denial, division and geopolitics has dealt international cooperation some heavy blows this year.” And the outcome of the fragile unity displayed at COP30 is also succinctly put by Steill thus: “The world is not winning the fight against climate crisis but it is still in that fight.”
Therefore, though 194 countries apparently affirmed their support for the Paris Agreement reinforcing a global transition to low emission and a tripling of adaptation finance to support poor countries facing climate catastrophe, in the absence of a political action plan to restrict the unhindered corporate plunder of nature, all these commitments are going to be rhetorical only. For, Trump, the executive head of world’s largest historical polluter, and the typical representative of the most reactionary, global corporate capital now has repeatedly described climate change as a “hoax” and the “greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”. To be precise, unless and until the world people rise up to the occasion and become politically capable to appropriately deal with this far-right neofascist perspective, the Action Agenda conceptualised by COP30 will remain only in paper.
Meanwhile, a word on India’s position on the climate question will also be in order. As active member of COP30, the GOI’s stance is that the final text of the Summit is in tandem with the global principles that India has long defended, particularly equity and climate justice. However, reality is the opposite. Together with Modi government’s pro-corporate environmental policies, rapid growth of crony capitalism in India has most adverse impacts on natural resources, forests, land, flora and fauna. Adani and Ambani like crony capitalists with their close nexus with the Modi regime are sky-rocketing their profits in gross disregard of the lofty principles claimed by the regime. For instance, the burning of coal alone from corporate projects of Adani and others are releasing billions of tons of carbon pollution. Along with this, Adani, in particular, has been causing “irreversible and irreparable damage” to coastal ecology and people’s livelihood, which are all in violation of the much-discussed Paris Agreement. In brief, the pro-corporate development paradigm that India pursues now has been at the cost of ecological balance, leading to severe pollution of air and water, deforestation, soil degradation, destruction of habitat, and loss of green coverage, all resulting extreme vulnerability to broad masses of people.
