The grim reality of past climate summits and a plea for Belém

Upon arrival in Baku for COP29 as a “semi-pro” negotiator, party badge in hand and Article 6 text memorised, I had prepared for everything except the bait‑and‑switch game I’ve seen at every UN climate summit since COP24: the bait of soaring calls to action that draw applause; and the switch of fine print, late edits and shifted accountability that lands on the developing world. I was one of the fortunate few. My government, Zimbabwe, had put a young person on the Article 6 track. Many of my peers, and particularly those from “developed nations,” were sidelined by their own systems and were offered little or no opportunities to formally engage in the central COP process.

Even before many delegates (particularly those from the Global South) had cleared security in Baku, the COP Presidency gavelled through rules for the UN carbon market under Article 6.4 (a centralised UN‑run international carbon-crediting mechanism). It was touted as an integrity breakthrough, but it was rushed in a way that raised hackles across the halls. While Article 6.4 was passed on the first day, Article 6.2 (country‑to‑country trading of internationally transferred mitigation outcomes) was passed at the end of the conference. 

Negotiators had worked on these texts for close to a decade, striving to resolve the integrity, human-rights safeguards, and grievance mechanisms. To be fair, they are integrated into the decision, but there remain loopholes and this rush to a conclusion for the sake of international media coverage dented the trust in the process by ignoring unresolved issues related to baselines, additionality and double counting.

Such tactics were not unique to Baku. At Glasgow’s COP26 in 2021, there was a last‑minute shift from a coal “phase‑out” to a “phase‑down.” Dubai’s COP28 in 2023 saw a “transition away from fossil fuels,” a faint signal that stopped short of a full and binding fossil phase‑out. It wrapped progress on tripling renewables and doubling efficiency by 2030 in language that left too much room for interpretation at home. 

Then Baku, the self-branded “Finance COP,” captured both the hope and hollowness of this bait-and-switch game. On finance, governments set a so-called New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) of at least USD 300 billion a year by 2035 from developed countries, wrapped in an “all‑sources” mobilisation signal of USD 1.3 trillion a year by 2035 - NCQG being the post‑2025 successor to the old USD 100 billion goal that some argued was inflated through reclassification of existing aid and creative accounting. In the lead up to that decision, many developing countries and small island developing states were saying “no deal is better than a bad deal.”

Yet on the afternoon of November 22, 2024, sitting in a G77+China negotiator meeting in an over-air-conditioned room in Baku Stadium, the text came out. Together, we all quietly read point 3 on the first page, which estimated costs for developing countries of mitigating climate change of USD 5.1-6.8 trillion up to 2030 and, for adaptation, of USD 215–387 billion annually.

In near perfect unison, we breathed a momentary sigh of relief. The text appeared to reflect the financial needs to meet the Paris Agreement. Then, we read points 7 and 8:

• Calls on all actors to work together to enable the scaling up of financing to developing country Parties for climate action from all public and private sources to at least USD 1.3 trillion per year by 2035;
• In this context, decides to set a goal in extension of the goal referred to in paragraph 53 of decision 1/CP.21, with developed country Parties taking the lead, to USD 250 billion per year by 2035 for developing country Parties for climate action.

Admittedly, this was later updated to “at least USD 300 billion” per year by 2035. But the feelings of hopelessness and increasing vulnerability that we experienced at that moment have remained. While many from the developed world cheered a breakthrough, others called it a compromise, useful progress, though still short of the needs. I would describe it as a COP-out.

In the geopolitical landscape since then, developed nations continue to dodge their responsibilities, as small island developing states and developing countries continue to drown, starve, and lose our land, lives, and livelihoods due to a crisis we didn’t create. We have reached an inflection point. If the Global North’s role, responsibility and debt in addressing the climate crisis remains ambiguous, non-binding, and subject to geopolitical shifts, why shouldn’t developing countries, with our rich mineral and natural wealth, pursue the same development path based on unsustainably extractive practices? It is the wrong path for the planet, and for all of us, but it is the choice that this game of bait and switch rewards.

We, young people around the world, the Global South, small island developing states, have been left with this path, this burden, and this debt. This continuous game of promises, pledges, hopes, and opportunities, dashed at the very last minute, begin to paint a concerning picture of our global climate architecture. The premise of carbon markets was that they would be a supplement, not a substitute, to mitigation; yet there is a combination of weak language and weak enforcement of a phase out of fossil fuels, combined with a deflection from public climate finance (as a debt to be repaid) towards carbon markets that remain unclear and open to misuse.

This begets two questions. Is the COP a fit-for-purpose process to address climate change? Is this a fit-for-purpose process to meet the needs of those who are owed a climate and development debt by the Global North? You would be hard pressed to answer “yes” to either question. I am not arguing that the process should be dismantled or dissolved. The negotiators and Parties to the Paris Agreement work hard and in good faith, for the most part. The Kyoto Protocol represented unassailable progress. However, the game we have been made to play for the last three years, in particular, rewards and incentivises the watering down, rolling back, and lack of enforcement of climate commitments. This undermines the effectiveness of climate action by allowing for a lack of accountability and a slower pace of emission reductions, while the Global South bears the brunt of increasing adaptation costs, and permanent, irreversible losses and damages.

For the first time since I began attending climate summits in 2017, I shall watch COP30 from home. It is difficult to justify, in good conscience, the cost and the carbon of another long‑haul trip to witness the same bait‑and‑switch: the grand declarations and glossy launches, followed by the fine print, late edits and responsibility shuffled onto those with least fault for creating this crisis and the least room to respond to it.

COP is, to borrow a phrase, “too big to fail.” The stakes are also too high to keep playing this game of rewarding announcements over the tedious job of accountability. We concentrate power while diffusing responsibility, and we conflate access to the stage with a say in the outcome. Belém is our opportunity and our responsibility to break that pattern by changing what actually matters, the results we can verify.

COP30 in Belém can set that tone and, in doing so, offer a template for a system that has confused noise with substance. Focus less on pledges and more on proof of impact, open access to decision-making and the negotiating rooms, track progress in public and transparently, and make participation accessible rather than continuing this pageantry that is increasingly reserved for the elite echelons of power.

These are not radical demands. These are the bare minimum standards by which any serious “inclusive”-branded enterprise should govern itself. If COP adopts them, people like me will have reason to return, not for the spectacle but for the results delivered to those who need them most. From my office in Arendal, Norway, I will look for signs of change, and I encourage all of us to do the same. Retire the bait‑and‑switch, and a larger opportunity comes into view: restored trust that big institutions can still do big things, fairly, quickly, and well.

We cannot continue to play this game, because for some of us, it is not a game at all.

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Natalie Mangondo is Sustainable Finance for Nature Lead at GRID-Arendal, a non-profit environmental organisation in Norway.