In this podcast, we touch upon COP30 outcomes and current climate leadership with colleagues from the Think Sustainable Europe network, Jens Mattias Clausen from CONCITO, Zofia Wetmańska from the Reform Institute, and IEEP Executive Director, Antoine Oger. Moderated by Krystyna Springer from our Climate team.
Ten years on from Paris, COP30 was declared as the COP of “truth” and “implementation”. This year was also critical, as it marked the deadline to submit new nationally determined contributions, which are the countries’ climate pledges outlining national ambitions for cutting emissions through to 2035. However, most countries missed consecutive UN deadlines, and many failed to submit their NDCs before the summit. And even among those that did, the collective ambition did not move the dial on keeping warming to 1.5°C. Climate Action Tracker’s analysis of the submitted NDCs released during the summit still pointed to around 2.6°C of warming by the end of this century.
The political landscape has also widely changed since the reality that produced the Paris Agreement. The efficacy of the UN climate process is increasingly being questioned, and calls for reform have grown loud enough that, for the first time, the issue appeared formally on the COP agenda.
From an EU perspective, the run-up to COP30 was rather tense, with many observers noting that the EU found itself in an uncomfortable position of still trying to champion global ambition, yet with weakened leadership at home.
All this set the stage for a mixed set of outcomes. A proposed roadmap for tracking national progress in transitioning away from fossil fuels did not make it into the final text. Nor did it provide a roadmap for halting deforestation. The agreement did, however, reaffirm the aim of keeping the 1.5°C limit “within reach,” and delivered some concrete steps, including a new mechanism to support a global just transition and a commitment to triple adaptation finance by 2035.
In this podcast, IEEP Senior Policy Analyst Krystyna Springer talks about COP30 outcomes and discusses climate leadership with Jens Mattias Clausen from the green think tank CONCITO, headquartered in Copenhagen; Zofia Wetmańska from the Polish independent think tank The Reform Institute; and IEEP’s very own Executive Director, Antoine Oger.