COP30 in Trump’s shadow: Will it move forward, backward or get stranded?

Climate summits are, in any case, handicapped by voluntary pledges, called Nationally Declared Commitments (NDCs), lack enforcement, monitoring leading to tardy progress in 30 years.

The latest Conference of the Parties (COP) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will be held in Brazil’s Belam between November 10 and 21 in unprecedented conditions. For the first time in its history of three decades – the first COP was held in 1995 in Berlin – this year’s COP30 will be held without US participation.

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The White House had announced on October 31 that no high-level representatives would go to COP30 – to indicate its hostility to climate mitigation. When the two-day leaders’ meeting began on Thursday (November 6) to set the tone for the summit to follow, the world’s most powerful and polluting countries – the US, China, India and Russia – were missing.

The US’s fossil fuel pivot

In fact, not only did the US not send anyone, but top US officials were in Greece with fossil fuel giant Exxon Mobil on the same day (November 6), and they signed a new deal to explore offshore for natural gas (fossil fuel), expanding the US's footprint in the eastern Mediterranean.

US President Donald Trump signed a deal with Pakistan in July to explore the latter’s oil reserves and taunted India at the time that they might be “selling oil to India someday!”

What is more ominous is that Trump is on a roll, dictating global economic and trade order. A climate denier who calls climate change a “hoax”, “con job”, and a “scam”, Trump shouted “drill, baby drill” to US oil companies from the day he assumed office. He threatened world leaders at the UN summit in September this year: “If you don’t get away from the green energy scam, your country is going to fail”.

This is no empty threat. Trump arm-twisted the European Union to exempt 90 per cent of US companies from the carbon tax (Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism or CBAM) in the trade treaty signed earlier in the year – and the European Parliament duly approved it with overwhelming 564-20 votes in May, 2025.

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Trump has taken several measures to stop climate mitigation in the US and globally. In his very first executive order of January 20, 2025, he unleashed the US fossil fuel industry by rolling back environmental protections.

Since then, the US has withdrawn from the COP commitments, teamed up with other oil-producing countries to oppose global plastics treaty, compel Europe to give up or weaken carbon laws, killed the first-ever proposed global fee on shipping industry to curb emissions and a recent proposal the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has sought to end US polluting industries from mandatory disclosure of pollution data, etc.

Without the backing of the US and its hold over the EU, the UK and other developed nations, the COP30 summit is unlikely to make any progress.

Unmet finance and tech transfers

The kind of transformative changes COPs fight for – although with very limited success, as would be clear soon – require huge financing and technology transfers to enable developing countries to transition to green energy, from cheaper fossil fuels. Developing nations have been fighting for such assistance with very little gain.

For one, at COP15 in 2009, developed economies pledged $100 billion a year of finance, but the actual flow remained much lower for most of the time. The UNFCCC’s latest update says, developed countries “met this goal for the first time” in 2022, providing $115.8 billion.

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But here is the rub. The UNFCCC added: “However, only a small share of the total went to low-income countries and only about a quarter to Africa. Loans made up the largest funding category, mainly going to middle-income countries.

At COP29 (November 2024), developing countries had sought to raise it to $1.3 trillion – backed by an OECD expert group’s finding of the actual need. Developed countries agreed to $300 billion. It remains to be seen how much fund flow actually happens.

Underwhelming technology transfers

For another, technology transfers have been underwhelming. India’s fourth biennial update report (BUR) to the UNFCCC in December 2024 said such transfers were “slow” and “intellectual property rights (IPR) hinder the rapid adoption of these technologies”.

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The underlying logic for seeking funds and technology transfers from developed nations is that they are primarily responsible for climate change and are obliged to help developing nations to fight climate change – as their dependence on cheap fossil fuel resources is far greater and so is the need to raise the living standards of their people. Development and growth call for higher energy consumption.

Bank finance to fossil fuel soar

Here it gets even murkier. According to the Banking on Climate Chaos report of June 2025, brought out by climate activists from across the world, involving 480 organisations in 69 countries, who track climate finance: “In 2024, global banks walked back many of those climate pledges and significantly increased their fossil fuel financing, including ramping up finance for fossil fuel expansion.” It adds: “Since 2021, global banks have financed $1.6 trillion USD to fossil fuel expansion companies”.

This is a major setback to the “Net Zero Bank Alliance (NZBA)” formed by global banks in 2021, pledging a united fight against climate change with the support of the UNEP’s Finance Initiative.

Indian banks up financing coal mining and plants

Despite India’s push for renewable energy and a net-zero target for 2070, its banks have ramped up investment in fossil fuels, particularly in coal.

According to Bengaluru-based Climate Risk Horizons’ June 2025 report, "Stuck in the past: Coal ties hinder Indian banks' energy transition", Indian banks invested $29 billion during 2016-2023 in coal alone. It said, “most Indian banks remain heavily exposed to carbon-intensive sectors, with approximately 25–35 per cent of their loan books (as of October 2023) tied to coal”.

It gave a breakdown: “From January 2016 to December 2023, Indian banks disbursed approximately USD 15,218 million in coal loans and provided USD 13,560.4 million in coal underwriting services. Roughly 2.3 per cent of total global coal financing between 2021 to 2023 came from India, making it one of the top 7 countries contributing to coal financing during this period.”

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On October 30, the coal ministry put 41 coal mines to auction; it privatised coal mining in 2020. In the past 11 years since 2014, 12 rounds of auction have opened up 150 mines. On May 26, 2025, Union Coal Minister G Krishna Reddy wrote in a business daily, the coal production went up by 70 per cent during these 11 years and was expected to make a record production of over 1 billion tonnes in FY25.

The Prime Minister shared this article on X with the following comment: “Union Minister Shri @kishanreddybjp traces the coal sector's journey from inefficiency to impact. An insightful piece on India's unprecedented rise under the government's decade of transformative governance!”

India aims to add 80 GW of coal-fired power plants by FY32, of which 41 GW would be Adani Power.

Predictable consequences

The consequences are predictable. Global temperature and GHG emissions make record highs.

Despite the 29 rounds of COPs, climate change is worsening by the day, pointing to its ineffectiveness.

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) confirmed on January 10, 2025, that 2024 was the “warmest year on record” – that is, since 1850.

It said: “We have likely seen the first calendar year with a global mean temperature of more than 1.5°C above the 1850-1900 average”, adding, “the past ten years 2015-2024 are the ten warmest years on record”.

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Before that, in January 2024, a NASA report had said, 2023 was the warmest year in recorded history when the temperature went up by 1.2°C above the average for 1951-1980. The Banking on Climate Chaos report of 2025, mentioned earlier, said 2023 witnessed “record-breaking greenhouse gas (GHG) levels”. Extreme temperature and GHG emissions contribute to the rise in frequency and severity of extreme weather events – killing people, livestock, destroying houses and crops across the globe.

Extreme weather killing millions

A 2020 report by the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNODRR) said, during 2000-2019, 7,348 major disasters claimed 1.23 million lives, affecting 4.2 billion people (many on more than one occasion), resulting in $2.97 trillion in global economic losses.

This was a sharp rise from the previous 20 years of 1980-1999, which saw 4,212 disasters claiming 1.19 million lives and affecting 3.25 billion people, resulting in $1.63 trillion in economic losses.

The Indian story

In India, the story is not different. The MoSPI’s Envistats India 2025 report, released on June 5, 2025, said: “The annual mean temperature increased from 25.05°C in 2001 to 25.74°C in 2024. Similarly, the annual minimum and maximum temperatures rose from 19.32°C to 20.24°C and 30.78°C to 31.25°,C respectively, during the same period.”

Its data shows, in FY25 alone, extreme weather events killed 3.080 humans and 61,960 cattle, damaged 3.6 lakh houses and 14.2 lakh hectare cropped areas. In the past 11 years (from FY15), the numbers are humongous: 22,009, 7.4 lakh, 75 lakh and 420.68 lakh hectares, respectively.

COP30's agenda of action

Coming back to the COP30 summit to start from November 10, its “action agenda” is “to inaugurate a framework capable of mobilising all actors and efforts to accelerate the implementation of what has already been negotiated, based on the results of the first Global Stocktake (GST-1)”.

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The GST-1 is the (COP21) Paris Agreement’s tool that assesses progress in achieving its goals and guides a global action plan in a five-year cycle. The agenda note says the COP30 Presidency (Brazil) proposes translating the results of the GST into six thematic pillars and 30 key objectives, which will be advanced through multiple solutions.

These six pillars are: transitioning energy, industry and transport, stewarding forests, oceans and biodiversity, transforming agriculture and food systems, building resilience for cities, infrastructure and water and fostering human and social development.

Welcome to COP30.