In the aftermath of climate negotiations at COP30, we delve into the implications of its ‘global mutirão’ text and other measures – and consider the pattern of national attitudes revealed across sustainability interventions, including the ongoing development of a Global Plastics Treaty.
The ‘global mutirão’ was the key document to emerge from COP30. While it is not legally binding, it urges both negotiating parties and non-party stakeholders – including those from the private sector, civil society, and financial institutions – to engage in “global mobilization” and “significantly accelerate and scale up climate action worldwide” in line with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target.
In order to realize that goal “with no or limited overshoot”, it acknowledges the need for “deep, rapid and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions of 43 per cent by 2030 and 60 per cent by 2035 relative to the 2019 level” – as well as “reaching net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050”.
It also praises the “significant global progress” made over the last ten years, such as “rapid advancements in and declining costs of technologies and record levels of global renewable energy capacity and green energy investments.”
Yet this round of negotiations seems to have yielded limited progress. While numerous parties, including the European Union, pushed for a more explicit and harmonized roadmap to manage fossil fuels, a group reportedly led by Saudi Arabia and backed by Russia resisted.
Now oil, gas and fuel remain largely unaddressed in the mutirão. Instead, willing participants are encouraged to form coalitions and pursue roadmaps outside the scope of the United Nations.
“Multilateralism won,” said Brazilian president Lula Da Silva of the compromise found between opposing parties; but others have argued that the text has watered down its ambition to appease nations with lucrative fossil fuel industries.
The outcome is similar to that of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee meetings, with the last round of discussions ending with no consensus earlier this year. A ‘coalition of the willing’ has long been discussed as a potential solution to the stalemate.
On that note, COP30’s newly launched Global Implementation Accelerator is described as a ‘cooperative, facilitative and voluntary initiative’. It aims to keep its members on track to meet the 1.5°C target – asking the presidencies of the seventh and eighth conference sessions in November 2026 to report back on the Accelerator’s progress.
Also revealed in the mutirão is the Belém Mission to 1.5, which intends to drive mitigation and adaption plans for implementation, investment, and collaboration within and between national parties. The relevant presidency for the eighth conference session is asked to write a report on the initiative’s progress.
Collective versus individual responsibility remained a contentious topic. As negotiators sought to finalize a list of ‘indicators’ for climate progress, African group chair Richard Muyungi told Carbon Brief: “The indicators should not infringe on the sovereignty of countries, asking countries to change their laws, their strategies. You cannot ask my country to change laws, because they want to address the global goal.”
Equally, the mutirão ‘calls for’ at least a tripling of adaptation finance for developing countries to $120 billion by 2035 – five years later than developing countries themselves had hoped.
“We didn’t win on all fronts,” said Evans Njewa, chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Group, “but we got tripling adaptation finance by 2035.”
According to a report from the UN Environment Programme, developed nations provided $26 billion in adaptation finance to developing nations in 2023. However, the EU and UK were among the parties resisting increased contributions, citing financial pressures at home.
The conversation resembles criticism aimed at previous drafts of a Global Plastics Treaty, in which the financial responsibilities of developed countries remained unclear.
The mutirão lays out plans for a high-level ministerial round table to discuss the collective quantified goal on climate finance, including ‘quantitative and qualitative elements’. A two-year work programme on climate finance will also be established, according to the text.
Companies based in developed countries are facing increased scrutiny for the impacts their operations could have on LDCs, and the same is true in a packaging context. In a recent example, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners has been criticized for importing, and failing to recycle, single-use plastic bottles in Samoa – “jeopardizing the enjoyment of a broad range of human rights in a country already exposed to the disproportionate impacts of the environmental crisis,” according to UN Special Rapporteur on Toxics & Human Rights Marcos Orellana.
At COP30, developing countries like Colombia and Panama feared that their input was being excluded from negotiations altogether; “We were promised a transparent process. That is not what we’re seeing. I raise my flag and you ignore it. I raise a point of order, and you ignore it. I sustain it, and it can be ignored.”
One area that wasn’t ignored this year was the packaging industry. The World Packaging Organisation (WPO) attended the conference, partnering with FSCC and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) to host ‘Systemic Solutions for Sustainable Food Systems: Tackling Food Loss and Waste through Packaging Innovation’ in the Action on Food Hub.
The talk asserted that safe, functional, resource-efficient and recyclable packaging that effectively extends a product’s shelf life keeps waste at a minimum and helps in the pursuit of climate targets.
“Raising the voice for packaging at COP30 is a milestone that has been sown in the past two years counting on intense collaboration,” said WPO president Luciana Pellegrino. “Together with UNIDO and FSSC Foundation, we are honoured to represent the global packaging community at COP30, emphasizing the relevance of packaging in reducing food loss and waste.”
Nevertheless, Greenpeace International deputy programme director Jasper Inventor describes COP30 as “start[ing] with a bang of ambition but end[ing] with a whimper of disappointment.” Like the Global Plastics Treaty, the end result is considered too safe to make any definitive progress.
Parties are ‘encouraged’ by the mutirão to shape their nationally determined contributions to meet net zero ‘by or around mid-century’ and keep 1.5°C ‘within reach’. It ‘urges’ those who are yet to share a new nationally determined contribution or long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategies to do so as soon as possible, with no binding time frame.
At the closing of the plenaries, UN Climate Change executive secretary Simon Stiell acknowledged: “We knew this COP would take place in stormy political waters. Denial, division and geopolitics [have] dealt international cooperation some heavy blows this year.”
Still, he asserted that “climate cooperation is alive and kicking”, adding: “I’m not saying we’re winning the climate fight. But we are undeniably still in it, and we are fighting back.”
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