COP30 World Climate Conference: High ambitions disappointed once again

The host country Brazil had big goals for this year's COP30 climate conference. The previous COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, delivered only unsatisfactory results and is considered a failure. This was to be corrected and compensated for in Belém. “The end result should be a new global alliance for climate protection, the so-called Global Mutirão,” says Dr. Heinz-Werner Rapp, founder and director of the FERI Cognitive Finance Institute, which recently published a comprehensive analysis of impending climate tipping points and global climate risks.

COP30 falls short of ambitious goals

The COP30 negotiations sought to achieve a nuanced triad consisting of a global roadmap for phasing out fossil fuels, steps to improve the social acceptability of climate protection measures, and significantly increased adaptation funding for poorer countries. “As a result of conflict-ridden negotiations, however, once again we are left with nothing more than a token compromise that excludes or severely waters down key aspects of effective climate protection,” explains Rapp. Once again, countries such as China, Russia, India, and Saudi Arabia have prevailed and prevented concrete steps toward moving away from fossil fuels. "Against the backdrop of unchecked global warming – with temperatures threatening to rise by 2.8 degrees by the end of the century – the 2025 climate summit has clearly failed to meet its goals. COP30 in Brazil will go down in history as another collective failure," says Rapp. This is particularly true in view of the approaching critical climate tipping points, which, if exceeded, would result in massive and irreversible changes to the global climate system. “Although this topic was discussed intensively at COP30, there is still a widespread lack of understanding of the existential risks of climate change,” explains Rapp. The US in particular, which demonstratively stayed away from the climate summit, showed no willingness to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions as the world's second-largest CO2 emitter.

Missed opportunity to prevent serious climate damage

The meeting in the Brazilian rainforest was described in advance by many experts as the “last chance” in the
global fight against climate change. However, the rapidly increasing tipping point risks, in particular the massive ice melt in Greenland and West Antarctica, as well as the possible drying up of the Amazon rainforest, were not taken seriously enough at COP30 to bring about a globally coordinated change of course. The host country, Brazil, did everything it could to bring the climate summit to a successful conclusion. "In the end, however, the pressure from powerful oil producers and CO2 emitters was once again too great to achieve real progress,“ says Rapp. He warns: ”With its eyes wide open, humanity is following a climate path that will lead to enormous damage to nature and high follow-up costs." According to Rapp, these burdens will soon also affect financial systems, in particular through a radical revaluation of climate risks (repricing of risk). Capital market participants should be aware of this dynamic and take it into account appropriately in their strategic dispositions.

The German study „Climate Tipping Points – Das Umkippen essentieller Klimasysteme als globales Risiko“ provides investors and entrepreneurs with in-depth insights into the issue of climate tipping points and supports them in analyzing and assessing future challenges. A short version of the study is available in German for download on this page.