The 30th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), known as the Conference of Parties (COP30), started in Belém, Brazil, on November 10. The event will continue until November 21. The latest edition of this global negotiation process to curb climate change is unfolding in the backdrop of a sharp contrast to the first such conference, the ‘Earth Summit’ held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 (Rio-92).

Back then, the United Nations benefited from a renewed post-Cold War multilateralism. The mandates of UN bodies expanded, alongside increased budgets. By creating the UNFCCC, the Rio-92 summit contributed to the rise of global norms in a rules-based international order. It was one among a host of environmentally-focused UN bodies, part of a more complex and robust framework for global governance.

The broad international consensus that made the 1992 agreement possible has since vanished.

Since the turn of the millennium, the United States has decoupled from the rules-based international order of which it was the major beneficiary after World War II. The first sign of a rollback of multilateral commitments came in 2001, when President George W. Bush announced that the US would not participate in the Kyoto Protocol, an extension mechanism of the UNFCCC. This move triggered a breakdown of the climate change regime, with unfulfilled expectations remaining until the Protocol expired in 2020.

The Paris Agreement, reached during COP-21 in 2015, was a cautious attempt to preserve the outlines of the regime in the aftermath of widespread non-compliance, especially after the 2008 global financial crisis. Instead of promoting a single baseline agreement for reducing global emissions following the multilateral logic, consensus was reached in terms of voluntary reductions (Nationally Determined Contributions), focusing on major global carbon emitters, especially the US and China.

The new agreement provided the backbone for a non-multilateral array of country-based promises for the next decade. This flexible framework depended on continuous political commitment on the part of major polluters.

But it was only the start of a retreat of multilateralism, marked by a noticeable decline in institutionalised cooperation that left the UN system at a crossroads.

One thing after another

One year after the COP-21 conference in Paris, the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House changed the rules of the game once more. Climate change negationism overlapped with the rise of far-right populism on a global scale, inflicting additional damage upon the fragile commitments of Rio and the Paris climate accord, which committed to hold the increase in global temperatures below two degrees Celsius.

This vicious cycle was enhanced by the COVID-19 pandemic. After the pandemic, the rules-based international order was held down, fragmented by a state renaissance fuelled by domestic nationalist nostalgia and a declining profile of international institutions. Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza have significantly worsened the situation since.

In its 2024 edition, COP showed the ambivalence of a divided world in motion. In sharp contrast to the expectations of economic transition to more sustainable platforms, the COP-29 conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, represented a dramatic return of fossil fuels to the forefront of diplomatic discussions, helped by Trump’s policies promoting “Drill, baby, drill” at home, and by the ongoing war in Ukraine. Eventually, it produced a US$ 300 billion compromise by developed countries to mitigate the side effects of climate change on the Global South, to be paid by 2035.

Not immune to ambiguities, Brazil has just approved a longstanding claim by Petrobras to allow oil extraction at the mouth of the Amazon River. At the same time, Lula promoted COP-30 as a “moment of truth” for climate financial commitments.

Brazilian authorities are already aware of a diplomatic fallout. The latest G20 and BRICS summits held in Brazil in 2024 and 2025, were lukewarm affairs, lacking ambitious agendas, overt normative commitments and political muscle to translate promises into global public policies. Especially visible in the BRICS case was the absence of major stakeholders, China’s President Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. This readjusted expectations—from promoting Brazilian leadership in the Global South to damage reduction.

The Belém summit was compromised even before it began. An infrastructure crisis led several delegations to keep confirmations hanging in the air until the eleventh hour, as the lack of proper accommodation triggered a hospitality crisis in Brazil. The overt absence of two countries that were major Brazilian allies at the time of the Rio-92 conference – the US and Argentina – also stands out.

Despite Brazil’s President Lula da Silva’s reaching out to President Trump during the latest UN General Assembly meeting and the ASEAN summit in Malaysia, the US continues to backtrack on its multilateral commitments in general, and environmental ones in particular.

Once again, the major carbon emitter is out of the Paris Agreement and will not attend COP-30 in an official capacity. This is a sign of downsized diplomatic prestige for Brazil, but that is not the biggest problem.

Leadership without followers

Long-lasting Brazilian aspirations of leadership in Latin America are challenged by the paucity of outcomes, a phenomenon crystallised by Andrés Malamud’s conception of “leadership without followers”. Over past decades, Brazil has combined investment in institutions (regional and global) with presidential diplomacy to promote its leadership claims.

The diplomatic and military rapprochement with Argentina after the re-democratisation of Latin America in 1985 brought the South American giants close enough for the creation of a common market, MERCOSUR, which was a success story in the late 20th century.

The end of the left-wing Pink Tide left regional institutions in tatters. After the election of neoliberal economist Javier Milei in 2023, Argentina sided with Trump in promoting climate change denialism. With Lula and Milei on a collision course, MERCOSUR floundered, even though the bloc is still attempting to work out a trade deal with the European Union. It was Trump’s US, not regional powers including Brazil, that rescued Argentina in October 2025 from the country’s latest currency crisis.

Without Argentina and the US, the COP-30 conference provides an unsettling mirror to Brazil’s global expectations, which are now under pressure.

It is not surprising, therefore, that rising Global South powers such as India approach the climate change conference with caution.

As the fastest-growing economy of the Global South, projected to become the world’s third-largest GDP by 2027-28, India feels no need to accelerate its climate commitments, since the world remains divided. Among G20 economies, there is no consensus on how to keep the post-pandemic economic recovery compatible with previous environmental commitments. Most G20 economies have slowed down since 2020; only a few (India, China, Indonesia) continue to grow above the world average.

The same splintered profile can be found among Global South polities, which are unable to find a common front, despite being united by climate financial promises. Trump’s tariffs are also a sensitive matter – Japan, South Korea and China reached trade deals with the superpower just before COP-30.

Torn between the frustrated expectations of the climate change regime during this century, and the current hardships of a fragmented world order, COP-30 reminds us of the missed opportunities of multilateralism since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

-360 info