In the assessment of the 30th United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP30), held in Belém, northern Brazil, the consensus on 29 items of the climate agenda was celebrated among the 195 parties that participated in the negotiations. The final document, expected at the end of each COP, does not include other agreements that fall outside official decisions but are nonetheless reached in the multilateral setting, such as the Action Agenda.
According to Bruna Cerqueira, general coordinator of the COP30 Presidency’s Action Agenda, producing a document at the end of COP30 with 120 plans to accelerate climate initiatives - and with 190 countries acting on at least one of them - was an unprecedented global achievement.
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For the first time, initiatives that support the implementation of COP decisions - developed by actors such as the private sector and subnational governments - were organized into a kind of global repository of good ideas. According to Bruna Cerqueira, the intention was to bring together voluntary actions to speed up the implementation of what has already been agreed.
“We created six axes for the Action Agenda, focused on energy, industry, and transport; on forests, biodiversity, and oceans; on food systems and agriculture; on cities, infrastructure, and water; on human and social development; and a final cross-cutting one on financing, technology, and capacity building,” Cerqueira explained.
Results
In practice, the results could already be seen throughout the activities held in Belém. One example was the global initiative for land protection, a plan to accelerate the Forests and Land Tenure (Pledge) commitment, which had already existed beforehand.
According to the member of the COP30 Presidency, a more results-oriented approach and the effort to connect negotiations to people’s lives led to greater country participation in the plan and renewed funding for the initiative.
“USD 1.7 billion was advanced, and now they have set a further target of USD 1.5 to USD 2 billion in new resources. This new phase was also accompanied by a commitment from some countries to improve their land management. Brazil, in fact, announced the demarcation of some lands during the COP as part of this commitment as well,” Cerqueira stated.
Levers
After being classified under the six axes, the initiatives received assessments based on twelve implementation levers, considering perspectives that range from the regulation of initiatives in the territories to demand, supply, and public acceptance.
“We made a diagnosis of what is going well and what needs to be prioritized, and the plans are actions to address these levers, so that we can remove the obstacles and move forward more quickly,” the general coordinator added.
As a guide for this work, the COP30 presidency used the Global Stocktake (GST), a transparency mechanism of the Paris Agreement that assesses progress on long-term greenhouse gas emission targets. Conducted every five years, the first GST was delivered during COP28, held in 2023 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Connection
Based on the classification and diagnosis aligned with the GST results, the Action Agenda achieved an outcome that links formal negotiations to people’s daily lives, the coordinator assesses. “If we want to transform economies and bring everyone into the structure of these six axes, every economic actor and every member of society has to understand. Hardly anyone will know paragraph X of the GST, but if you talk about energy, industry, and transport, everyone understands,” she emphasized.
With 120 plans already developed, many of them underway, Bruna Cerqueira believes that the next steps will be to ensure that the Action Agenda is strengthened at future COPs. “The next presidency has already indicated, in the agreement between Turkey and Australia, that they appreciated the structure and intend to build on it. The challenge now is to consolidate this legacy and work with them to keep everyone at the table and accelerate implementation,” Cerqueira noted.
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