“Devastating climate damages are happening already, from Hurricane Melissa hitting the Caribbean, Super Typhoons smashing Vietnam and the Philippines to a tornado ripping through Southern Brazil,” said Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change, on the eve of COP30 in the Amazonian City of Belém. “This is why COP must achieve three things: It must send a clear signal: nations are fully on board for climate cooperation—that means agreeing to strong outcomes on all the key issues.”
When world leaders now gather in Belém, Brazil for the UN climate conference, expectations will be modest. Few believe the meeting will produce any breakthroughs. The United States is retreating from climate engagement. Europe is distracted. The UN is struggling to keep relevant in the 21st century.
I have been working on climate policy since the late 1990s. I was in the room when Europe’s early carbon market discussions were shaping the architecture that would eventually underpin the Kyoto Protocol.
My recent visit to Brazil coincided partly with the Conference of the Parties (COP) 30, the 30th United Nations Climate Conference in Belém. Although I did not attend COP 30, I was very fortunate to visit the Amazon.
As the world prepares
for the next COP30 summit, a quieter battle is raging in courtrooms.
Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) are the fossil-fuel industry’s new favourite weapon, turning justice systems into instruments of intimidation.
President Prabowo Subianto welcomed his counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil to Jakarta recently to strengthen ties between the fast-growing economies.
“Has the world given up fighting climate change?” was a rhetorical question posed recently by the New York Times, perhaps with a degree of sarcasm.
It might look that way, says Christiana Figueres, a founding partner of the nongovernmental organization Global Optimism, “as US president Donald Trump blusters about fossil fuel, Bill Gates prioritizes children’s health over climate protection, and oil and gas companies plan decades of higher production.”
Political courage is the biggest obstacle to limiting the rise in global average temperature to no more than 1.5°C, said UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
Dating websites, mobile apps, social networks, and cell phones offer numerous opportunities for dating, developing relationships, having encounters, and finding partners with more and more people relying on these platforms. However, modern technologies with their scale, speed and easy have also brought about dating challenges for both men and women.
In recent days, nuclear state leaders have flouted the regulations and norms around nuclear non-proliferation and are flirting more openly with nuclear might in the name of projecting strength.
A decade has passed since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, and a United Nations synthesis report released ahead of COP30 in Belém shows that "Parties are bending their combined emission curve further downwards, but still not quickly enough."
As world leaders prepare to gather in Brazil for COP30 next week, they will convene in the heart of the Amazon -- a fitting location for what must become a turning point in how the world addresses the intertwined crises of climate change and biodiversity loss.
The message is clear: today’s youth are not “wishy-washy.” They are not just the future—they are the present, full partners in shaping it, and “power-sharing” is the new mantra. The veterans of activism are being reminded not merely to listen but to hear and to leave their egos at the door.
Three decades after the first Climate COP, the multilateral climate process – which was intended to serve as an instrument of justice and a guardian of the planet’s atmosphere – has fallen far short of its goals.
At COP15, the developing countries were calling for the temperature to not rise above 1.5 degrees and they ignored the Copenhagen Accord which agreed to 2.0 degrees
In the shadow of Rome’s Colosseum — once a monument to imperial violence — religious leaders from across the world gathered this week to deliver a message that felt both ancient and urgent: peace must once again become humanity’s sacred duty.
From the 10th to the 21st of November 2025, the 30th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP30) will be hosted in Belém, Brazil.
On a quiet July morning in Severo-Kurilsk, a coastal town in the East of the Russian Federation, the sea began to retreat unnaturally fast. Within minutes, tsunami sirens blared and 2,700 residents evacuated to higher ground. Waves up to five meters inundated the port and fish factory, but no lives were lost. The town’s survival reflected years of investment in early warning systems, community drills, and resilient infrastructure. The 2025 Kamchatka tsunami demonstrated what preparedness can achieve when science, governance, and community action align.
A new
global study has challenged a key assumption in climate planning: that the planet’s geological “carbon vault” is vast enough to hold all the carbon dioxide (CO₂) we might one day choose to bury underground after we remove it from the atmosphere. It isn’t.
As the world prepares for COP30 in Belém, all eyes are on Brazil’s proposed Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF)—a bold plan to reward countries for keeping forests standing. It represents a vital part of the long-term vision we need for global forest protection.
In Pakistan, journalism is a risky profession—and the danger only intensifies if you’re a woman, young, and a freelancer, says 30-year-old Saba Chaudhry, a journalist from a village near Narowal, in Punjab province.