Professor Richard Beardsworth continues his analysis of expectations for COP30 in Belém, as he navigates leadership between two realms, one rules-based and co-operative, the other nationalist-populist and centrifugal
Two worlds
We enter COP30 living, paradoxically, in two worlds – one rules-based and co-operative, the other nationalist- populist and centrifugal, treating obligations as optional.
The first descends from the post-war multilateral order that organised collective security and prosperity; climate co-operation since Rio (1992) and Paris (2015) is that order applied the atmosphere. In it, states across the North and South aim for co-operative agreements both to keep 1.5°C credible and to embed climate justice as a measurable goal. This world depends on rules, transparency and reciprocity: for example, national mitigation goals (NDCs) that shape domestic policy; international finance that is predictable and grant-based; adaptation indicators that match support to need.
The second resists international constraint and weaponises climate policy, recasting it as a threat to sovereignty, competitiveness and identity. It fragments co-operation, erodes trust, and normalises unilateral opt-outs. COP30 will unfold in the overlap of these two political worlds. Its outcome will hinge on whether leaders can hold the co-operation line while addressing the political-economy anxieties that a voracious counter-order exploits.
What leadership requires
The Presidency’s task at COP30 is leadership, not choreography. Belém needs a disciplined package that turns headline ambition into executable policy and funded implementation:
- Paris-compatible NDCs – especially from the G20 – closing the 2030 ambition gap through near-term measures in power, industry, transport, agriculture, forestry and land use (AFOLU), and methane abatement;
- A finance decision delivering grant-based and front-loaded flows of capital through 2030, with simplified direct access and debt-sensitive terms for the most climate-vulnerable;
- Operational adaptation through a concise Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) indicator set tied to finance, tracking and delivery; and
- A justice pillar that embeds Indigenous Peoples’ leadership, forest protection/restoration, and enforceable safeguards (including the ‘free, prior and informed consent’ (FPIC) of Indigenous Peoples) across Article 6, dedicated funding channels, and the cover decision. This pillar will partner with COP30’s Global Mutirão initiative to rally collective action and reshape climate governance.
Brazil: Climate leadership and domestic headwinds
Brazil itself straddles the two worlds above. The COP Presidency is pushing mitigation signals, adaptation indicators, Indigenous leadership, and forests – but the government is itself split between a diplomatic wing that wants Belém to succeed and an economic wing focused on profits, jobs, and exports. Alongside foreign affairs, environment and indigenous-minded ministries that back a justice-centred COP, economic portfolios (Mines, Energy and Agriculture) are pressing for agribusiness expansion and new offshore oil along the Equatorial Margin. This split is not only a result of socio-political and market pressures; it is an institutional contradiction inside the state.
The credibility test of COP30 leadership is whether the Presidency can coordinate the meeting in such a way as to insulate COP deliverables from domestic approvals that would undercut them: align the forest-justice narrative with enforceable safeguards; tenure finance and FPIC; and acknowledge that new extraction approvals would inevitably undermine the integrity and credibility of Belém’s outcomes.
Four tests of success
This leadership will consequently be judged on four fronts:
- Ambition:
- Whether G20 NDCs arrive aligned with 1.5°C and backed by credible sectoral policies rather than distant promises.
- Money:
- Whether the finance outcome provides a year-by-year schedule of public and grant targets – clearly tagged for adaptation and loss and damage, with direct access for vulnerable states and a pathway to scale by 2035.
- Resilience:
- Whether adaptation moves from aspiration to operation through an indicator set that channels resources to frontline communities and climate-sensitive systems: health, water, food and nature.
- Inclusion with integrity:
- Whether Article 6 launches with corresponding adjustments, transparency and grievance mechanisms; and whether Indigenous leadership and forest guardianship receive accessible finance so that communities become effective rights-holders, not COP photo backdrops, helping to steer the Mutirão initiative.
Law as a lever
One lever of leadership in this struggle is the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) recent advisory opinion. By affirming states’ duties of prevention, due diligence and co-operation – and treating 1.5°C as the operative yardstick – the ICJ reframes ambition as a matter of legal responsibility, not only political choice and will. That matters in Belém. It lets the Presidency argue that a grant-based and front-loaded finance decision is part of the international duty to co-operate with those “specially affected”; that adaptation indicators must be tied to means of implementation to satisfy due diligence; and that an Article 6 launch without corresponding adjustments, transparency, FPIC and grievance could court legal and reputational risk.
By grounding duties in customary international law, the opinion helps fill the U.S. federal vacuum: SIDS, Africa, Latin America, the European Union, and engaged U.S. subnational actors can now align around a legal baseline even if Washington is absent. Framed constructively, this is not a threat of litigation but a form of legally grounded risk management that finance ministries should understand: stronger rules reduce exposure to lawsuits, stranded assets and market-access barriers. In Belém, international law can help narrow the space for nationalist exceptionalism and widen the path for a rules-based, justice-centred settlement.
Why Belém matters
For these reasons, COP30 is not just another climate summit; it is the bellwether of our times. With the hegemon of the post-war order stepping back from multilateral leadership, Belém will test whether a coalition of Southern and middle-power states, working with European and subnational partners, can sustain collective climate governance.
The South is not a single voice; it bears the contradictions of development demands, sovereign debt distress and domestic politics; and Brazil exemplifies those tensions. Yet leadership is not the absence of contradiction; it is the capacity to hold competing imperatives together and move forward from them.
If COP30 delivers Paris-compatible G20 NDCs, a finance decision that restores trust, an operational adaptation framework, and a justice-centred forest package – anchored in the ICJ’s articulation of states’ duties – it will show that the rules-based, multilateral world can still organise action amid political fragmentation. If not, it will signal that the counter-order – comprising grievances, economic nationalism, authoritarianism, and sphere-of- influence geopolitics – is tightening its grip on climate governance. The outcome in Belém will be historic.
