Dispatches from Belém: An Emotional End to a Dramatic COP30

Well friends, we survived COP30.

When the gavel came down at 8:44 PM on Saturday, nearly 27 hours after the official close, the collective sigh of relief was palpable. We are beyond exhausted.

The closing plenary started messy. Negotiators worked throughout the night behind closed doors and by morning, we thought we had a package deal. But then plenary was delayed, and when it did begin, we saw it all—points of order, brazen insults, huge huddles. If there’s one thing this COP hasn’t lacked, it’s drama. When the torrential rain came down in the late afternoon, hammering the tented roof and drowning out every voice, I kind of felt like it was the only one we actually needed to hear.

But somehow, as always, we managed to push through. So what was agreed?

The Global Mutirão was adopted, though without any reference to phasing out fossil fuels—disappointing, but not surprising. The COP President did announce two ‘roadmaps’ on deforestation and fossil fuel transition, but they hold no legal standing. The good news? We agreed to a just transition mechanism and the Gender Action Plan—both of which will play important roles in tackling the climate crisis. It’s not everything, but given the state of geopolitics and the blow multilateralism’s had, it’s not nothing either. And we worked hard to get it.

I started to get emotional as the evening pressed on, and when Brazil’s environment minister Marina Silva spoke, she just about broke me. She thanked us for visiting “the heart of the planet,” explaining they had received us in the way that “expresses our gesture of love for humanity.”

I couldn’t agree more.

This COP has been hard and exhausting, raw and textured and colourful, wildly unpredictable and absolutely wonderful. I have learned so much, most especially that, as UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell said in the closing, multilateralism is “alive and kicking.” It might be rough, it might not look like we thought it would, but it is there.

I have so much more to say but for now, just my absolute gratitude. For this time, this space, the reminder that this work matters, that storytelling matters, that each of us, in our own way, shapes the world.

Cover photo:  COP 30 President André Corrêa do Lago with Marina Silva, Brazil's environment minister. (Photo: © UN Climate Change - Kiara Worth)