COP30 Opens with UN Call for Unity as U.S. Skips Global Climate Summit

The United Nations urged countries to unite and adopt a solution-driven approach to combating climate change as the two-week-long COP30 summit began in Belém, Brazil — notably without participation from the United States.

“In this arena of COP30, your job here is not to fight one another – your job here is to fight this climate crisis, together,” said UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell on opening day. He cautioned that nations opting out of climate action risk being left behind “while other economies surge ahead.”

Addressing delegates from 195 countries, Stiell said the Paris Agreement — adopted a decade ago — is “delivering real progress,” even as he acknowledged a “temporary overshoot” in efforts to cap global warming at 1.5°C. He noted that for the first time, renewable energy has surpassed coal in 2025, calling climate action “the greatest economic opportunity of the century.”

In a letter to signatories of the Paris Agreement, Stiell revealed that global greenhouse gas emissions are projected to fall 12% below 2019 levels by 2035, based on national commitments from 113 countries. Before the Paris pact, those emissions were expected to rise between 20% and 48%. Still, he warned that “progress so far is not nearly enough.”

Stiell pressed nations to turn negotiations into concrete results at COP30 and strengthen international cooperation to accelerate emission reductions. He highlighted the need for developed countries to deliver on the $300 billion climate finance pledge made last year to help developing nations implement adaptation and mitigation strategies.

“Humanity is still in this fight,” Stiell said. “We have some tough opponents, but we also have some heavyweights on our side — like the market forces making renewables cheaper. Lamenting is not a strategy.”

AI for Climate Action Award 2025

Alisa Luangrath of Laos PDR received the AI for Climate Action Award 2025 for her project SAFIR (Smart AI-based Farming and Irrigation for Resilience), which uses artificial intelligence to help farmers in Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States boost water efficiency and climate resilience.

Activists’ Wake-Up Call

Outside the summit, climate activists called for faster and bolder action.
“Global leaders are taking such small steps, like they’re sleeping,” said Viviana Santiago, Executive Director of Oxfam Brazil. “We need these people to wake up to the urgency of the climate crisis.”

Protesters dressed as puppet versions of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and former U.S. President Donald Trump, with Trump depicted lounging under a headline reading “Make rich polluters pay.”

The U.S. absence marks another retreat from global climate diplomacy under Trump, who withdrew the country from the Paris Agreement twice — first in 2017 and again in January 2025 — despite the U.S. being among the world’s largest carbon emitters.