The Shift from Ideas to Real Implementation at COP30
By Suvid Bordia, Eco-Ambassador
By now, it is well known that our pristine climate is deteriorating by the day. We hear innovative ideas around the world that claim they are a solution to our issues, but that is only 50% of the way. What is the point of an invention if it is never used?
At COP30, the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Bélem, Brazil, discussions between countries around the world were inspired by this tension. Like many global climate summits in the past, critics pointed to slow negotiations, voluntary commitments, and the lack of binding enforcement which ultimately ended in little progress on our most pressing goals, like the Paris Agreement to slow global warming. Luckily, this year’s focus was different; at the opening speech, the President of Brazil said, “We are moving in the right direction, but at the wrong speed.”
Instead of centering the conference on new pledges for efforts alone, the conference emphasized true implementation and results. The final outcome was the COP30 Action Agenda, a framework made to create commitments that can be tracked and improved over time. Importantly, given the world’s current state, an increasingly prominent way to deal with worsening environments is adaptation in addition to mitigation, creating new infrastructure to ensure that our lives are sustainable without relying on the fact that humanity will completely overcome climate change.
One of the most significant changes at COP30 was the emphasis on transparency, especially when measuring the results of initiatives. Data management plays a large role in this focus, allowing for coordination when done the same way across the world. For example, many discussions covered obstacles to the clean energy transition by enhancing supply chain data quality and coordinating electricity grid expansion. Particularly, developing economies that are at a major risk of the adverse impacts of climate change need increasing “adaptation financing” to ensure that they can improve their practices while promoting resilience.
For example, the problem of wildfires has been exacerbated by atmospheric changes throughout countries like the United States and Australia over the past few decades. At COP30, more than 50 countries and organizations signed a global Call to Action on Integrated Fire Management and Wildfire Resilience. The initiative focuses on expanding data sharing and early-warning systems to communities around the world, especially those with a lack of infrastructure to properly deal with the effects.
Another promising step was the launch of the Systematic Observations Financing Facility, the world’s first weather and climate data impact bond. Reaching its USD 200 million target by the end of 2026 could quintuple internationally shared climate data, helping at least 30 least developed countries and small island developing states shorten gaps in their solutions. Many partners encouraged the use of AI, satellite observations, and open data to scientists in public, allowing for better worldwide forecasting and resilience.
As a very passionate student researcher myself, I can definitely see the importance of such practices in our lives. My most recent independent project has introduced me to the world of raw environmental data, as well as the several hardships that come when merging different sources and creating novel datasets. Flooding, another natural disaster that has been intensified by climate change, affects many developing countries that do not have the technological or structural tools to help their communities adapt. Therefore, my project tries to begin by training statistical and machine learning models on areas with an abundance of data, and then applies it to countries around the world. Standardizing and making more data available can create an even bigger impact on all locations.
Over the summer, I also worked on a study to assess and predict water quality in a nearby river basin, applying methods to improve sparse data simply because of the difficulty in obtaining it over long time periods. Although the project ended up working out, I believe that more support for the academic institutions that power every invention is supremely important to achieve our goals for a sustainable planet.
Although successful in many ways, COP30 also had some pitfalls. Most importantly, the summit failed in creating an explicit roadmap to eliminate fossil fuels, largely because many countries rely on them for their economies and are not able to fully switch to more renewable forms. This problem has existed in past years’ discussions, and there is only more pressure by activists to change our ways.
Ironically, the very disasters that were discussed at the conference stopped events from occurring. A fire was started and led to the closure of certain venues and delayed important talks. Heavy rain over the Amazon rainforest led to flooding through the corridors of the location. When nature itself is giving us more extreme weather during a conference made to stop them, the problem is right in our faces!
There is no doubt that all of the issues above are pressing, but what do we do now? That is exactly where SDG 4.7 comes in, educating future generations to be skilled in the countless areas that attack environmental degradation from different angles is key, whether it is handling data and working with computational devices to model our planet or building new structures to protect communities. However, at the end of all that, we also need policy makers that work with other countries around the world to make sure that new solutions can be accessible to all of humanity.
COP30 has built a foundation, and from here, strong collaboration can begin to further and rapidly change the state of our world. UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell said, during the closing plenaries of COP30, “Here in Belem, nations chose unity, science, and economic common sense.”
Only the changemakers of tomorrow, including me and all of my peers, will determine whether we use them.
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Suvid Bordia is a 10th grader and a Youth Eco-Ambassador at the Center for Sustainable Development, Columbia University.