COP30 Faces Pressure for Overhaul as World Questions the Future of UN Climate Talks

A growing call for change is echoing through the global climate community as Brazil prepares to host this year’s COP30 summit. At the center of the debate lies an existential question: What are the annual UN climate talks really achieving?

More than three decades of climate negotiations have produced some progress — from the rapid expansion of renewable energy to increased climate finance. But it hasn’t been enough. Emissions continue to rise, and temperatures keep climbing.

This has intensified demands to reform the Conference of the Parties (COP) system, which was designed to secure global agreements and track progress, not to drive real-world implementation.

Reuters interviewed more than 30 experts — including diplomats, former UN negotiators, ministers, activists, investors, and officials from development banks in both wealthy and developing countries. Many argued that the UN-led process needs a significant upgrade to translate years of COP pledges into concrete action.

“We need to move away from noise and focus on accelerating implementation,” a European negotiator said. “This might be the last of the old COPs and the beginning of a new one.”

Even among those who agree that reform is necessary, there is little consensus on what it should look like.

Skeptics warn that the timing could not be worse. With climate-skeptic politics gaining momentum in the United States and some countries rolling back green policies, they fear that major structural changes could backfire.

“At a time when the climate debate is so fragile, a reform process risks handing control to climate-change deniers,” said Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, Peru’s former environment minister.

The United Nations itself is among those pushing for change. UN climate chief Simon Stiell has convened a group of 15 former world leaders, diplomats, ministers, business executives and Indigenous representatives to recommend how COP should evolve over the next decade. Two members told Reuters the group will present its proposals in the coming weeks.

Stiell said the COP process has delivered real progress — noting that countries’ latest pledges would cut global emissions 12% below 2019 levels by 2035, marking the first sustained decline.
“But in this new era,” he said, “we need to evolve and accelerate… and be clear about who can change what.”

Climate scientist Johan Rockström, a member of the advisory group, said “nothing is off the table,” with discussions ranging from replacing consensus rules to restructuring the entire annual summit format.
“Ultimately,” he said, “what matters is that we start delivering on what has been agreed.”

The Consensus Problem

One major frustration is COP’s requirement that nearly 200 countries must agree unanimously on every major decision — a system that has repeatedly watered down ambition. At COP26 in Glasgow, for example, a deal to “phase out” global coal use was weakened to “phase down” after a last-minute objection from India.

A possible solution would be shifting to majority voting — but such a change itself would require unanimous approval, highlighting the central dilemma: sweeping reforms depend on the consent of all countries.

Diplomats told Reuters that some governments have proposed holding COP every two years or breaking it into smaller, task-focused meetings.

But Avinash Persaud, special adviser to the president of the Inter-American Development Bank, cautioned against reducing frequency.
“If COP becomes biennial, I fear we’ll lose momentum,” he said.

With thousands of delegates — including large business lobbies — recent COPs have often felt more like trade expos than policy negotiations. Some say this helps connect governments with the banks and companies needed to implement climate goals; others want the gatherings scaled down.

“There are people who hop from COP to COP, cocktail to cocktail, side event to side event — while the world keeps burning,” said Panama’s negotiator, Juan Carlos Monterrey.

Big Promises, Broken Commitments

A leaked UN document reviewed by Reuters shows that an internal task force recently suggested folding the UN climate body into another department and even questioned whether COP should continue “in its current form.”

Though the idea is unlikely to move forward, some diplomats saw it as a warning to refocus on essential work, one European negotiator told Reuters. That includes reducing bureaucratic overload and trimming the sprawling agenda.

“This system isn’t working. We’re drowning in paperwork,” Monterrey said.

Activists, meanwhile, have criticized fossil-fuel-backed hosts and called for new rules to prevent conflicts of interest — such as oil-industry representatives lobbying to expand fossil-fuel use at climate summits.

Recognizing the frustration over slow progress, Brazil — the COP30 host — has urged all parties to avoid making new promises this year and instead focus on meeting old ones. Brazil has proposed creating a UN-backed council to check whether countries are following through on their commitments.

Governments involved in COP30 negotiations are also considering how to reshape global climate diplomacy itself.
For the first time, countries are weighing a final COP30 agreement that would formally shift the world’s climate system “from negotiation to implementation,” according to a note published Sunday by Brazil’s COP presidency.