Day 3: Searching for the Truth

With Day 2 bringing forward the need for a multilevel governance approach to successfully achieve the goals set out in the Paris Agreement, Day 3 completes this by focusing on a “people-powered transition”.  The themes for the next two days are as follows:

A Just Transition

The topic of a just transition – leaving no one behind when transitioning and achieving a green economy – was a central theme during the day. A low-carbon green future is expected to be very different from what we know today. It will be made of new industries, new responsibilities, and new jobs. Therefore, people and communities must be prepared to integrate into these new economies by having the right skills and knowledge. However, current transition strategies mostly target infrastructure and technology and disregard the importance of educating and reskilling the workforce. New research has shown that the green transition could bring 380 million new jobs to the market in the adaptation space alone. Therefore, with green jobs across sectors increasing by 18% in a year, it is imperative that the development of people is brought forward as a key puzzle piece of climate action.

Hence, the “Global Initiative on Jobs & Skills for the New Economy” was launched in the morning of Day 3 to target this gap. The initiative aims to prevent the lack of green talent from becoming a bottleneck to the green transition.

In the early afternoon of Day 3, a high-level ministerial event launched the Plan to Accelerate Solutions (PAS) which aims to use public procurement as a tool for a just transition.

Information Integrity

Another key theme discussed throughout the day was information integrity on climate change, a key issue Brazilian President Lula brought up during his COP30 opening speech. Disinformation (the intended use of false information to mislead) and misinformation (inaccurate information) have been major obstacles to global environmental governance: together, they have hindered global consensus, slowed down climate action progress, and delayed policy adoption.

A major contributor to climate change disinformation has been the fossil fuel industry which have hidden scientific evidence of greenhouse gases contributing to global warming, promoted technologies that would lock in fossil fuels in our future, and attacked climate scientists and activists. They have continuously slowed down climate action progress using advertisements, lobbying, and greenwashing. This has come at the cost of the livelihood and health of millions of people. We have seen fossil fuel companies pollute our rivers, soil, and air – from extraction to combustion - without taking any kind of accountability and responsibility. Therefore, we need to interrupt the cycle if disinformation perpetuated by the fossil fuel industry.

To achieve this, a session in the afternoon led by ACT Climate Labs called for the advertising and media organisations to end partnerships with fossil fuel organisations as it accounts, on average, to a mere 1% of their revenue. Panelists urged these organisations to rethink their relationship with fossil fuel clients and businesses to show their support for campaigning against fossil fuel advertising.

Which is also why, one year ago, UNESCO, the Government of Brazil, and the UN have established and launched the Global Initiative on Information Integrity on Climate Change. It is built on three pillars:

1.      Strengthen research on climate disinformation and misinformation.

2.      Fund projects and research to communicate and report climate change accurately.

3.      And integrate the topic of information integrity in COP30 processes.

The third pillar has already been a success within its year of existence, leading information integrity to be incorporated as one of the main themes in COP for the very first time.

Launch of the Global Tipping Points report 2025

With a new COP Day comes a new report launch, today University of Exeter presented their Global Tipping Points report for 2025. The results are bleak. Tipping points are one of the key threats of additional warming – warming beyond that increases the risk of tipping some critical systems (ocean circulation, polar ice caps, tropical forests, coral reefs) over the edge, plunging them into a state of degradation which not only is hard to reverse, but in some cases also risks accelerating the breach of other tipping points and triggering more warming and harm in cascade effects. In other words, when tipping points are breached, they create dangerous negative feedback loops that will exacerbate our situation and trigger other tipping points. This will bring our climate crisis to a state that will be virtually impossible to manage and come back from. Therefore, they need to be treated differently from how global warming is.  We need to avoid triggering tipping points at all costs – especially since the world just crossed its first tipping point, coral reefs decline, having just been reached.

Therefore, it is imperative that governance structures are adapted to this new and urgent threat. They need to bring prevention and risk mitigation to the forefront of climate strategies such as limiting the overshoot of 1.5°C by phasing out fossil fuels immediately and investing in carbon removal strategies not only for hard-to-abate emissions, but also to aim for net negative emissions.

Outside of COP30

Meanwhile close to the negotiations happening in the Amazon, 200 different boats carrying around 5000 people from 62 different countries gathered on the waters of the Guajará Bay, creating the largest parallel event to COP30. This event called the “People’s Summit” was organised by 1100 civil-society organisations. The Summit, which expects an audience of 30.000 people, stands for solutions that put nature and people before profit. In defiance of the Conference of the Parties and its little result despite 30 sessions, they proclaim that the solutions lie with the people who live in harmony with nature through collective and agroecological practices.

Concluding Remarks

The key theme through discussions of Day 3 at COP30 was about empowering people and workers. That begins with educating and reskilling the workforce for a just transition where no one is left behind, everyone benefits from the new jobs opportunities, and the transition avoids being bottlenecked by green skills. However, it also begins with tackling disinformation on climate change that threatens democratic processes and the health of millions of people globally. This message was further reinforced by the largest parallel event happening on the river of Belem, the People’s Summit. By gathering 5000 people, their objective is to promote the people who have been living in harmony with nature and who hold ancestral knowledge as the key solution to tackling climate change.

One thing is clear, regardless of whether you support COP30 or People’s Summit, the fight against climate change is not possible without considering the role of individuals.

Climate Action for Associations (CAFA) are attending COP30 as official NGO Observer. This year we are attending in a virtual capacity, providing our members with direct reporting from the heart of the negotiations. We are committed to delivering daily insights and a comprehensive end-of-COP report to ensure you stay fully informed on the outcomes that matter to membership organisations and their members.

For more information and updates on COP30 from us, follow this link.