In the 10 years since countries signed the Paris Agreement, an international treaty to limit global warming to a critical level of 1.5°C, the United States has withdrawn from the agreement twice – both times under President Donald Trump.
But the country has otherwise played a critical role historically at the United Nations’ annual climate conferences, known as COP, and some say its ability to bring people together and raise ambitions will be sorely missed at the upcoming COP30 talks in Belém, Brazil.
”[The US] has historically been a very important, very positive actor at COPs,” said Ani Dasgupta, chief executive officer at the World Resources Institute. “I argue in my writing that the Paris COP [in 2015] would not have happened without the Chinese and US leadership coming together the year before that.”
But Dasgupta, who analysed the grounds for success of previous climate negotiations in his recently published book The New Global Possible, says that he is already seeing middle income countries adapting to new roles as climate leaders. Countries like China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Kenya are among those that are playing leadership roles that are different to their historical positions.
Ani Dasgupta, chief executive officer at the World Resources Institute, authored a book that looks at successful climate action and what needs to change for the world to meet its climate goals. Image: World Resources Institute
”[In Southeast Asia, there’s] Vietnam, Indonesia…Singapore is playing such an important role right now in galvanizing finance for the transition,” he told the Eco-Business Podcast.
“We will see these countries at COP playing a very different role, and filling the vacuum created by the US in a very different way. That would be very interesting to watch.”
Tune in as we discuss:
- The importance of the United Nations’ COP process
- How middle income countries are rising to climate leadership
- Raising climate finance beyond COP
- The growth of adaptation finance
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
You’ve recently written a book called The New Global Possible and positive outcomes of previous COPs featured heavily in one of the first chapters. What successes have we seen in past COPs, and what might we expect at COP30?
I think COP has been a very important for multilateralism, and multilateralism, which is countries working together, is critical for climate. Climate has no boundaries, so countries coming together and agreeing [is crucial].
In the book, The New Global Possible, I looked at one of the biggest achievements on the COP process, which is the Paris Agreement. 195 countries came together to sign a very ambitious agreement to reduce carbon emission from the economies.
I looked at it because I was interested in what made the Paris Agreement successful. I looked at how years of work and different things have happened – for instance, at COP16 in Cancun, Mexico, it was about agreeing to what Nationally Determined Contributions are about and counting carbon.
That took many different pieces to come together. And even during that COP, I wrote in that different countries, specifically small island nations like the Marshall Islands, played an incredible role to get the momentum for 1.5°C [global warming target].
The stories in the book are about this orchestration – how does something that big happen? And I write in that chapter that we actually have done many big things; Paris is not the only thing that we have done that is significant for the climate movement. We just take them for granted.
Some 20 years back, we didn’t know how to count carbon. Now everyone talks about gigatonnes this and gigatonnes that. For a while, people thought it was impossible to count carbon because you don’t smell it, you don’t see it. But now we can. We take the infrastructure of the climate movement we take for granted right now.
But at the same time, you know, the progress since Paris has been disappointing – I also write that. It has not moved as fast, and one of the biggest reasons I argue is that when we signed the Paris Agreement, we thought we were signing a climate agreement. In reality, for the climate to be different or carbon emissions to be reduced, we need a different economy. We need an economy that is not dependent on fossil fuels and that produces food without destroying nature. It’s an economic transition we signed on to, and we are just the beginning of this transition.
I don’t think in Paris, we grasped the enormity of what we were signing or what needs to happen for the desired outcome. That Paris Agreement outcome is for less carbon dioxide in the air, but that is just a byproduct of the economy we have. You can’t address it just by thinking about carbon. You have to think about what happens in the economy, how we produce things, how we produce energy, how we move, how we eat. That’s what I think we face right now, and that’s what I think COP30 will be focused on.
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When we signed the Paris Agreement, we thought we were signing a climate agreement. In reality, for the climate to be different or carbon emissions to be reduced, we need a different economy.
We’re looking at a US$1.3 trillion Baku-to-Belém Roadmap for COP30 against a backdrop of the US pulling out of the Paris Agreement, and developed countries scaling back their climate ambitions and targets. How would this affect negotiations around finance at COP 30?
For the Baku-to-Belém Roadmap, I think the Brazilian leadership of COP30 has really taken that process very seriously. They created the Circle of Finance Ministers which just published an impressive report about all the things they want and need to achieve.
WRI argued when the agreement at COP29 in Baku was done for US$300 million towards US$1.3 trillion that for that US$1.3 trillion to work, you can’t just have that discussion at COP. You need to have the discussion in different fora, including the G20, and the Brazilian leadership has done exactly that. They use the G20 in South Africa. So we feel a very serious effort has been put in.
Whether we will reach US$1.3 trillion we do not know yet, because these are not pledges. A lot of focus has been on private capital, but we can only agree to a mechanism that could allow private capital to flow. You would not know if private capital is flowing until it actually flows.
The other thing that Brazil is doing and WRI is supporting is the creation of country-level platforms to focus on ownership of their plans, so that different kinds of funds, especially private capital, can be leveraged and mixed with other kinds of capital [editor’s note: this is widely known as blended finance]. We are hoping more than 10 country platforms will be announced.
Coming to the US, it has historically been a very important, very positive actor at COPs. I argued in my writing that the Paris COP would not have happened without the Chinese and US leadership coming together the year before that.
The US is historically important not just for their money, but for their ability to bring people together and raise ambition, and that will be missed. That will be definitely missed.
I think the impact will seen in two ways. One, they were a contributor to the $300 billion New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on finance, which other countries would have to pick up.
The other is the leadership part, which to me is the most interesting part. I already see large middle-income countries like China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Kenya already playing a very different leadership part in the climate movement than they have played historically.
I think this climate COP will be different because we will see middle income countries playing a different and much clearer role, because their climate policies are very clear. They want to make progress faster. You live in Malaysia – you can see countries around you, Vietnam, Indonesia…Singapore is playing such an important role right now in galvanizing finance for the transition.
So we will see these countries at COP playing a very different role, and filling the vacuum created by the US in a very different way. That would be very interesting to watch.
Because as WRI, we’ve been predicting for a while that this large millennium countries will play a very different role in climate policy globally going forward.
The world has made significant progress on addressing climate change that is often taken for granted, argued author Ani Dasgupta in The New Global Possible. Image: World Resources Institute
How do you think this might change the way we talk about critical climate issues? On climate adaptation, would we see more practical or implementable solutions?
We have to see much more practical implementable policy. Already we see the new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are much more financeable, much more sectoral than before. [Editor’s note: The NDCs are climate mitigation and adaptation targets that countries update every five years under the Paris Agreement.]
The latest NDCs are not perfect, but they are much better than the last two cycles. We are trying to quantify that and that we are trying to figure out how much better they are.
At Paris they were saying, let’s figure out how to get to 1.5°C, but then they’ve realised how difficult it is to do.
Just to quantify this, when we went to Paris (in 2015), we were at 4°C – if we continued as is, we would’ve been 4°C warmer by end of the century than pre-industrial levels, which is devastating for most natural habitats and humans.
Since then, with the policies that have been put in place, we’re looking 2.8°C, which is much better than 4°C, but nowhere close to the 1.5°C we need to be safe as a human species.
But the interesting thing is that if the world implemented everything they have agreed to – countries, businesses, cities – we would be at 1.8°C. There’s one whole degree of implementation gap. We would be 75 per cent closer to our goal if countries implemented all the things they agreed on.
What I’m saying is it’s very important to be more ambitious, to get to 1.5°C. It’s even more important to implement things, so implementation is a very important part of the Brazilian leadership’s agenda.
We think implementation only possible if two things happen. First, they countries clear sectoral goals in the NDCs. You’ll see a lot more of them rather than a global [target saying] we’ll reduce by 70 gigaton. It’s much more important, like India has done, for example, to raise 500 gigawatts of energy from renewables by 2030. These sectoral goals are much more [geared] towards implementation.
The second is finance – how do you get finance to implement those goals? These two agendas are at the centre of what Brazilian presidency is trying to do and what we are supporting.
There’s been a lot of talk about the Global Goal on Adaptation, with 100 indicators being discussed for adoption. What progress can we expect on that front?
I was at the mid-October World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington DC – a lot of global and finance ministers were here. I participated in many finance discussions and most of them were about adaptation finance. So I’m very encouraged at this moment how much focus there is on adaptation finance.
The good news is that over the last three or four years, the narrative and analytics of adaptation finance has become increasingly better. This has happened in several ways: first, experts did a very good job in quantifying how much money is needed for adaptation. They think about $400 billion is needed per year by 2035. [Editor’s note: Two weeks after this interview, the United Nations Environment Programme published a new report on the gap in adaptation finance, putting it at US$310 billion a year in 2035.]
Secondly, we have found that many adaptation [activities] are actually prime for returns on investment. WRI did an exercise last year that looked at adaptation investment – not just as reducing climate loss but as an investment for macroeconomic stabilisation, growth, and to make people’s lives better. We found that every instance, adaptation investments actually produce incredible returns.
So we are in a very different place in the narrative on adaptation from even few years back. If you see the report the Brazilian COP presidency just published on the ministers’ circles, you’ll see how much adaptation finance was mentioned.
The goal of this meeting is threefold, I think, to get to 50 per cent agreement for 50 per cent climate finance and adaptation. I think most probably we’ll meet that goal.
The Global Goal on Adaptation has been difficult because when there’s a hundred indicators, it’s very difficult for people to agree to all the indicators. So we will see.
But what I am actually most interested in is the flow of private capital to adaptation. That’s not the only thing that needs to happen, but that’s a good leading indicator of other things that needs to happen for adaptation.
How do we make finance more equitable for developing countries? And how can they be best represented by COP, given the high costs of attendance?
I have heard the same thing [about high costs], but I’ve also heard the Brazilian government is trying to make sure that vulnerable and poor countries can come to COP30 and have places to stay.
At the same time, all the people I met at New York Climate Week (in September) – it seems to me that everyone is going to Belém. I don’t know how both these things are true.
But WRI is very committed to COP and we will be there for it. As one small organisation, we will do our part to make it successful.
It doesn’t matter which country’s hosting it – think we always hear a lot of noise for any location. But people were surprised by how many there were at New York Climate Week. Everyone said no one would come, look at [US policies on] immigration. But that was widely successful. So I am looking forward to Belém.
This story was produced as part of the 2025 Climate Change Media Partnership, a journalism fellowship organized by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.
