More Oil Lobbyists Than Indigenous Representatives."That Says It All"
NEWS: COP 30
What Went On?
COP30 in Belém, Brazil, has ended in overtime and acrimony. What was billed as “the COP of truth” by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has instead revealed the widening gulf between political theatre and planetary urgency. Lula, speaking from the G20 Summit in Johannesburg as the talks dragged on, declared that “science prevailed, multilateralism won.” Yet back in Belém, his own COP30 president, André Corrêa do Lago, was forced to suspend negotiations after a furious intervention from Colombia, whose delegate accused the final deal of “falling far short” of what vulnerable countries face on the ground. “What do you expect when you don’t listen?” muttered one NGO observer as talks halted again.
The Numbers that Matter
There were 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists at COP30, one in every 25 delegates, outnumbering nearly every national delegation. Indigenous representation, though historically high at about 2,500 participants, remained mostly outside the decision rooms. Barely 14 percent gained access to formal negotiating spaces. The optics could not be clearer: profit and access remain unequally distributed.
What Was Agreed
The final “Belém Political Package” extends the process and sketches an ambition to triple adaptation finance by 2035, yet without enforceable mechanisms or clear baselines. A Loss and Damage fund was endorsed again, but without solid pledges. The text calls for “accelerating the transition from fossil fuels,” carefully avoiding the word phaseout. It is diplomacy at its most elastic.
What Was Lost
This COP was meant to be the one where adaptation took centre stage, the moment the world finally addressed how the most vulnerable will survive a warming planet. Instead, adaptation was buried beneath procedural jargon and the lobbying machinery of oil exporters. Colombia’s frustration echoed across the hall: “The final text does not capture the full breadth of positions expressed throughout the negotiations.”
The Broader Pattern
COP30 repeats an uncomfortable pattern. Each year, the process grows larger, more corporate, and less accountable to those living on the frontlines. Lobbyist numbers rise; Indigenous access stagnates; binding commitments vanish behind “roadmaps.” Brazil’s presidency sought to balance diplomacy with domestic politics, showcasing Amazon protection while keeping doors open to agribusiness and oil revenue. In that balancing act, the moral clarity of leadership was lost.
The Real Question
If COP is to remain relevant, it must confront its own contradictions. Can a process so entangled with fossil capital credibly negotiate its own decline? Can climate justice exist when those most affected remain excluded from the room? The result from Belém suggests not yet. Finance without reform is a holding pattern, not a solution. The “devil’s pitchfork,” money, novelty, ego, still drives the agenda, leaving the discipline of mastery, humility, and stewardship to the margins.
The Takeaway
COP30 may be remembered less for what it achieved than for what it exposed: a world still unwilling to match rhetoric with restraint. “Science prevailed,” said Lula. But the science is clear, and what prevailed most was politics. Until Indigenous voices carry the same weight as oil executives, and until fossil phaseout has a date, every new deal risks becoming another performance of progress while the planet burns quietly outside the plenary hall.
"Until the COP process puts biodiversity, deforestation, and fossil fuel exit plans ahead of balance sheets, it will remain a forum for promises rather than progress, a place where we fund the symptoms, not the cure."
Conclusion: The Fiction of Financing
At COP30, the conversation has been captured by money. Every press release speaks of “mobilising trillions,” “scaling finance,” and “leveraging capital.” Yet, for all the noise, this shift toward financing has begun to look like fiction, a convenient narrative that replaces difficult action with the illusion of progress.
The world does not need more financial frameworks; it needs roadmaps, clear, enforceable plans to halt deforestation, phase out fossil fuels, and restore biodiversity. Finance, when divorced from these physical realities, becomes another market instrument detached from life itself. Balance sheets cannot save Amazon. Coral reefs do not recover through loans.
While negotiators trade promises of future funds, forests continue to fall, and extraction expands. Indigenous communities that have protected the planet’s last intact ecosystems are still fighting for recognition, not funding pledges. The COP process risks mistaking capital flows for climate action, as if the right accounting language could substitute for moral clarity.
If COP30 is to be remembered as anything more than the “Conference of Finance,” it must return to first principles. Climate action begins with limits on deforestation, on emissions, on greed, not with endless mechanisms to price the damage. The earth does not negotiate. It responds. And no financial architecture, however elaborate, will save us if we refuse to stop the harm itself.
