It has been an honor to participate at COP30. The achievements toward mitigating an irreversible and fast-approaching climate crisis are significant. Twenty-nine decisions were approved by consensus among one hundred and ninety-five Parties. These include agreements on just transition, adaptation finance, trade, gender, and technology—renewing the collective commitment to accelerated action and a climate regime more connected to people’s lives.
The role of the UN Climate Change Conference in driving this action is imperative.
However, the road of change is never easy. Any change—whether personal, institutional, or, even more so, societal—is hard. And we are trying to achieve all of them at once.
Some people resist; they are deeply attached to their history, their memories, and the lives they hold in their hearts. The experiences of their childhood and youth—shaped by the industrial environment of the 1950s–90s, cultural and societal norms, parental homes, and education—remain deeply ingrained. Inevitably, this rapid change brings a sense of uncertainty; and even greater concern about high risk.
The risk of losing the wealth we have built—the wealth our children depend on. Feel that. Would you abandon it personally?
Now take that same feeling and scale it up. That’s the risk of losing wealth at a national level—the wealth built during the fossil-fuel era, the wealth on which a nation’s livelihood depends.
And now imagine a huge, roaring crowd facing someone wielding a stick, threatening to wipe it all away instantly if they do not comply. A surge of emotions could follow—protective instincts, hostility. There can be no other feeling.
And yet, despite all this, the party still engages in dialogue, and more so, the party still speaks. “Effective emissions reduction can only be achieved through cooperation,” HE Haitham Al Ghais,
OPEC Secretary General wrote in their response to COP30, 19/11/25.
Cooperation — a magic word.
“My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.”
— Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Further to that, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDG) focus on “economic growth.”
Hence, the wealth that has been generated from rent on natural resources—and largely through carbon-intensive activities, a rent on petrochemicals—should be replaced by wealth from alternative sources. This will be sufficient to meet the goals of the Bretton Woods institutional landscape and the economic frameworks they guide, such as the UNSDGs. It is also sufficient to motivate the abandonment of non-sustainable to planet sources of value.
The quest for alternative value, as well as the design of a global institutional framework to distribute that value in a socially fair way—while managing to entice parties to abandon non-sustainable wealth capture—is the next priority.
My academic work with the University of Exeter explains this in detail.
By IONNA TROFIMOVA ELLIOT