Energy & Climate
A fair COP
Publishing COP30 host country agreement with Brazil is a ‘positive step for transparency’.
21 October 2025
This article first appeared in our COP30 special issue of My Green Pod Magazine. Click here to subscribe to our digital edition and get each issue delivered straight to your inbox
This November the world’s eyes will be on Brazil as COP30, the 30th UN Climate Conference, unfolds in Belém – an Amazon gateway city that is surrounded by lush forests and teeming with life.
Yet even before the summit kicks off, the scars of controversy surrounding COP30 are already all too vivid.
To be precise, a new four-lane highway has been specially built for the event, slicing through tens of thousands of acres of protected rainforest to accommodate over 50,000 attendees who will be flying in to descend on the city and save the planet.
This highway, Avenida Liberdade, embodies a bitter paradox: a vital virgin rainforest has been cleared to host a climate summit aimed at, among other things, saving that very forest.
The state of Pará has denied that the highway construction is directly linked to the COP30 event, and says the project was planned years before Belém was selected as the host city.
The irony that this makes it OK is palpable – why build this road at all? – yet the destruction has largely gone unnoticed and unmourned.
Such is our appetite for attending events, conferences, summits and meetings that are aimed at discussing how we can limit human-inflicted damage to the planet we all call home.
This moment truly does feel make or break – not just for the planet’s health, but for the credibility of the climate movement itself.
World leaders, science experts and CEOs will gather to negotiate emissions cuts, champion renewable energy, defend global forests and shout climate justice from the rooftop.
But amidst this cast of powerful players stands another crucial group: the army of NGOs and charities who claim to represent the public in this fight. They too must be held accountable.
Month after month, event after event, the same faces circulate – and the same three-letter abbreviated organisations show up at every single Climate Week event in the calendar.
Not a month goes by without some new ‘happening’ that requires everyone to board a plane and set off to save the world.
But what is all this talking and showing up actually achieving? Where is their funding going? How do their countless appearances, including at COP30, translate into real impact?
Sometimes it is hard to see the wood for the trees and we need to remind ourselves of the real wins that break through; when civil society is laser- focused and result-driven, it can still drive change.
In a landmark victory in 2021 Dutch environmental organisations, including Friends of the Earth Netherlands and Greenpeace, won a court ruling that held the oil giant Shell legally responsible for its contribution to climate damage.
For the first time, a fossil fuel company was ordered to reduce its carbon emissions drastically – in this case by 45% by 2030 – in alignment with the global goal to limit warming to 1.5°C.
In November 2024, the Court of Appeal of The Hague overturned this landmark decision, rejecting the specific 45% reduction order.
While the Court reaffirmed that Shell has a duty of care to reduce emissions to mitigate climate change, it decided that Shell should decide how to meet this responsibility without a mandated and binding percentage cut.
Friends of the Earth and other plaintiffs have since appealed to the Dutch Supreme Court, with a final ruling expected in 2026.
While not a clear-cut win or the perfect victory many had wished for, this case set a powerful legal precedent that fossil fuel companies can be held accountable in court for their contributions to climate change.
Another success, again in 2021, saw the cancellation of the Keystone XL oil pipeline project by Canadian company TC Energy.
Relentless opposition, led by Indigenous communities and allied environmental NGOs, saw the project scrapped.
This massive fossil fuel infrastructure, projected to transport tar sands oil from Alberta to the US Gulf Coast, posed grave risks for climate emissions, land destruction and Indigenous rights.
Community leaders at the forefront of resistance organised grassroots campaigns, legal challenges and public awareness efforts, and NGOs helped to amplify their stories.
This united effort highlighted the intersection of Indigenous sovereignty and social justice with wider environmental causes.
The eventual cancellation of the pipeline marked a rare but powerful win against entrenched fossil fuel interests.
Since returning to office in January 2025, President Donald Trump has taken steps to reopen the pipeline project, promising the regulatory approvals required for it to go ahead.
But the original developer has stated it has moved on from the project and is not interested in restarting it.
Much of the previously built pipeline has been dismantled, permits have expired and significant legal and financial hurdles remain for anyone interested in restarting construction.
EARTHDAY.ORG (EDO)’s own Great Global Cleanup Campaign invites everyone to volunteer to clean up their own community, and its long-running Canopy Tree Project is a pragmatic, community-led solution to a real problem: planting trees to address deforestation.
Since 2010, the project has seen hundreds of millions of trees planted in Bangladesh, India, Madagascar, Mexico, South Africa and Uganda, targeting the regions most impacted by climate change and deforestation.
In the Sundarbans of India, EDO’s efforts focus on planting trees to enrich and protect the mangroves.
Local people on the ground, funded by donations sent to EDO, plant Avicennia alba (black mangrove), which thrives at a lower substrate level and can withstand up to 5.5 hours of saline water submergence per day.
The heartwood of the black mangrove is used as a herbal medicine and its seeds are eaten as a vegetable.
This incredible tree has lateral root systems that grow up and out of the muddy saline water; this allows them to take in oxygen for the submerged root systems, forming a natural flood barrier that substantially lowers tidal currents and stabilises soil erosion.
Like all trees, black mangroves absorb carbon dioxide, the key greenhouse gas, from the atmosphere and store it, making these mangrove forests important carbon sinks.
So these incredible trees help to fight climate change while minimising flooding, providing important habitats for endangered species, providing herbal medicines and helping to feed communities.
These are three real-world examples that illustrate how NGOs have gained ground or made pragmatic steps to right wrongs. But more needs to be done.
To that end, perhaps it’s time for environmental groups to ask themselves where their efforts will have maximum impact.
Flying delegations thousands of miles in oil-guzzling, greenhouse gas emitting planes – often to stay in fancy resorts that use up natural resources – to spend a good part of their time speaking into their own echo chamber, might not be the best use of time and funding.
Marching and demanding action might serve us better, as Break Free From Plastics discovered when it activated the people of Ottawa to make their feelings known and demand a strong Global Plastics Treaty.
Negotiations may have collapsed, but the fight to secure a treaty continues.
It’s increasingly worrying when instead, we see major NGOs simply attending every conceivable event, speaking on panels and sitting with the very companies driving climate change to begin with.
They appear to be there not so much to find common ground and bring their influence to bear in changing corporate behaviour, but to be part of the ‘climate change circus’.
It’s as if ‘being there’ is an end in itself. It isn’t.
We need our leaders in the charitable and NGO space to drive results, not become an industry in their own right.
If they must go to COP30, go with a clear mission, be focused on driving impact and know that actions always speak louder than words.
Leaders in the environmental movement also need to be more open to listening to new voices and embracing the new breed of emerging leaders, perhaps even stepping aside to let them take the movement forward.
There’s a tendency for the old guard to cling to the past and ‘their’ way of doing things, as if anything not road-tested in the 1960s is unworthy.
We haven’t got time for this sort of posturing – the planet needs actual wins. Now.
The future demands action, not attendance. It’s time for the climate movement to stop talking and start delivering.
Publishing COP30 host country agreement with Brazil is a ‘positive step for transparency’.
His Majesty, The King and His Royal Highness, The Prince of Wales mobilise action for climate and nature.
Over 5,000 women march in Brazil’s capital to defend their territories and the Amazon ahead of COP30.
Political declaration released by ‘Mutirão dos Povos’, a coalition of Indigenous peoples, traditional communities & social movements from across the Amazon.
