How are climate change summits similar to the Mexican Soccer Team? That no matter how low expectations are, they always disappoint. In Paris in 2015, the goal of limiting the increase in the planet’s temperature compared to pre-industrial levels to 1.5 degrees Celsius was set. Ten years later, at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, it became clear that it will not be achieved. The Global Environment Summit is about to end and there is nothing to celebrate, after two weeks of meetings between representatives of 189 countries.
Many reasons to get busy and worry. There is a real possibility that the increase will reach 3 degrees by 2050, warns António Guterres, Secretary General of the UN. The emissions reduction commitments expressed in national plans are insufficient and are equivalent to less than a third of what is needed, according to Guterres.
If 1.5 cannot be maintained and we reach increases of 3 degrees, we will have to prepare for a scenario where there will be extreme heat waves, increasingly intense storms, droughts, fires and floods. These phenomena will complicate food production, cause forced migrations and exacerbate some of the current geopolitical tensions.
Mitigation and adaptation. More and more we will use those words. The world will need approximately $310 billion annually to adapt to climate impacts, but current spending on adaptation amounts to only $26 billion annually, according to the United Nations Environment Program’s Adaptation Gap Report 2025.
How to adapt to a scenario that will increase social tensions? The climate crisis is a machine that worsens poverty and inequality, says Marcio Astrini, director of the Climate Observatory, a network of environmental organizations in Brazil. Climate change does not affect everyone equally and, in that sense, we must go beyond economic policy and social policy to prevent the number of victims of climate deterioration from growing. The most vulnerable are low-income people, children, the elderly and indigenous communities.
What changed between Paris 2015 and 2025? The environmental agenda lost weight among the political class and became less relevant in government programs and the proposals of political parties, but it was increasingly integrated into the business plans of companies. “Solving big sustainability issues is big business,” Matthias Berninger, vice president of Public Affairs, Science and Sustainability at Bayer, told me three months ago. He complemented his reflection with a warning: “There are companies that will not be here in 10 years if they ignore climate change.”
Who said crisis? According to the World Economic Forum, the global market for green technologies has quadrupled since 2015, exceeding $700 billion annually. This market includes solar photovoltaics, wind turbines, electric vehicles and batteries, demonstrating the commercial viability of the climate economy.
The failure of COP30 in Brazil is a confirmation of the crisis that multilateralism is experiencing: there is no will or capacity to reach agreements to resolve the most relevant issues on a global scale. The summit did not reach consensus to achieve a roadmap with clear commitments to end the use of fossil fuels.
There was also no significant progress in defining specific mechanisms for transferring resources to poor or developing countries. There is not enough money to preserve vulnerable ecosystems like rainforests or mangroves; nor to accelerate the energy transition or to support the most affected communities.
How will Mexico experience the failure of COP30? We are one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change. The big question is: will the Government redouble its efforts to compensate for what it failed to do during the last six-year term and turn Mexico into a global reference for good practices or will it relax, with the pretext that other places are worse or that ecology does not appear in the surveys?
