It was a curious way to conduct negotiations. Ahead of the 2025 climate summit in the Amazonian port of Belém, Brazil's hosts simply removed from the table the issue everyone assumed would be at its heart: concrete national plans laying out exactly how each country would cut its greenhouse gas emissions. Brazil insisted these plans - the bedrock of the Paris agreement - were the business of national governments, not something up for negotiation. "In that case, it will be a very short Cop," one seasoned global south negotiator told the Guardian beforehand, reflecting widespread unease. "There is nothing to negotiate." Another developing-country diplomat put it bluntly: "They have decided that there is no appetite for negotiation, with the US out of Paris. Countries won't engage."
The summit ended with a deal, though few loved it. But as the faultlines from Brazil's decision deepen going into this year's summit, it's clear the Paris agreement - and climate action worldwide - has reached an impasse. And it isn't just Cop insiders worrying. For many outside those vast white air-conditioned conference halls, the question as this year's summit begins is simply: what is the point?
The same governments have pledged year after year since Paris was signed in 2015 - and entered into force a year later - to limit global heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels. Yet temperatures have exceeded that threshold for two years running, and the UN revealed a few weeks ago that its most optimistic estimate is now about 1.7 to 1.8C of heating. There could be no clearer evidence that Paris, on the face of it, has failed. It's impossible not to wonder whether the Cop process itself is simply not fit for purpose.
The charge sheet against Paris is long, with the central issue being the failure to hit its goal. Beyond that, the negotiation processes are endlessly convoluted and generate their own problems - it took more than five years just to negotiate the Paris "rulebook" under which the treaty is interpreted and put into effect. The convention that all resolutions must pass by consensus has given bad actors free rein; Donald Trump's allies in Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela and other petrostates frequently veto measures and obstruct progress.
It took more than 30 years of negotiation since the UN framework convention on climate change was signed in 1992 for fossil fuels even to be addressed directly - at Cop28 in Dubai in 2023, where countries agreed for the first time to "transition away from fossil fuels" but set no timeframe and no policies to back it up. The US, the world's biggest economy and responsible for about one in every eight tonnes of CO2 emitted today, has withdrawn from Paris under President Trump.
Even parts of the developed world that support the process have mostly failed to produce convincing plans. Australia, co-host of Cop31, has set no end date for fossil fuel exports; its fellow co-host Turkey plans to increase its carbon output. The UK is opening a gasfield and mulling a new oilfield. Germany has dropped its electric vehicle sales targets and scrapped a renewable heating law. Meanwhile, most rich countries are reducing their climate finance contributions to the poor.
Most of all, the slow pace of the Paris timetable might have seemed fine in 2015, when temperatures were rising at 0.2C a decade. Today the rate of rise is 0.4C a decade and still accelerating. "The structures of Cops and Paris are labyrinthine, bureaucratic, and ultimately dispiriting," said Paul Bledsoe, a former Clinton White House climate adviser now with American University. "It may be time to streamline them to focus more deliberately on national emissions reduction goals."
As ordinary people watch these failures inside and outside the process, some are losing faith. Paris was a sensation, celebrated around the world; since then the aura of Cop has faded as meetings disintegrate into arguments over wording and compromise. "A lot of the commitments, the promises that were made, just turned out to be a bunch of hot air," said Juan Carlos Monterrey, former climate envoy for Panama and now chief executive of the Vanglabs consultancy. "Under that measure, we have failed."
Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, was blunter still: "The fact that global warming is accelerating, that we inevitably will be breaching the 1.5C limit within three to five years, that tipping points are coming closer fast, that Earth's resilience is showing worrying signs of decline, and that we still allow ourselves to follow a global path that will take us to a catastrophic 2.6C-3C, and that this is allowed to happen within the framework of the Paris agreement, cannot be considered as anything but a global failure."
But like most involved in international climate efforts, both refuse to concede Paris is done for. "On the other hand," said Rockström, "Paris is all we have. And we know that the global climate crisis can only, in the end, be solved if all countries in the world simultaneously move away from planet-damaging heat injection." Monterrey agrees: the most important fact about Paris and the Cop process, he says, is that they exist. "Paris is our moral compass. It has told us where we should go. The speed of travel is not what it needs to be, but Paris has set the direction."
This year's Cop is the first with a split presidency and host - held in Turkey but presided over by Australia, a messy compromise between two countries whose other chief point of commonality is an admiration for coal. Unexpectedly, however, the skies look a little brighter than anyone might have expected. Brazil has decisively re-elected Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has already overseen the biggest reductions in deforestation for decades. The US midterms delivered a drubbing for the right, and in Serbia and Hungary democracy has won out over authoritarianism this year. The far right is still on the march across much of Europe, and autocrats still rule most countries with the biggest fossil fuel industries and highest emissions - but the replacement or weakening of anti-climate authoritarians by pro-climate parties is a positive sign. Globally, a large majority of people support climate action.
Action beyond the Cop framework is marching on. After last year's Cop30 in Brazil failed to provide a strong statement on phasing out fossil fuels, a group of nearly 60 countries held an alternative meeting in Colombia in April and agreed to draw up their own national roadmaps for the "transition away from fossil fuels." Three major countries have done so: France, Germany and the Netherlands. Bledsoe wants to use this model for more side agreements on "super pollutants" such as methane, refrigerant chemicals called HFCs, ground-level ozone, nitrous oxide and black carbon, or soot. Cutting methane by 40% could alone hold down temperatures by about 0.3C in the next decade, and deeper cuts beyond that could yield a 0.5C decrease by 2100. "Paris was never intended to do all the hard work itself," Bledsoe said. "We need to use the G7, the G20 and other forums too, and we need to elevate the climate to the level of national security concern, and see it as an economic threat."
While Paris's failures may seem obvious, its "moral compass" has also translated into more real-world success than many realise. "The solar panels on my roof and the BYD Dolphin [electric car] my neighbour drives are exhibit one and exhibit two of Paris's success," said Claudio Angelo of the Observatório do Clima thinktank. "Will Paris prevent overshoot of 1.5C? No way. Will it prevent 2C of warming? Unlikely. But the transformation it has triggered can't be exaggerated."
Perhaps the clinching argument lies in China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and second-largest economy. "China is taking multilateral climate efforts more seriously than many other countries, and certainly more seriously than it did a few years ago," said Li Shuo, director of the China climate hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute. "The reason is simple: its economic stakes have grown enormously. If the world abandons decarbonisation, where will China sell its solar panels and electric vehicles?"
Stung by high fossil fuel prices, many developing-country consumers are grasping clean technology without waiting for assistance. In Pakistan, plagued by blackouts and grid supply issues, rooftop solar now makes up about a quarter of electricity use. In Vietnam, drivers are increasingly opting for cheap Chinese electric vehicles, which now account for more than 40% of car sales.
Meanwhile, the conference hosts themselves, from unpromising beginnings, have brought forward one of the biggest new ideas in a decade for getting the world on track: changing fuel sources for cars and heating to electricity - ideally from clean sources, but so efficient that even fossil-based power uses less. Jan Rosenow, professor of energy and climate policy at Oxford University, estimates that electricity's superior efficiency over fossil fuels means total final energy use can be halved by switching everything to electric - meaning we need to generate a lot less, too. If countries agree at Cop31 to a target of 35% of final energy use from electricity by 2035, up from 23% today, that would be a major boost. Adair Turner, former chair of the UK's climate change committee and now co-chair of the Energy Transitions Commission, said: "Electrification is the single most important thing you have to do [to reach net zero emissions]."
Cops provide a place where countries can share experiences, seek advice, and find support and fellowship. "That's very valuable," said Ilana Seid, ambassador of Palau and chair of the Pacific Small Island Developing States. And in a world where the bulk of current and future emissions and fossil fuel production comes from non-democracies or authoritarian states, Cops provide one of the few forums where they can be held to account. That "societal pressure" is crucial, said Seid. "We small islands and vulnerable nations are on the frontline. For us, this is existential. We are all very committed to Paris."
After all, the power of a Cop decision should not be underestimated. While "coalitions of the willing" are a "good thing" according to economist Nick Stern, the universality of Paris and Cops gives them unique authority. Sue Biniaz, a former US climate negotiator, said: "Any time you have a consensus decision, it sends a signal to investors, to people who finance things, and to countries. I think that's true these days with the geopolitics of the world - if something can be agreed by the whole world, it's impactful."
Cop31 may bring progress on electrification, climate finance and the low-carbon transition rich and poor countries alike need to make. But we already know that whatever the summit produces, it will not be enough. However flawed yet substantive, Cops last only a fortnight, while tackling the climate crisis will require such wholesale transformation of our economies and societies that it should top governments' agendas all year. As one voice from the frontline put it: "Imagine you have lost your loved one without having their bodies to bring back home. Lost livelihood where you spent your whole life to accumulate..."