COP Climate Summits Have Turned into an Annual Empty Ritual

The foundations of global climate policy are due for reconsideration. International cooperation in this field has been under way for more than thirty years, since the adoption of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992. In 2015, governments signed the Paris Agreement, pledging to keep temperature increases well below 2 degrees Celsius and, ideally, to 1.5. The annual Conferences of the Parties (COPs) were meant to drive this process forward, but on the eve of COP30 in Brazil it has become clear that both the Agreement and the Convention itself are losing relevance and authority.

Over the past decade, countries have produced national emission-reduction plans, devised a system for assessing climate adaptation, and set up a fund to compensate developing states for climate-related loss and damage. Yet the outcomes remain modest: only 67 countries have submitted updated strategies. Brazil, the summit’s host and one of the world’s major oil producers, has weakened environmental safeguards and expanded extraction. The previous two summits took place in Azerbaijan and the UAE, whose economies are likewise built on oil, with negotiations fronted by industry insiders. Meanwhile, Donald Trump has once again withdrawn the United States, the world’s second-largest emitter, from the Paris Agreement and ordered a halt to emissions monitoring, effectively stripping the country of its own enforcement mechanism.

Meanwhile, climate anxiety is only intensifying. Global warming has already exceeded 1.5 degrees, and extreme weather has become routine: Hurricane Melissa, which recently struck the Caribbean, ranked among the most powerful storms ever recorded. Even the UNFCCC secretariat has conceded that “current levels of greenhouse gas pollution guarantee human and economic catastrophe for every country without exception.”

The Paris Agreement has not altered the trend. By fixating on “tonnage management”—the accounting and trading of emission units—it has given governments economic flexibility but delivered little in the way of outcomes. Such a system allows major polluters to carry on largely undisturbed, turning climate diplomacy into an exercise in self-consolation.

The Paris Agreement framework, overseen by the UNFCCC, has failed to tackle the core problem: the world economy’s dependence on carbon. The Convention channels diplomatic efforts into low-impact fixes instead of driving a phase-out of fossil fuels and large-scale investment in green technologies. A genuine shift would require tax and financial reforms involving institutions such as the OECD and the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system. The UNFCCC should be preserved only as a platform for data-sharing and support to developing countries. Real change must come from states prepared to undertake profound economic transformation.

Three decades of climate diplomacy have not delivered the pace of decarbonization needed to avert catastrophe. UNFCCC policy built on carbon offsets and carbon pricing has proved inadequate.

Offsetting allows countries and companies to meet obligations by funding emission-reduction projects elsewhere. Carbon pricing relies on taxes or cap-and-trade systems in which firms purchase allowances. Both are market-based instruments, and both have fallen short. Since 2005, only 16% of offset projects have resulted in genuine emission cuts. Carbon pricing covers 28% of global emissions, but the average carbon price is just $5 per ton against an estimated economic damage of $44 to $525. In practice, the system functions effectively only in the EU, which has built a kind of carbon central bank, while elsewhere it is undermined by political conflict.

Both schemes suffer from structural flaws. Offset developers expand the volume of credits, intermediaries grow their turnover, and buyers hunt for the lowest possible price. Commercial gain inevitably trumps environmental integrity. Emissions trading systems, for their part, have lavished exemptions and free allowances on the biggest polluters—benefits the EU only began phasing out in 2024. So long as the UNFCCC clings to these instruments, most countries will miss their targets, because they leave the core of the problem—fossil fuel extraction—largely untouched.

The UNFCCC process is also littered with unfulfilled pledges. In 2009, wealthy countries vowed to provide $100 billion a year by 2020; they reached that figure late, and only by rebadging existing aid. At the “finance COP,” governments agreed to scale up support to $300 billion a year from 2035, even though developing countries will need at least $1.3 trillion.

There are more effective routes to decarbonization. For the shift to clean energy to materialize, owning carbon-heavy assets must become a liability, and “clean” investment a source of advantage. That moment will come when the clout of oil and gas corporations wanes and the political weight of green industries grows. The way to accelerate it is through tax and investment reform, with the OECD and investment agreements playing the central role.

The starting point is the tax system. Between $7 trillion and $32 trillion in corporate assets are hidden offshore. In 2022, one-third of multinational profits—around $1 trillion—was shifted there to avoid taxation. These schemes entrench the financial power of fossil-fuel asset owners and drain public budgets, especially in developing countries. Repatriating this revenue could provide the means for a green transition.

The most meaningful progress so far has come via the OECD’s proposal for a 15% global minimum corporate tax. The reform has been endorsed by 140 countries, and 65 have already enacted it. The rest must follow suit and close the remaining loopholes. Civil society can push further—for instance, by reviving the idea of a “Zucman tax” on wealth above €100 million.

Taxation is directly bound up with climate policy: the concentration of wealth determines the scale of emissions. According to Oxfam, the richest 0.1% produce more emissions in a single day than the poorest half of humanity does in an entire year. Forcing fossil-fuel owners to pay their share would weaken their grip on power.

A second pillar of reform is overhauling investment protection. Since 1980, more than 2,600 agreements have been signed guaranteeing investors protection from “expropriation and discrimination”. Roughly 20% of all ISDS claims have been brought by fossil-fuel companies; they have won around 40% of those cases, with average awards of $600 million. These mechanisms restrain governments that fear being dragged into costly arbitration. In New Zealand, for example, after a ban on new offshore oil exploration, the authorities refrained from extending restrictions to existing licences for fear of arbitration.

One solution is for states to withdraw from the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), as Bolivia, Honduras, and Venezuela have done, or to strip ISDS provisions from their treaties, as in the 2020 agreement between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. A more limited but effective option is to exclude the fossil-fuel sector from arbitration protection altogether, as India has partially done.

Rolling back investment guarantees would clear the way for a more assertive climate policy: the money states currently pay out to oil and gas corporations could instead become a source of climate finance.

Defenders of the COP process argue that, for all its flaws, it is the only viable forum for dialogue. It is not. We should stop expending political energy and resources on mechanisms that do not deliver and redirect international efforts toward structural economic change. That requires scaling back the role of the UNFCCC. Its functions as an operator of carbon-offset markets are limited, and its annual reports neither enforce accountability nor drive greater ambition.

The Paris Agreement may remain a supplementary channel for adaptation finance, but nothing more. Since 2010, the largest of the UNFCCC’s six financial instruments—the Green Climate Fund—has disbursed around $6 billion, a figure wildly out of step with the needs of developing countries, which require more than a trillion dollars annually.

The UNFCCC should retain only its technical functions: data collection, knowledge and technology sharing, and support in designing climate policies. The current model is no longer built for success. Allowing the status quo to persist—where states barely meet the most modest commitments—reduces the Paris Agreement to a formality. Staying this course will only hasten devastation and magnify the human toll.