The road to COP30 is paved with people power, and we’re already moving

The good news is that despite US attempts to rollback climate progress, Ministers held steadfast in their commitment to the 1.5 degree limit to global heating enshrined in the Paris Agreement, and underlined the need to not only uphold multilateral cooperation, but strengthen it. This sets the stage for COP30 to be the turning point when governments finally start turning climate promises into serious climate action.

The bad news is that the gaps between words and action remain enormous. Climate financing for the Global South has increased, but remains $1 trillion short of what’s needed annually. The current climate policies of all countries combined would only produce a 2% reduction in emissions by 2030, even if fully implemented. That’s far short of the 43% drop needed to hold the line on 1.5 degrees and stave off full-blown climate catastrophe.

“COPs don’t begin when the conference doors open, but long before”, COP30’s CEO Ana Toni has emphasized. The most crucial milestones this year are the updated national climate plans (Nationally Determined Contributions) that all parties to the UN climate convention have to submit every five years. To date, only a handful of countries have released new NDCs. But 350’s analysis of the plans so far submitted shows encouraging momentum on the desperately needed shift from polluting fossil power to clean energy.

Of 19 newly updated NDCs, 16 adopt the goal of tripling renewable energy capacity that was agreed two years ago at COP28. And a dozen include concrete targets that are aligned with meeting or exceeding the 3x goal by 2030. A few countries are even ahead of schedule!

With 178 national climate plans still to play for, we all have a part to play in raising our leaders’ ambitions. 350.org is working with hundreds of community groups, youth leaders and indigenous associations around the world who are literally taking the power into their own hands. Rather than waiting for politicians to act, they are starting a clean energy revolution from the bottom up, starting with decentralized solar and mini-hydro solutions that put affordable and reliable power into the hands of marginalized communities.

From April 13 to April 17 in Brazil, 350.org and partners will bring together over 200 of these community leaders from 70 countries to share skills and strategies and build a global movement for a just energy transition. As civil society, this is our collective contribution to the spirit of “mutirão” advocated by Brazilian COP President Andréa Corrêa do Lago as a guiding principle for climate action: coming together as a community on a shared task, with empathy, understanding and togetherness.–And, by showing what can be done even in some of the most under-resourced communities in the world, we aim to ramp up the pressure on leaders to turn their COP promises into reality by implementing renewable energy at scale and speed.

Thanks to current geopolitics, the road to this year’s COP will be an undeniably rocky one, but it could end in a surprisingly positive place. More and more communities, businesses, investors and politicians are catching on to the fact that we can trade expensive, risky and polluting fossil energy for affordable clean power that is locally produced and controlled. The COP goal of tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030 is well within our reach. Let’s make sure that our leaders do not squander this precious opportunity.

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