COP30 Dispatch

What Congress Needs to Know from Brazil

Welcome back to another issue of COP30 Dispatch. A busy week is wrapping up across Brazil, and the show is really only getting started. In this issue, we catch you up on the COP30 Local Leaders Forum and the World Leaders Climate Action Summit. There is also a wave of reports coming out ahead of COP30 to help delegates understand the state of play of global climate efforts. With the stage set, COP30 will officially open on Monday, which includes Azerbaijan passing the presidency baton to Brazil. If all goes as planned, negotiations should get underway that afternoon.

EESI’s briefing series this week covered an overview of COP30, the status of the Global Cooling Pledge, and the nexus of climate and trade. If you missed any of the briefings, the recordings are now available.

Missed last Friday’s edition? Check it out here.

You can find all EESI’s COP30 resources here. Getting lost in the COP lingo? Check out EESI's glossary of terms and other helpful guides in our Resources section! Looking for more information? Reach out to EESI Policy Director Anna McGinn at [email protected].

Key Takeaways for Congress

The Trump Administration will be absent from COP30, and multiple Congressional delegations have canceled their trips to Brazil due to the government shutdown; meanwhile, 85 city leaders from 26 states will be in attendance. (U.S. Updates)
Heads of State convened in Belém on November 6 and 7 ahead of COP30 for the World Leaders Summit, where many criticized countries that have abandoned their climate commitments. (Around the World)
Seven countries pledged more than $5.5 billion to the new Tropical Forests Forever Facility, which will pay heavily forested developing countries to leave these ecosystems intact. (Around the World)

Negotiations

Delegates line up to enter the COP30 venue ahead of the official start of the negotiations. | Credit: COP.audiovisual via Flickr.

Negotiations Begin Monday: After COP30 officially opens on Monday and countries adopt the agendas, negotiations will get underway. Check out EESI’s What Congress Needs to Know About COP30 briefing series to get up to speed. These primers from the World Resources Institute and the International Institute for Sustainable Development will also get you situated with key issues like the path forward on international climate finance and determining the indicators for the Global Goal on Adaptation. And if you want to dig deep on either of these issues, check out the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s reports on the new collective quantified goal on climate finance and adaptation indicators.

U.S. Updates

Subnational leaders, including many representatives from the U.S., met in Rio de Janeiro in the lead up to COP30. | Credit: COP.audiovisual via Flickr.

Updates from the Hill: Multiple Congressional delegations have canceled their trips to Brazil due to the ongoing government shutdown. The Senate delegation, set to be led by Sens. John Curtis (R-Utah) and Chris Coons (D-Del.), called off its trip earlier this week.

Where in the World is the U.S.: The Trump Administration confirmed that it is not planning on sending top officials to COP30. While other world leaders convene in Belém, U.S. leaders—including Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum—have headed eastbound to Greece for a Partnership for Transatlantic Energy Cooperation summit, which is focused on exports of U.S. natural gas to Greece and other Mediterranean countries.

Subnationals in Brazil: A delegation of over 100 local leaders from the U.S. will demonstrate continued commitment to international cooperation on climate action at the Local Leaders Forum and COP30. The delegation (led by America Is All In, Climate Mayors, and the U.S. Climate Alliance) comprises about 35 mayors and 50 city officials from 26 states.

State of Alliance States: The U.S. Climate Alliance released its 2025 Annual Report at a press conference led by Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers and New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham. The press conference was part of the COP30 Local Leaders Forum taking place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The report highlights collective progress made by member states within the Alliance, including a 24% reduction in net greenhouse gas emissions (from 2005 levels), as well as a 34% increase in gross domestic product.

Glass Half Full for U.S. Climate Mitigation: According to a new report from America Is All In and the University of Maryland’s Center for Global Sustainability, a combination of expanded subnational climate action and restored federal support after 2028 could feasibly result in greenhouse gas emission reductions of up to 56% in the U.S. by 2035 (from 2005 levels). The report stresses that even without federal engagement, subnational leadership alone could still achieve an emissions reduction of 44%.

Around the World

World leaders gathered in Belém ahead of COP30. | Credit: UN Climate Change via Flickr.

World Leaders Climate Action Summit: Heads of State convened in Belém on November 6 and 7 for a preliminary gathering ahead of COP30. Leaders broadly agreed that global climate action is diminishing. In his opening remarks, UN Secretary-General António Guterres criticized countries that have abandoned their climate commitments and “remain captive to… fossil fuel interests.” Leaders from Brazil, Chile, and Colombia echoed this sentiment and urged other leaders not to follow suit. Guterres added that exceeding 1.5°C (2.7°F) of warming is a “moral failure and deadly negligence.”

Roll Call: The World Leaders Summit had only half of the attendance of COP29’s. Leaders from China, the EU, France, the UK, COP29 host Azerbaijan, COP28 host UAE, and Australia and Turkey (both of whom hold competing bids to host COP31) all made opening remarks. The U.S., India, and Russia were notably absent.

New Forest Fund: On the first day of the World Leaders Climate Action Summit, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF). The multilateral fund will pay heavily forested developing countries to leave these ecosystems intact, with 20% of these payments going to Indigenous and local communities. Upon its launch, the TFFF collected endorsements from 53 countries and more than $5.5 billion in pledges, with $3 billion from Norway, $1 billion each from Brazil and Indonesia, $500 million from France, $250 million from Colombia, $5 million from the Netherlands, and $1 million from Portugal, with more pledges expected over the course of COP30.

Local Leaders for Global Action: The COP30 Local Leaders Forum took place on November 3 through 5 in Rio de Janeiro. The COP30 Presidency and Bloomberg Philanthropies co-hosted a series of high-level gatherings that resulted in the release of the Local Leaders Joint Statement on behalf of leaders from more than 14,000 cities, towns, states, regions, and provinces across the globe. The statement presents three commitments in the spirit of “mutirão” (continuous mobilization) to help meet the urgency of climate action this decade: supporting national climate goals by engaging as partners, ensuring a pipeline of over 2,500 bankable local projects, and advancing multilevel action and collaboration to facilitate implementation and accountability within the COP process.
- EESI Podcast: “Keeping U.S. Climate Action Afloat: Subnational Diplomacy on Ocean Acidification”

Award Season: Part of the Local Leaders Forum, the 2025 Local Leaders Climate Awards honored the most ambitious and impactful policies, projects, programs, and partnerships spearheaded by cities, states, and regions. There were two winners for each of the six categories: Energy Transition & Smarter Buildings (Boston and Juiz de Fora, Brazil); Clean, Reliable Transportation (Oslo, Norway, and São Paulo, Brazil); Safer Infrastructure for a Changing World (Beijing, China, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil); Healthy Cities, Strong Communities (Sofia, Bulgaria, and Barcarena, Brazil); Sustainable Waste Solutions (Quezon City, Philippines, and Salvador, Brazil); and Power of Partnership (Scotland and Piauí, Brazil).

A Tale of (More than Two) Cities: The C40 World Mayors Summit, co-hosted by London Mayor and C40 Cities Co-Chair Sadiq Khan and Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes, kicked off the Local Leaders Forum with a gathering of nearly 100 mayors. Kate Johnson, regional director for North America at C40, stated on EESI’s podcast that C40’s main goals for the summit are to give hope that city-level climate action can accelerate progress towards national goals, to inspire confidence among mayors who are facing political headwinds, and to influence momentum at the upcoming negotiations in Belém.
- EESI Podcast: “Smaller Scale, Greater Impact: Subnational Climate Diplomacy at COP30”

Mind the Gap: Each year ahead of COP, the UN Environment Programme publishes the Emissions Gap Report and the Adaptation Gap Report, designed to highlight the difference between climate commitments made and actual progress achieved. The Emissions Gap Report, bluntly titled Off Target, states that keeping warming to under 1.5°C (2.7°F) and 2°C (3.6°F) would require “rapid and unprecedented cuts to greenhouse gas emissions far above what has been pledged.” It adds that in a best-case scenario, warming would be kept to 1.9°C (3.4°F), and emphasizes that the U.S.'s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement is expected to cut progress by about 0.1°C (0.18°F). The Adaptation Gap Report, Running on Empty, found adaptation financing needs of developing countries to be 12 to 14 times greater than current finance flows.

And Another Emissions Report: The new Rhodium Climate Outlook 2025 generally echoes the findings of the Emissions Gap Report, leading with the headline, “although we’ve avoided the most catastrophic projections, the world is on track to exceed 2°C [3.6°F] of temperature rise.” The report details sector-by-sector emissions, highlighting that the industrial sector is responsible for the highest share of emissions globally and is projected to remain in that position through 2050.
- EESI Briefing: How Can We Cut Industrial Emissions?

Green Climate Fund: The Green Climate Fund was established in 2015 by countries under the UNFCCC. In the 10 years since, funding for mitigation and adaptation projects has reached $19.3 billion (up from $145.8 million), and project support has expanded to 134 countries (up from eight countries). Together, these projects have avoided the equivalent of 3.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions. At its most recent meeting last week, the Green Climate Fund board approved a record $3.26 billion for projects in developing countries.
Representation at COPs: A report from the International Institute for Sustainable Development examines the history of Indigenous Peoples’ engagement with and access to the UNFCCC process and that of its two sister conventions, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention to Combat Desertification. The report details how Indigenous knowledge is currently incorporated into the draft indicators for the Global Goal on Adaptation.

Private Sector in São Paulo: The Bloomberg-sponsored COP30 Business and Finance Forum took place in São Paulo, Brazil, earlier this week. Coming out of this event, the We Mean Business Coalition penned a letter to world leaders. The core message is twofold: national governments should commit to high ambition at COP30, and reconsider the way their domestic clean energy finance incentives are written in order to boost private sector investment. The letter specifically calls for redirecting the $1 trillion in annual fossil fuel subsidies to the clean energy transition. The letter’s signatories represent more than 135,000 companies.
- EESI Podcast: “It’s Time for World Leaders to Put Their Subsidies Where Their Climate Goals Are”

Resources

EESI Resources

Briefing series: What Congress Needs to Know About COP30
- What's on the Table for the Negotiations?
- Keeping it Cool: International Efforts to Reduce Emissions from Refrigerants
- International Trade and Climate Policy
Climate Change Solutions: Bi-weekly newsletter covering climate, energy, and environmental issues
EESI's United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Glossary of Terms

Tracking the Negotiations

CarbonBrief: Reporting and analysis on the UN climate talks, with in-depth tracking of country positions in the negotiations
COP30 Resource Hub: World Resources Institute's extensive set of resources on the climate negotiations
Earth Negotiations Bulletin: A play-by-play of the negotiations, plus expert analysis from the International Institute for Sustainable Development
ECO Newsletter: The climate advocate’s perspective from Climate Action Network International
C2ES Newsletter: Daily key takeaways from COP30 experts observing the negotiations
Nature Updates: Nature4Climate brings daily updates on all the nature-based solutions happenings at COP to your inbox

Background and Logistics

Brazil COP30 presidency website: Priorities, details, and logistics for the negotiations from this year’s host country
UNFCCC COP30 website: Conference details and all updates on documents produced during the negotiations
Congressional Research Service: Reports related to the UNFCCC

Questions about COP30?

Reach out to EESI Policy Director Anna McGinn with your questions. We will get back to you or include the information in an upcoming newsletter.

Thanks for reading!

This newsletter covering COP30 will be running from November 7 - November 24.
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Staff contributors: Daniel Bresette, Alison Davis, Laura Gries, Amaury Laporte, Anna McGinn, Nicole Pouy, and Hannah Wilson-Black

About EESI

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit advancing science-based solutions for climate change, energy, and environmental challenges to achieve a sustainable, resilient, and equitable world. Founded on a bipartisan basis by members of Congress, EESI has been informing policymakers about the benefits of energy efficiency, renewable energy, and environmental conservation since 1984.

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