COP30 Dispatch

What Congress Needs to Know from Brazil

Today, the COP30 Presidency is putting the spotlight on the intersection of public health and climate adaptation. The new Belém Health Action Plan has been endorsed by more than 80 countries and international partners, and a new Climate and Health Funders Coalition announced $300 million to support the plan’s implementation.

Negotiators are still working through technical discussions, and at the same time, the COP30 Presidency has announced pairs of ministers who will assist in elevating and moving forward key issues. Ministers from the Gambia and Germany are taking the lead on the Global Goal on Adaptation, while Kenya and the UK will lead on finance and Chile and Sweden take the reins on gender. For detailed updates on the negotiations, see the Earth Negotiations Bulletin’s daily reports and quick highlights.

EESI’s trackers are up and running. To see key updates we have shared in this newsletter organized by subject area, check out our COP30 Announcement Tracker. And if you are curious about which U.S. leaders have made the trip to Brazil, here is our latest list. So far, we have noted three governors and 24 mayors—if we omitted someone from our list, please let us know!

Missed yesterday’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 world has 170 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions remaining before hitting 1.5°C (2.7°F), a “carbon budget” that will be met before 2030 unless countries scale up mitigation efforts. (Around the World)
The new Food Waste Breakthrough enlists cities and food businesses to halve food waste by 2030. (Around the World)
Across Latin America and the Caribbean, 41% of the population and 37.5% of emergency hospitals are located in medium- to high- natural hazard zones. (Around the World)

U.S. Updates

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore with Deborah Gordon, senior principal of climate intelligence at RMI (and EESI Advisory Board member), at a Climate TRACE event. | Courtesy: Deborah Gordon via LinkedIn.

Put Me In, Coach: State and local leaders convened for a press conference on how the U.S. is moving forward on climate action despite opposition from the federal government. Panelists rattled off laundry lists of initiatives already in place. California achieved 70% renewable energy generation (and is now working towards 85%) and has more electric vehicle charging stations than gas stations. The state’s bay area recently saw the passage of a regulation to improve regional public health by banning new gas-powered space and water heaters, and is now leading the GeoZone Initiative to deploy 600 megawatts of next-generation geothermal energy. And the Blue Lake Rancheria in northern California has continued to pursue energy resilience efforts through a microgrid project, despite losses in federal funding. In Hawai’i, a virtual power plant program has removed the need for a coal power plant, and the island of Moloka‘i has reforested one-third of its forests lost to ranching. Maine deployed the country’s first floating offshore wind turbine with support from California universities, and is building greenhouses to bolster agricultural climate resilience.
- EESI Podcast: “Smaller Scale, Greater Impact: Subnational Climate Diplomacy at COP30”

Order in the Court: A U.S. Climate Action Network (USCAN) event highlighted grassroots efforts to build climate resilience and combat the fossil fuel industry. A Center for Biological Diversity attorney explained recent victories in U.S. courts—from the blocking of $15 billion in federal fossil fuel investments in Puerto Rico to the New Mexico Supreme Court taking up a challenge by Indigenous tribes against fossil fuel companies regarding the tribes’ constitutional right to clean water.

California’s Got the Conch: At an America Is All In event held on Tuesday, California Governor Gavin Newsom spoke on the tug-of-war between the need for consistency in diplomacy and the political changes inherent to democracy, urging people to “think about the United States bottom-up, not top-down.” On depoliticizing climate change, he opined, “We have to talk in terms that people understand. You don’t have to believe in science, you have to believe your own eyes,” and he pointed to the Los Angeles wildfires in January. “I talk about financial risk in relation to climate risk. I talk about the insurance crisis in the [U.S.], and you can’t build a home, let alone buy a home, without insurance. That connects all of us to this issue.”
- EESI Briefing: Risky Business: Insurance in the Era of Climate Change

Around the World

Participants stretching during the launch event of the COP30 Presidency’s health plan. | Credit: UN Climate Change - Kiara Worth via Flickr.

Over Budget: The Global Carbon Project launched the 20th edition of its annual Global Carbon Budget report, which quantifies the carbon emission reductions needed to avoid 1.5°C (2.7°F) of warming, as well as annual carbon emissions by country and fossil fuel source and the planet’s natural capacity to absorb these emissions. The 2025 report calculated that the world has 170 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions remaining before hitting 1.5°C, a “carbon budget” that will be met before 2030 unless countries scale up mitigation efforts. On emissions by source, it projected a 0.8% increase in coal-related emissions for 2025, a 1% increase in oil-related emissions, and a 1.3% increase in natural gas emissions. The report also found that climate change has weakened the carbon sequestration capacity of land and oceans, which currently absorb 50% of carbon. In better news, 35 countries have successfully reduced emissions while growing their economies, and global emissions from both land use and cars decreased in 2024.

Healthy Planet, Healthy People: A health and climate ministerial meeting served as the official launch of the Belém Health Action Plan for the Adaptation of the Health Sector to Climate Change, which was designed collaboratively with civil society, international organizations, academia, and countries. As climate impacts increase in severity, health systems must be able to adapt to address the health risks that grow in parallel. The health action plan—the Brazil Presidency’s effort to connect the Global Goal on Adaptation to the resilient health systems objective of the COP30 Action Agenda—outlines 27 targets and 33 concrete actions for authorities and health services across all levels of government to adopt over the next decade. The recommendations, ranging from early warning systems to strategic medicine stockpiles, are underpinned by principles of health equity and the inclusion of civil society in governance. Brazil Health Minister Alexandre Padilha also foreshadowed the launch of two special reports on health and climate change at COP30, expected tomorrow.
- EESI Topic Page: Public Health

Breaking Through Food Waste: A UN Environment Programme (UNEP) event saw the launch of the Food Waste Breakthrough. One third of humanity suffers from food insecurity, and yet over one billion tons of food is wasted from retail, food service, and households every year. This waste, in turn, generates up to 14% of total methane emissions. The Breakthrough is a five-year plan enlisting cities and food businesses to halve food waste through consumer behavior change, public-private partnerships, circular food systems, and food waste deterrence policies. It will also build on the efforts of two existing UNFCCC declarations: the COP28 UAE Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems, and Climate Action, and the COP29 Declaration on Reducing Methane from Organic Waste. UNEP is serving up implementation of the Food Waste Breakthrough with a four-year project funded by the Global Environment Facility to the tune of $3 million.
- EESI Briefing: Reducing Emissions by Reducing Food Waste

Now You Know: The new report, Resilience Science Must-Knows, distills decades of research and inputs from over 100 resilience scientists into nine takeaways for decision-makers. At the Resilience Hub launch event, speakers underscored that investing in resilience is a cost-saving strategy. They also noted that taking a close look at resilience trade-offs will lead to stronger policies. Building from the report, the Stockholm Resilience Centre and its partners are focused on embedding these “must-knows” in climate philanthropy and using them to help inform national adaptation plans.

Climate Disinformation (Cont.): Yesterday’s newsletter featured the COP30 Presidency’s information integrity theme. A new study looking at climate disinformation spread through the mainstream media in France and Brazil uncovered 19 different disinformation narratives circulating in France from January to August 2025, the top six being about renewable energy. In Brazil, most climate disinformation was about agriculture, deforestation, electric vehicles, ethanol, and COP30 itself. Separate from the report, Brazil is taking steps to address this challenge, including by starting the first national chapter of the Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change, while France is leading on the Paris Declaration on Multilateral Action for Information Integrity and Independent Media.

Climate and Development: The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs assesses the intersection of climate action and the sustainable development goals. This year, they released reports on conservation, disaster insurance, and public health in urban areas. The insurance report found that 62% of global losses from disasters are uninsured, and references microinsurance and parametric insurance as possible mechanisms to expand coverage.
- EESI Briefing: Risky Business: Insurance in the Era of Climate Change

Financing Resilience: At a high-level event, Ilan Goldfajn, president of the Inter-American Development Bank, shared that multilateral development banks are joining forces to improve their work at the intersection of climate and health, with a specific focus on adaptation. He said that the collaboration has four goals: to increase financing for resilience, make financing transparent to encourage private sector engagement, support countries in integrating resilience into their budgets, and innovate with financing tools like debt-for-nature swaps and resilience bonds.

Bridging Solutions for Latin American and Caribbean Cities: ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability and KfW, the German development bank, launched ProUrbano at the COP30 Cities & Regions Hub on Wednesday to expand on their collaborative urban resilience finance program in Latin America and the Caribbean. ProUrbano will establish a link between two existing instruments, the Urban Infrastructure Insurance Facility and the Urban Adaptation Financing Facility. By connecting disaster risk insurance with adaptation finance, this new program will streamline climate resilience for cities across the region with a budget of about $68 million through 2030.

Putting Demographic Intelligence on the Map: Also looking at resilience in Latin America and the Caribbean, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and partners found that 41% of the region’s population and 37.5% of its emergency hospitals are located in medium- to high-hazard zones. The report mapped exposure to the major natural hazards in the region, including earthquakes, hurricane-force winds, and riverine floods. Susana Sottoli, UNFPA’s regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, stated, “When development investments are not risk-informed, they can inadvertently reinforce vulnerabilities and increase long-term costs.” Women, for example, face heightened barriers to accessing contraception, maternal healthcare, and gender-based violence protection during climate disasters.

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
COP30 Announcement Tracker: Key Announcements from the 2025 UN Climate Summit. Also, check out this article with updates on past COP announcements.
U.S. Leaders at COP30: Updates on Members of Congress and other U.S. Officials at the 2025 UN Climate Summit
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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