In Brazil, battle for a real climate summit includes call to stop deluge of oil/gas/coal lobbyists

The setting could scarcely be more symbolic — the summit of the world’s climate negotiators convenes Monday in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon. Many participants, harking back to past summits, are skeptical much progress will be made despite the desperate need to do so.

And, just as in those past summits, the COP30 conference will be heavily populated with corporate polluters lining themselves up to get the okay for more fossil-fuel extraction and burning as the planet’s carbon budget melts away and numerous nations and corporations retreat from their previous emissions-cutting promises.

The contradictions converge this week in the 409-year-old Belém, the first European colony in the Amazon. The outcome may determine whether this year’s conference is remembered as a turning point or just one more missed moment.

Brazil’s decision to host COP30 in the Amazon was deeply intentional. According to leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, this year’s summit must be the “COP of truth” — no more fine speeches, no more symbolic agreements, just action. The host government has emphasized implementation over negotiation, organizing thematic “axes” around forests, oceans, industry, transport, social justice, and technical enablers. In theory, the message is clear: the era of fluff is over. The summit is to be oriented toward follow-through. Sounds encouraging, no? After all, Lula has been the only Brazilian president to take deforestation seriously, so maybe he can also be the catalyst for climate follow-through now and after COP adjourns two weeks down the road.

But, no surprise, the rhetoric of action collides head-on with the reality of entrenched power. One of the most sobering stories emerged just ahead of COP30. Between 2021 and 2024, more than 5,000 fossil-fuel lobbyists representing 180 oil, gas, and coal companies gained better access to U.N. climate summits than many countries did. According to the new analysis, just 90 of those companies produced 57% of global oil and gas in 2024 — and are responsible for nearly two-thirds of planned short-term expansions. If executed, these new drilling projects would unlock roughly 165 billion additional barrels of oil — more than five years of current global consumption — a staggering commitment to planetary self-sabotage spurred by their unbendable commitment to the bottom line.

The social justice Members of the International Network for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR-Net) are urging…

... governments to decolonize climate action and centering solutions led by Indigenous Peoples, women, workers, and other frontline communities. These peoples-led alternatives already exist—but they continue to be sidelined by corporate capture, greenwashing, and the same colonial systems that fuel the crisis.

At COP29 in Baku, 1,773 fossil-fuel lobbyists were granted access—more than the delegations of nearly every country. Emissions continued to rise while frontline communities, especially in the Global South, faced displacement from extractive “green” projects prioritizing profit over people.

Corporate capture has turned the UN climate talks into a marketplace for carbon offsets, debt swaps, and geo-engineering schemes. Meanwhile, the same global systems of extraction and unpaid care that enriched the North continue to shape climate policy and finance.

COP30 is a test: will governments side with peoples’ solutions or with polluters.

It is precisely this dissonance — a summit meant to pivot toward action while the fossil-fuel sector expands — that threatens to undermine COP30’s credibility. The Brazilian agenda itself is uneven. For instance, while forests are front and center, Brazil simultaneously supports oil exploration near the Amazon delta.

COP30’s call to shift from negotiation to implementation is ambitious and overdue. After decades of annual conferences featuring declarations, promises, and gentle nudges, many voices in the climate community argue that this summit must deliver measurable progress or future summits should be abandoned. (That is actually has been a theme of critics after several previous COP summits.) Brazil steps into this with mutirão — a term derived from Indigenous practice meaning collective communal work — to suggest a new paradigm of shared effort, not just diplomatic one-upmanship. But shifting from symbolism to substance will demand political will, credible finance, transparent rules, and most importantly, a power shift away from fossil-fuel incumbents.

The 197 signatories of the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015 agreed to present Nationally Determined Contributions on emissions cuts that align with the goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F) above the preindustrial age. These were to be updated every five years. But this year fewer than one-third of the world’s nations submitted updated NDCs by the September 30 deadline. And, as scientists just told us in yet another disappointing report that I wrote about here, we’re headed for 2.6°-2.8°C (4.78°-5.04°F) of warming by century’s end without quicker, deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

So while the world waits for consensus, the fossil-fuel industry is not knocking politely. It remains a favored participant deeply inside the COP process, leveraging its networks, expanding infrastructure, and treating the emissions of fossil fuels as if the impacts of greenhouse gases and other death-dealing pollutants are scientific fantasy.

So what will determine success in Belém?

First: clear outcomes. Not only new pledges but also binding frameworks for a just transition, financial flows, fossil-fuel phase-out, and protection of the natural world, not least because the evil twin of the climate crisis is the biodiversity crisis that is wiping out species on a daily basis.

Second: equity. (Yes, I know that’s a dirty word in some quarters these days.) The Global South cannot foot the bill for dealing with climate impacts they had little to do with causing or exacerbating. Wealthy nations that have contributed the most to climate impacts must deliver fr more money and support structural change than has so far been the case. For instance, Lula and Brazil’s environment minister talk of redirecting oil revenues toward the green transition.

Third: institutional reform. There’s talk about cutting through U.N. stasis, about reforming decision-making in climate governance. The system must evolve or the “action” rhetoric will ring hollow. Because action without confrontation is capitulation. A serious COP of action would begin with three immediate moves:

A binding fossil-fuel non-proliferation treaty, negotiated not as an aspirational declaration but as enforceable international law.
A permanent firewall between U.N. climate talks and the fossil-fuel industry, banning lobbyists from accreditation just as tobacco lobbyists were once barred from public-health negotiations.
Mandatory climate-finance transfers from the Global North to the Global South — not charity, but reparations — with fixed percentages of GDP directed toward adaptation, loss-and-damage funds, and renewable build-out.

Think that list is outside the realm of possibility? Who can argue that the possibilities of success on that front are not so great? It’s true that what Lula has been saying sounds the right notes.
But there remains a serious risk of COP30 ending up just another frustrating choreography of delay. However, if a solid cohort of participants employ the collective work of mutirão together with a confrontation of corporate power and rich-nation complacency, the summit might mark a turning point. If not, we will have witnessed yet another instance when leaders talked glibly of saving the forest even as they keeping lighting matches.

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