Is climate multilateralism dead in a post aid world?

As we approach the second quarter of the 21st century, lofty affirmations of “peace and prosperity, hope and renewal… unity and connection” echo from international podiums​. Yet these shared values ring hollow against the stark reality of a warming planet and fraying global solidarity. The COP30 President-Designate’s vision letter, brimming with optimism about “deep, rapid, and sustained cooperation”​, arrives at a time when multilateralism is faltering. The truth is hard to ignore: three decades of climate talks have been a mirror of humanity’s “greatest qualities and limitations,” revealing how our politics “should work — and how they do in practice”. Unfortunately, practice has fallen far short of promise.

As climate disasters crescendo worldwide, the mechanisms of global cooperation seem paralyzed. 2024 smashed heat records, becoming the first year above 1.5°C warming​, and with it came droughts, floods, fires and storms of biblical scale. But instead of galvanizing unified action, these crises have exposed the cracks in our international system. We see major powers turning inward or squabbling over blame, while vulnerable nations plead in vain for support. The “cooperation among peoples” that the Brazilian COP30 presidency champions​ has never been more urgently needed — yet it is painfully absent. We stand at a crossroads: either reinvent global solidarity for a post-aid world, or watch climate chaos overwhelm a fractured international order.

Failures of Past COPs and the Old Order

To understand the stakes, we must first confront the failures of the old climate regime. Conference of the Parties (COP) summits have convened for nearly thirty years, but their legacy is mixed at best. Yes, there have been milestones — from Kyoto to Paris — but for every triumph there are countless unmet commitments and broken promises. The President-Designate himself acknowledges the journey of “achievements and shortcomings” in the multilateral climate regime​. Indeed, recent COPs have often ended in frustration, revealing systemic flaws in how we tackle a global threat.

Consider the litany of letdowns: COP26 in Glasgow saw a loss-and-damage fund proposal blocked by wealthy nations, relegating climate compensation to a “dialogue” derided as just another talk shop​. COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh finally established a loss-and-damage fund, but did little to curb fossil fuels. COP28 in Dubai — hosted by an oil executive — trumpeted a deal to “transition away” from fossil fuels, yet its text was riddled with loopholes pleasing petro-states, not the planet​. By COP29 in Baku, the pattern persisted: a new climate finance goal was agreed, but it fell woefully short of what developing countries need. Developed nations pledged to channel “at least” $300 billion a year by 2035 — a tenth of the $3 trillion-plus experts say is required — leaving poorer countries “bitterly disappointed.”​

The final deal conveniently broadened responsibility to “all actors” instead of guaranteeing public finance from rich states, watering down the obligation to deliver the $1.3 trillion per year that vulnerable nations had called for​. In fact, negotiations grew so contentious that the world’s least developed countries and small islands staged a walkout in protest, as a show of disgust at the foot-dragging by big emitters​

Finance is just one flashpoint; the failures are broader. Year after year, critical agendas are punted to future talks. The just transition work program — meant to ensure climate action is fair and inclusive — floundered at COP29 and was kicked down the road to COP30​. Meanwhile, global emissions have continued to rise. The hard truth is that our multilateral COP process often prioritizes consensus over ambition. Any single country can water down outcomes, and often the lowest common denominator wins. This is how climate summits become exercises in diplomatic brinkmanship instead of bold action. It’s how we end up with nicely worded decisions that gloss over the lack of tangible progress. And it’s why, despite dozens of COPs, we are closer to climate catastrophe than to climate safety. The failures of past COPs are not just accidents — they are symptoms of a system that is no longer fit for purpose.

Beyond the climate summits, the broader international aid and governance architecture has also shown its cracks. Traditional development aid was supposed to help countries build resilience and prosperity, but in this era of compounding crises it is faltering. Many in the Global South now speak of a “post-aid” world, where the old paradigm of wealthy donors and grateful recipients is fading. And indeed, wealthy donor countries are pulling back support at the very moment they should be stepping up. Humanitarian aid — a lifeline after climate disasters — is stretched to breaking point: by late 2024, less than 43% of the UN’s appeal for urgent relief had been funded​. The world’s needs hit record highs as “multiplying floods, drought and extreme heat wreaked havoc” across multiple continents​, yet donor fatigue set in.

The result? A growing chasm between promises and reality. Climate-vulnerable nations have “grappled with the slow pace of progress” for decades, watching their pleas for adaptation funds and disaster relief go “largely unmet.”

Even as one climate catastrophe after another strikes — from submerging island states to floods that wipe out years of development — the international response is mostly too little, too late. An analysis by Oxfam shows the funding needed for UN climate disaster appeals has skyrocketed 800% in 20 years, but donors are failing to keep up. In 2023, for the first time in over a decade, humanitarian funding met less than half of identified needs​– and 2024 fared even worse. This is the alarming context of our “post-aid” era: skyrocketing climate impacts, surging needs, and a global aid system that is out of steam. It is a systemic failure of international governance — one that leaves the world’s poorest to face the fiercest storms virtually alone.

Climate Action and Inclusion on the Back Burner

Why are we here? In part because climate action and inclusion have been repeatedly deprioritized on the world stage. When push comes to shove, too many governments treat climate commitments as optional — nice-to-have so long as they don’t conflict with short-term interests. We saw this starkly in recent years. The United States, historically the largest carbon polluter, pulled out of the Paris Agreement under President Trump and slashed funding for global climate efforts, leaving vulnerable communities like those in Malawi even more exposed to climate extremes​. In Europe, leaders talk a good game on climate, but as new security crises emerged, even they shifted focus — pouring resources into defense and fossil fuel substitutes while delaying green transitions​. Around the world, a wave of nationalism and geopolitical tension has made international cooperation unfashionable. Climate change — which demands collective action — often falls by the wayside as nations chase narrower agendas.

Equally troubling is how often inclusion and justice agendas are treated as afterthoughts. Climate change is the great inequality multiplier — those least responsible suffer first and worst. And yet, the voices of those frontline communities are frequently marginalized in decision-making. Look no further than the power imbalances on display at recent climate summits. At COP28 in Dubai, a staggering 2,456 fossil fuel lobbyists swarmed the halls — an “unprecedented presence” — outnumbering the delegates of the 10 most climate-vulnerable countries combined. They also dwarfed the official Indigenous delegation by seven-to-one.

Think about that: the people most affected by climate fallout had a fraction of the representation that oil and gas interests enjoyed. When the petro-industrial complex can field an army of lobbyists larger than entire nations’ delegations, it’s no wonder that final texts get watered down and “oily fingerprints” end up all over our climate agreements​.

The sidelining of inclusion doesn’t stop there. Women and youth, who drive grassroots climate activism, often find their priorities tokenized in outcomes. Funding for programs supporting women and girls remains among the most underfunded in climate aid​.

Just transition for workers, Indigenous land rights, local community adaptation — these are championed in speeches but too rarely backed by binding commitments or adequate resources. Every year there are official gestures — a gender action plan here, an Indigenous peoples dialogue there — but the power structures remain fundamentally unchanged. Decision-making stays top-down and dominated by the big emitters and big donors. The result is policies that fail to center the people on the ground. Inclusion is treated as a box to tick, rather than the guiding principle of climate action that it must be.

In short, climate action has been continually compromised by narrow interests and half-hearted engagement with those most affected. The world’s poorest and most vulnerable are told to adapt to a crisis they didn’t cause, while the rich world’s attention drifts. This is not only morally abhorrent — it’s strategically foolish. A climate response that neglects justice and inclusion will never muster the legitimacy or cooperation required to succeed. As the COP30 letter rightly highlights, our shared future depends on “unity and connection, resilience and optimism, generosity and kindness, diversity and inclusion.”​

We have plenty of rhetoric on these values; what’s missing is action that truly reflects them.

New Initiatives: Hope for Renewal or More of the Same?

Faced with these failures, the incoming COP30 leadership and others are floating bold ideas to shake up climate governance. We should welcome these creative proposals — but also scrutinize them. Will they break the vicious cycle of inaction, or simply repackage old mistakes?

One idea generating buzz is the creation of a Climate Change Council (CCC) under the UN. Brazil’s President Lula recently urged the international community to consider establishing such a council, akin to how the Human Rights Council was created in 2006​. The proposed CCC would act as a high-level body to coordinate and streamline climate action across the fragmented maze of global agencies and agreements​. In theory, this council could usher in an “era of implementation,” shifting us from endless negotiations to actually enforcing decisions. It’s an acknowledgement that “we need stronger climate governance” and an “effective mechanism to accelerate the implementation of the Paris Agreement,” as Lula put it​. Given how the current regime struggles to move beyond promises, a Climate Council could be an important piece of the puzzle — if it has the authority and inclusivity needed.

Brazil is also championing a “Circle of Presidencies,” essentially a council of recent COP hosts and other global convention leaders, to advise on climate action’s political trajectory​. This Council of COP Presidents would bring together the presidencies of the last nine climate COPs (from the Paris COP21 through COP29 in Baku) along with the current heads of the UN biodiversity and desertification conferences​. The idea is to break silos and learn from the past: leveraging the experience of those who have shepherded climate summits, and fostering alignment between related global accords. Such a circle could help build on previous COPs’ legacies rather than treating each summit as an isolated event​. It’s a promising attempt to inject continuity and collective memory into a process often plagued by short-termism.

Another novel concept is the “Global Ethical Stocktake” — an initiative the COP30 team plans to undertake to reinject moral clarity into climate action. This would convene a geographically diverse group of thinkers — scientists, philosophers, community leaders, faith voices, artists — to discuss our ethical responsibilities in the face of climate change​. The stocktake aims to go beyond science and economics, asking what our duty to each other and future generations really means when the rubber meets the road. As the letter notes, “science without conscience is but the ruin of the soul.”​

By elevating ethical considerations, this exercise could counterbalance the technocratic and political inertia with a humanistic call to action. Similarly, COP30 plans to form a “Circle of Indigenous Leadership” to embed traditional knowledge into global climate solutions​– another welcome step to broaden the conversation.

These initiatives — a Climate Council, a Circle of COP Presidents, an Ethical Stocktake, and more — signal a refreshing willingness to think outside the box. They recognize that more of the same will not deliver the change we need. We should acknowledge the potential here. A Climate Council could create a sharper spearhead for action. A COP Presidents’ forum could help navigate political roadblocks and hold countries to commitments. An ethics-driven stocktake could remind negotiators why this fight matters beyond dollars and diplomatic niceties. All are attempts to correct course and infuse climate governance with new energy, insight, and accountability.

Avoiding Past Pitfalls: The Need for True Inclusion and Innovation

However, new structures alone won’t save us if they replicate the failures of the past. We must ensure these ideas do not become just new clubs for the powerful or additional layers of bureaucracy. The devil is in the details — and in the political will behind them. To truly make a difference, these initiatives need to embody the inclusivity, transparency, and urgency that have been missing to date.

First, any new climate governance model must put the most affected at its center, not the periphery. A Climate Council, for instance, should not be a glorified talk-shop for big emitters to grandstand. It needs representation from the developing nations, Indigenous peoples, youth, and vulnerable communities who have borne the brunt of climate impacts and of past governance shortcomings. If it simply mirrors the power imbalances of the UN Security Council — with a few heavyweight countries calling the shots — it will justly be seen as illegitimate. Likewise, the Circle of COP Presidents should engage not only former conference hosts, but also civil society voices, scientists, and subnational leaders. Their mandate must be more than a backroom advisory role; it should feed directly into guiding implementation on the ground. The Global Ethical Stocktake will ring hollow if its profound insights are ignored in actual negotiations. We’ve had no shortage of wise words over the years; what we’ve lacked is the willingness to act on our collective principles. These new forums must have clear channels to influence official decision-making and galvanize public support, or else risk becoming well-meaning side events.

Crucially, we must guard against repeating mistakes. One reason past efforts faltered is the lack of accountability. If countries can spout fine promises in these new venues and still walk away with no consequences for inaction, then nothing changes. Any Climate Council worth its salt should develop mechanisms to track and pressure progress — perhaps naming and shaming laggards, or working with international financial bodies to redirect funding away from dirty investments. The Council of COP Presidents could use its moral authority to hold subsequent COP hosts to higher standards, ensuring that issues like just transition or climate finance aren’t dropped when they become politically inconvenient. And as the Ethics Stocktake reminds us, ethics must translate into practice. For example, if a broad ethical consensus emerges that allowing fossil fuel expansion is incompatible with climate justice, that must be reflected in how agreements are crafted and enforced. New governance models must actively integrate such guidance, not treat it as window dressing.

Furthermore, inclusion must be substantive, not symbolic. It is encouraging to hear talk of Indigenous leadership circles and stakeholder “mutirões” (collective task forces)​. But the true test will be whether these voices can influence outcomes. Will an Indigenous knowledge holder’s perspective be taken as seriously as a CEO’s in shaping climate solutions? Will youth climate activists have a real seat at the table in the Climate Council, or only at side events? To avoid tokenism, these initiatives should have diverse co-chairs and decision-making rules that elevate underrepresented perspectives rather than allowing business-as-usual actors to dominate. The “movement of movements” spirit touted for COP30 — a “global movement of local, multistakeholder, and multisectoral movements”​– is exactly the right approach. It recognizes that effective climate action must bubble up from communities, cities, scientists, businesses, and more, coalescing into something greater than the sum of its parts. The challenge will be converting that ideal into institutional reality at the international level.

Finally, innovation is needed not just in form, but in approach. We should be bold in exploring new decision-making models. Why not experiment with deliberative democratic assemblies on climate that feed into the UN process? Why not empower a reformed Green Climate Fund or a new financing facility to automatically support nations struck by climate disasters, rather than making them beg each time? Why not tie debt relief to climate progress, or give the most vulnerable veto power over decisions that affect their survival? The post-aid world demands we move beyond paternalistic frameworks to ones of true partnership and mutual accountability. If the COP30 Presidency’s reforms can crack open space for these kinds of ideas, it will be a success. But if they become just another layer in an already complex bureaucracy, frustration will only grow.

A Call to Action: Reclaiming Multilateralism’s Promise

This critical juncture calls for courage and vision. We cannot afford another cycle of half-measures. The decline of multilateralism is not inevitable — it is a choice, born of complacency and insularity. Likewise, its renewal will be a choice — one that requires leaders and citizens alike to demand better. The COP30 President-Designate rightly invokes the “collective spirit” of humanity and the need to “innovate our response” to match the enormity of the climate crisis​. Now it’s time to deliver on that lofty rhetoric with concrete, transformative action.

Our case is simple: if the current system fails, change the system. This means holding international institutions accountable and pushing them to evolve. It means insisting that climate justice and inclusion are not negotiable side themes but the very foundation of cooperation. It means mobilizing pressure at all levels — from local communities to global forums — to ensure the new initiatives like the Climate Council or Ethics Stocktake are empowered and not co-opted. The world has seen enough grand declarations and glossy plans. It wants results: emissions cuts that keep 1.5°C alive, finance that actually reaches those in need, adaptation that protects every community, and a global solidarity that doesn’t fracture at the first sign of political trouble.

As we look to COP30 in Belém, in the heart of the Amazon, let it be a turning point. Let it be where we start to reinvent multilateralism for the 21st century — one that is inclusive, nimble, and fiercely committed to justice. The Amazon’s vast forests, so vital to our planet’s climate stability, remind us of what’s at stake. The people living on the frontlines of climate change remind us who we fight for. The failures of the past remind us of pitfalls to avoid. And the ideas on the table — from councils to circles to stocktakes — remind us that another way is possible.

It falls to all of us — not just presidents and diplomats, but citizens and activists worldwide — to demand this new way forward. We must channel our anger at the status quo into energy for reform. We must replace cynicism with constructive urgency. It’s time to reclaim the promise of multilateral cooperation before it’s too late. In this post-aid, post-illusions world, solidarity is our only path to survival. The climate crisis will not wait for us to get our act together. We need systemic reform now, not tomorrow. Belém can be the launchpad for that transformation — if we have the courage to make it so.

The hour is late, but not past hope. The choice is ours: emerge from this crossroads with a stronger, more inclusive global alliance — or continue our drift toward climate calamity. The window for action is closing fast. For the sake of our shared future, let’s throw open the door to real change and walk through together.

Our call to action is clear: world leaders, bring these new governance ideas to life with genuine commitment, and ensure they empower those who have been left behind. Civil society and citizens, keep the pressure on and hold them accountable. Only by doing so can we revive the spirit of cooperation and finally match our deeds to our words. The planet cannot wait — and neither can we. The time to act, to reform, to reimagine multilateralism for a climate-safe future, is now.