With characteristic pomp and fanfare, the United Nations Framework on Climate Change’s COP30 Summit, convened from Nov. 10-21, in Belém, Brazil.

But the celebratory atmosphere could scarcely hide the fact that, for the first time, the U.S. government boycotted this year’s COP. Moreover, official Indigenous representation was overshadowed by the 1600 or so lobbyists for industries tied to fossil fuels, many of them U.S. firms. If those lobbyists could count as one country, they would make up the second largest delegation behind that of the host country. Unsurprisingly, lofty declarations were made that are non-binding and the final agreement, Global Mutirão (roughly, “collective mobilisation”), ended up being little more than acknowledging implementation challenges. Even the term “fossil fuels,” though implied as a cause of the climate crisis, was omitted from the text.

The overall aim of COP30 was to build on and strengthen the 2015 Paris Agreement’s implementation, focusing on finance, adaptation to climate change, and “nature-based solutions”. The Paris Agreement is “a legally binding international treaty on climate change … adopted by 195 Parties at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21)” to work towards keeping global average temperatures to 2°C and preferably no higher than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

Another aim was to strengthen climate justice and just transition aspects of policy agreements. It was therefore important to bring into relief the representation of Indigenous communities, whose lifeways exemplify ecological sustainability but are most intensely undermined by climate change. This year saw the highest official participation from Indigenous communities out of all previous summits.