Posted on November, 14 2025

A new civil-society report, Inequity, Inequality, Inaction, delivers a stark verdict: three decades after the Rio Earth Summit and a decade on from the Paris Agreement, governments are still protecting profits over people - shielded by elite capture and fossil fuel disinformation - and climate cooperation is on the brink of collapse unless COP30 resets on fair shares.

The report shows that Global North countries have failed to cut emissions and are still expanding oil and gas, while also failing to deliver promised finance. The global finance system is failing too: instead of providing public funds at the scale needed, it traps many countries in debt and dependence. While the Global South is closer to fair shares, it is held back from taking effective climate action by this debt and lack of funds. Climate cooperation is paralysed, and Paris targets will remain out of reach unless COP30 delivers a reset - moving from loans to grants, from profit-driven finance to public support that lets countries invest in clean energy, resilience, and jobs.

The report also warns that inequality within countries is driving the crisis. Wealthy elites - including in the Global South - can shield themselves from climate impacts while pushing the costs of transition and disaster onto workers and overstretched public systems. This elite capture - and by fossil fuel companies in particular -of crucial political processes deepens injustice, fuels political paralysis, and blocks the stronger action needed to keep Paris alive. This paralysis extends to militarised conflicts that divert trillions from climate action - COP30 must redirect those resources to peace and robust multilateralism.

In the face of this systems failure, incrementalism is outdated: COP30 demands a new "climate realism" - rapid transformation toward a just, fossil-free world.

What COP30 must deliver

The report identifies three breakthroughs COP30 must achieve:

1. Fair-shares NDCs: clear commitments on finance and fossil fuel phaseout.

2. A finance reset: a radical overhaul of international financial architecture, shifting from debt and loans to substantial public, grant-based support, including debt cancellation and global taxation.

3. Just transition frameworks: putting workers, women, youth, and Indigenous peoples at the centre, breaking elite capture through progressive taxes and zero-carbon economic shifts, while redirecting militarised resources toward peace, cooperation, and strengthened democratic institutions and human rights law, with protection for jobs, schools, healthcare, housing, and transport.