The Paris Agreement Turns 10: COP30 as The People’s COP
(CARE’s COP30 Position Paper)
A decade after the Paris Agreement, the promise of 1.5 °C is slipping away. The climate crisis is accelerating—heatwaves, wildfires, and storms are hitting harder and more often. For communities on the frontline, in particular women and girls, the cost is immediate and unjust, as climate impacts collide with deep-rooted inequalities.
COP30 arrives amid our multilateral climate regime’s most reflective anniversary yet, offering a moment to assess what has been learned—and what remains to be done.
The world is already paying a steep price for inaction. The year 2024 was the warmest on record globally, the first year average temperatures surpassed 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, while January 2025 shattered previous monthly heat records. Climate-driven catastrophes keep on striking—from a one-of-a-kind flash flood in central Texas that claimed more than 135 lives, and devastating floods across China forcing 80,000 evacuations, record-shattering heatwaves sweeping across Europe to intensifying droughts and floods across almost all continents. These extreme events, growing in frequency and severity, expose both the fragility of communities and the interconnectedness of our planet’s climate systems.
Multilateralism still offers a beacon of hope in today’s fractured geopolitical climate, and COP30 stands at a critical juncture. The unanimous Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) affirmed that developed countries must lead by cutting emissions, enhancing sinks, and supporting adaptation and cooperation, while also confirming that states can be held legally accountable for their greenhouse-gas emissions. By reaffirming the Paris Agreement, recognizing common but differentiated responsibilities, and underscoring obligations of technology and financial transfers- in good faith, the Opinion gave fresh momentum to weakened multilateralism. Yet persistent divisions from the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) talks in Baku—on adaptation, finance, unilateral measures, and energy transitions—threaten progress. Without credible, scaled-up finance, transformative breakthroughs at COP30 remain unlikely; finance remains the decisive fault line for climate action.
The overarching mission in Belém is clear: every nation must present a national plan, as required under the Paris Agreement, that commits to deep emission cuts to keep warming below 1.5 °C. The ICJ’s Advisory Opinion has reinforced this target as a legally binding “primary temperature goal,” obligating all states—particularly major emitters—to align their nationally determined contributions with the highest possible ambition. This new legal weight underscores the urgency for countries to act without delay.
With that goal rapidly slipping from view amid surging emissions and rising temperatures, COP30 must serve as the stage for renewed ambition, global solidarity, and tangible action.
Women and girls must be at the centre of this renewed ambition. Disproportionately affected by the climate crisis despite contributing least to its causes, they face heightened risks from extreme weather events, displacement, and resource scarcity, and are often excluded from the decision-making processes that shape climate responses. At the same time, women are often at the forefront of climate solutions, leading community-based adaptation, resilience building, and advocacy efforts. Even though their leadership and expertise remain under-recognized and underfunded. CARE International recognizes this imbalance and is committed to integrating gender equality into climate action. Since its founding in 1945, CARE has consistently prioritized women and girls in its work: this focus is grounded in the belief that empowering women is fundamental for building resilient communities and advancing sustainable development.
The COP30 Presidency’s letters offer a vision of global solidarity through “Global Mutirão”, framing climate action as a shared responsibility with a focus on the human dimension of climate change. They underline the need for stronger ambition in Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs), and call for greater alignment across adaptation, mitigation and just transition efforts in order to meet agreed climate goals. The letters, however, do not address gender and Loss and Damage, both of which are essential pillars for a people-centred approach to climate action.
At COP30, dubbed as ‘People’s COP’, CARE International is looking forward to joining the people of Brazil and the international community in a Global “Mutirão”, a global effort of cooperation among peoples for the progress of humanity. A novel approach—a COP centering people’s power with meaningful and adequate means of implementation to the people and ensuring climate justice and resilience is central to all efforts, to ensure COP30 is remembered as a turning point, 10 years after the Paris Agreement.
KEY DEMANDS:
- Operationalise a robust Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) framework that includes indicators on means of implementation (MoI) that ensure effective and equitable adaptation finance, measuring quantity, quality, and access.
- Set a post-2025 target that triples adaptation finance by 2030 to close the adaptation finance gap to protect vulnerable communities.
- Adopt a new and ambitious Gender Action Plan (GAP), with secured funding to support women-led organizations in climate action
- NDCs must be aligned to 1.5°C by phasing out fossil fuels, reducing deforestation, and investing in renewable energy production led by communities.
- Provide grant-based loss and damage finance that is fair, predictable, and accessible to vulnerable communities.
The Paris Agreement Turns 10: COP30 as The People’s COP (ENGLISH)
CARE COP30 Position Paper
*The COP30 Position Paper will also soon be available in Spanish and French