Climate talks: In over half a century of discussions, many goals and very little progress.

The Stockholm Conference was attended by 113 countries and more than 400 governmental and non-governmental institutions. The main outcome of the meeting was the Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, which contains nineteen principles that established the basis for the new environmental agenda of the United Nations System.

That same year, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was created, which is the main global environmental authority with the power to determine the international agenda on the subject, promote global sustainable development initiatives before the United Nations and serve as an advocate for the environment in the world.

Since 1972, many other conferences have taken place. Among them were the Nairobi meeting in 1982; Rio-92 and Rio+20 in 2012. As part of the efforts to place the climate agenda as an extremely important issue for the future of the planet, the Conference of the Parties (COP) began in the 1990s, and will reach its thirtieth edition this year in Belém do Pará. The first edition, COP1, took place in 1995 in Berlin, where negotiations began to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In 1997, during COP3 in Japan, the Kyoto Protocol was established, which set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions for developed countries by at least 5.2% compared to 1990. In 2015, after realizing that its objectives had not been achieved, the Kyoto Protocol was replaced by the Paris Agreement, which set the target of limiting the increase in the planet's temperature to a maximum of 1.5 degrees Celsius. Ten years later, we are still far from achieving this target.

Over the 52 years between the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in 1972 and the present day, some targets have been established, such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) defined in 2000 and which provided for the achievement of 8 goals by 2015, namely:

• Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.

• Universal Basic Education.

• Promote gender equality and empower women.

• Reduce Infant Mortality.

• Improve Maternal Health.

• Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases.

• Ensure Environmental Sustainability.

Some of the 8 MDG targets have made progress, but they are far from a lasting solution. In 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were established, now with 17 goals to be met by 2030. From what we have seen so far, we are far from achieving these goals with only 6 years left until the established deadline.

COP29, which took place in Baku, Afghanistan, in November, was not at all encouraging. The agreements reached and the volume of financing for climate issues are far from ideal.

When we analyze the history of the discussion on the climate issue, we cannot help but think that the strategies considered so far are far from providing the answers we need to contain the advance of global warming. The agreements established at the conferences that take place each year end up remaining only on paper, with economic issues and geopolitical conflicts always taking precedence over discussions and effective positions regarding the climate crisis.

Meanwhile, we are seeing the increase in extreme weather events taking over the world. In 2024 alone, we have seen floods in Rio Grande do Sul, extreme drought in the Amazon, the occurrence of 3 unprecedented hurricanes in the North Atlantic, and floods in Spain, to name just a few examples. Extreme events have always occurred. The question now is how often they are happening again.

Even in this scenario, our relationship with the environment remains unchanged. The way we are degrading it is not a recent thing, nor is it a result of climate change, but rather of the predatory relationship we have with the planet. When we started talking about the worsening climate issue, we created several concepts to continue using natural resources in a predatory way.

For example, we created the concept of recyclable waste. A very important resource, but given the intensive way we consume, people end up believing that they can produce as much waste as they want - because after all, it will be recycled. But what to do with the waste from the recycled waste?

Another important concept, that of sustainability, has also been trivialized. And today, all we need to do is put the name “sustainable” on anything and we will have the impression that we are acting in an environmentally correct way.

Over time, we have been creating mechanisms that guarantee our comfort, which is a positive thing. The big issue is that the consumer goods necessary for our comfort no longer satisfy us. The logic of capitalism requires a growing pattern of consumption, of accumulation of wealth, of creation of illusory needs. We have a huge amount of objects in our homes that we rarely touch or that are accumulated in some warehouse to be discarded and “recycled” and then we buy the new generation that lasts less and less.

With the climate crisis already showing its consequences through increasingly frequent extreme events, we place our hope in science, since it will find a way to help us adapt to climate change. The big issue is that it is not science that decides what to do with it; we have several examples of the use of scientific findings that were used in the interests of big capital and politics, which most of the time work hand in hand.

Considering the elements presented here, we need to think about a cultural change to deal with the complexity of climate change. Science is of fundamental importance in this process, however, it needs to be heard and its findings taken seriously, which has not happened so far.

The world's population needs to rethink its consumption patterns and its relationship with the environment, a relationship that is increasingly distancing us from nature. After all, we have undergone such a great cultural transformation in this regard that today we hardly think about where our food comes from.

that we eat and all the other products we consume daily, we have the impression that the sources are infinite. Even worse, we are not aware of the processes involved in the generation of the products that sustain 8 billion people.

It is certainly not individual actions or science that will solve our environmental problems. It is important that we increasingly listen to the warnings that science presents to us, that more and more people evaluate their relationship with the planet. Despite the importance of these actions, the main problem lies in the current economic pattern with big capital that works towards the perspective of infinite accumulation of wealth and the political relations that work in the service of this big capital.

We have some difficult questions to be resolved: how to reduce inequalities while maintaining the current consumption pattern and economic model? Who is responsible for working towards balance? How to work taking into account the moral aspect of preserving the planet for future generations? The problem is who defines what is moral?

Some actions need to go hand in hand. Individual action is important to move towards cultural change, but it takes a long time to respond. Economic action needs to move towards changing production processes and the excessive use of natural resources. Political action needs to work on multilateral agreements, but these are progressing slowly because they clash with economic and power interests.

In 2025, we will have COP30 in Brazil. We need to make a great effort to transform this moment into an opportunity to expand discussions so that the entire country can get involved in this process. The entire country means that the COP must take place in all areas of our country, and not just in Belém. We need to discuss all of Brazil's biomes, from the Amazon to the Caatinga, including the Atlantic Forest, Cerrado and Pantanal.

We need to hold several COPs within the COP, with discussions involving as many stakeholders as possible. We cannot count on the political summit to solve all of the problems because, as I said at the beginning of this article, negotiations between the parties have been moving slowly and without much progress. We need to get more involved and think beyond climate change.

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