COP30: All you need to know about the climate change conference

What is COP30?

COP30 is the thirtieth United Nations Conference of Parties.

It’s a global climate conference organised by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), bringing together the 197 nations who are part of this agreement.

The first COP was held in 1995 in Germany. The conferences used to be held every two years, however, as the impacts of climate change are becoming more severe, COP is now an annual event.

Why are there multiple COPs a year?

It’s confusing, but as COP stands for ‘Conference of the Parties’ there are multiple UN meetings that fall under this title.

The biggest of these are ones like COP30 – the annual climate conferences.

There’s also a biodiversity conference series that uses the COP name, and another focused on combating desertification, for example. This means that there can be more than one COP occurring within the same year.

For example, in 2024 there were two COP16s – a biodiversity COP held in Cali, Columbia and a desertification COP held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In the same year a climate change COP – COP29 – was also held in Baku, Azerbaijan.

When is COP30?

COP30 officially began on Monday 10 November 2025. It’ll last just under two weeks, with a scheduled conclusion on Friday 21 November. However, previous COPs have over run as nations take extra time to finalise the new agreements.

Delegates at this climate meeting will be hoping to avoid the outcome of previous COPs, when they ran out of time to make many important decisions.

Where is COP30?

Climate change COP conferences are hosted by a different country each year. The host rotates among the UN’s five regional groups, and the member nations of these hold consultations on who will offer to host the conference.

COP30 is being held in Belém, a city in the Amazonian rainforest of Brazil. This is the first time that Brazil has hosted the conference, and it hasn’t been without controversy.

There have been numerous news reports criticising a decision to clear a section of Amazon rainforest to build a new road for the conference.

There have also been concerns that Belém’s small size has led to unsustainable competition and, as a result, skyrocketing prices for accommodation. The United Nations expressed concern that accommodation is so expensive that smaller nations simply can’t afford to send delegates.

For each climate COP there’s a nominated COP President whose role is to guide the negotiations and keep the conference on track. The President is nominated by the regional group of the host region in which the COP is taking place. For COP30 the President is André Corrêa do Lago.

Who will be attending COP30?

This year’s climate summit is expected to be attended by world leaders, politicians and delegates from almost 200 nations.

While the UK’s Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer has confirmed that he’ll attend, along with Prince William, there are few details as to who else will be there.

No ‘high-level’ official is expected from the United States and while China is sending a delegation, their Premier Xi Jinping isn’t expected to make an appearance.

In addition to the politicians, delegates and policy makers, there will be a whole retinue of journalists, campaigners and lobbyists. One of the biggest criticisms of COPs in recent years is how this part of the attendance has expanded significantly.

What are the key topics for COP30?

The primary focus of the talks in Brazil is to limit global warming and climate change. This is achieved through a number of different routes.

In 2015, just under 200 nations agreed the landmark Paris Climate Accords, a treaty to limit the rise in average global temperatures to 1.5°C of pre-industrial levels and “well within 2°C”. There are now considerable concerns that this higher limit will be breached.

Ahead of COP30, nations were asked to submit updated plans on how they’ll manage this through cutting carbon emissions. To date, only a third of countries have actually done this. It’s hoped that a renewed commitment in Brazil might help limit any further rises in global temperatures.

There are likely to be a few key themes emerging from the talks. One of the most obvious is that of fossil fuels. During last year’s COP29 negotiations, the commitment for nations to ‘phase out’ the use of fossil fuels was controversially changed to ‘phase down’. This was after intense lobbying from fossil fuel exporting countries and industry.

Finance is another major aspect of the talks. With the historic imbalance of which nations have emitted the most greenhouse gases, the equity of who actually pays for the transition to renewables is significant. Typically, smaller nations are asking that larger nations take the brunt of this.

Another issue that’s becoming more pronounced is agriculture. With a third of all carbon emissions coming from agriculture, there’s a lot of focus on how this can be tackled.

This feeds into the other major threat facing our planet – biodiversity loss. While this crisis has its own dedicated COP events, there’s a growing understanding that climate change and biodiversity loss are inherently linked. There will likely be conversations about the progress towards 30 by 30, along with a potential new fund to prevent the destruction of tropical rainforests.