Ten years after the Paris Agreement was adopted, the world has already surpassed the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Ahead of COP30 in Belém, Brazil, from November 10 to 21, fewer world leaders are attending than before, as experts warn of warming up to 2.8 degrees. Former Swedish ministers express concern that the climate issue has been sidelined.
The Paris Agreement was adopted in December 2015 during COP21 in Paris, aiming to limit global warming to well below 2 °C and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 °C. It also requires increasing ambitions every five years and financial support from industrialized countries to developing ones. Now, ten years later, the world has surpassed the 1.5-degree target, according to the UN Secretary-General and climate scientists. With current policies, the planet risks 2.8 degrees of warming by the end of the century.
Former Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, who attended Paris, is concerned that the climate issue has partly been sidelined. “Now it's back to the hesitation that climate is just woke,” he says. Löfven, now chair of the Party of European Socialists, emphasizes the need for public pressure: “Keep pushing. Political leaders who sense real pressure are forced to listen.”
Former Climate and Environment Minister Åsa Romson, who represented Sweden in Paris, does not consider the agreement itself a failure. “The Paris Agreement itself doesn't set the individual targets for countries; countries do that themselves. So in the formal part, the Paris Agreement delivers. However, countries are not delivering at all on emissions reductions and climate work,” she says.
COP30 in Belém, in the Amazon region, takes place from November 10 to 21, 2025, carrying symbolic weight due to the anniversary and location. Maria Jernnäs, assistant university lecturer at Linköping University, is attending and highlights the Amazon's importance: “The Amazon is incredibly important from the climate system's perspective, so there will clearly be extra focus on the rainforests' benefits for the climate, but also the threats to them.” This year's meeting is less well-attended; the US has withdrawn from the agreement and sends no high-level delegation, while China's President Xi Jinping and India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi stay home.