‘Hop-on, hop-off’ — the state of climate governance

The current architecture of global climate governance increasingly resembles a pair of ‘hop-on, hop-off’ buses. One has the CMP (the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol), and the other, the CMA (the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement), circling endlessly without real direction. There is no obligation to reach the stated destination.

In this vacuum, the politics of climate change has emerged as the undisputed winner. National interest overrides global urgency with predictable regularity. Consensus, once celebrated as a virtue, reflects the inability of the parties to agree on the rules of voting, thus ensuring a veto for each party, diplomatically disguised as cooperation. Ambition appears in preambles; hesitation dominates operative paragraphs. Alongside politics stands the economics of climate change, shaping its contours with even greater force.

The common man is last

When governments hesitate, markets step in. Corporates, financiers and technology leaders thrive in the uncertainty that slows political action; short-term profits rarely, if ever, wait for long-term planetary consequences. The climate economy is driven not by precaution but by opportunism, because incentives reward the present. The future, after all, is not at the negotiating table.

Meanwhile, ordinary people lose, as they usually do. Their attention remains anchored to immediate needs: food, housing, health, employment. Climate change is a distant abstraction until it arrives as disaster, by which time they are victims, not stakeholders. And if citizens are not demanding climate action, politics need not respond, since risks outweigh benefits. For most people, climate change is neither daily nor urgent.

Scientists have long completed their part. The physics is established, the risks quantified, the future scenarios depicted, and uncertainties explained. What follows is not scientific uncertainty but the politics of science — uncertainty repurposed to justify delay, to diffuse responsibility, and to argue that the moment for decisive action is perpetually “not yet”.

Politicians have also played their predictable role. The politics of climate change consists largely of managing expectations, avoiding costs, and postponing decisions. Governing the climate within political timeframes is an impossible equation.

Economics reinforces this short-termism. Profits on the near horizon overwhelm moral arguments; growth imperatives overwhelm ecological restraint. Future generations are not market participants. Therefore, markets do not account for them.

The result is a system in which each sector moves according to its own logic: science pursues truth through evidence, politics pursues power, economics pursues profit, individuals pursue livelihood, and climate pursues aspiration. The system behaves exactly as designed — and, therefore, achieves exactly as predicted. Not surprisingly, every Conference of the Parties is described as a success, with virtually no climate action to follow, except those that assist in the concomitant pursuit of power and profit. We know the destination. But the path remains obscured by competing priorities and an unwillingness to bear cost. Thus Kyoto failed. Paris is failing. The desire for climate stability remains widespread, but the willingness to act remains selective.

Drift, inadequacy, no driver

This is the structural condition of global climate governance today — not collapse, but drift; not absence, but inadequacy; not denial of the destination, but absence of a driver. COP30 only confirmed this. It delivered the “global mutirão” package, emphasising cooperation and togetherness to address climate change, but its measures remain largely voluntary, burying the basic spirit of common but differentiated responsibilities between developed and developing nations enshrined in the Convention. It failed to change much because it was never designed to. The promises were new; the politics remained the same.

It was advertised as the COP that would “keep 1.5°C alive”, even though the world had already drifted far beyond its reach. No negotiator realistically expected a 1.5°C outcome; the political space for such ambition does not exist. According to the UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2024, global greenhouse gas emissions reached around 57.4 GtCO₂e in 2024, the highest in human history. At the current rate, the world is projected to cross 1.5°C in the early 2030s.

Countries were politely urged to be more ambitious, but no new obligations were created. Even the attempt to include clear fossil-fuel language failed. Finance followed the same rhythm. Parties expressed ambition to scale up climate finance, but the final text relied on voluntary measures and offered no binding timetable. Actual needs for mitigation and adaptation in developing countries exceed $2.4 trillion-$3 trillion per year, while current flows are under $400 billion. What emerged instead was a document full of encouragement and intentions but empty of commitments. No country agreed who would pay, how much, or by when — much as it has always been.

Adaptation, the work of preparing societies for rising heat, floods, droughts, and storms, also stalled. Although leaders pledged to “triple” adaptation finance at COP30, the decision did not specify a baseline year or binding sources of funds, leaving the pledge effectively aspirational. Countries adopted a long list of indicators to measure progress, but the list was put together hastily, criticised for lack of clarity, and disconnected from any plan to provide the large sums adaptation requires.

If anything is clear after more than three decades of climate negotiations, it is that all countries need to prepare to adapt, since adaptation will have to be undertaken with or without a global agreement.

Loss and damage, the issue of helping countries hit hardest by climate disasters, made small steps. COP30 formally opened the new loss and damage fund to applications, yet the fund’s capitalisation and initial disbursements remain small relative to projected needs, underscoring the gap between institutional creation and operational capacity.

Technology transfer — getting climate-friendly technologies to developing countries — again stayed more in concept than in action. New programmes were announced. New themes were added. But the financial support required to operationalise them did not follow.

Capacity building, especially the support poorer countries need to monitor and report their climate progress, also moved in circles. The just transition agenda, ensuring that climate action does not leave workers and vulnerable communities behind, produced strong statements. Rights were acknowledged, principles affirmed, and processes created. But none of it is binding, and none of it comes with resources. It recognises justice; it does not deliver it.

A widening gap

Across all seven pillars, the pattern is unmistakable. COP30 produced more language, more platforms, more frameworks, more processes — but not more action. The gap between what the climate needs and what politics delivers remains as wide as ever.

Yet, for all its structural flaws, chronic inertia, and theatrical ambition, the UNFCCC and its COP process remain the only universally legitimate, near-universal-membership forum humanity possesses for coordinated climate action. Neither the G-7, the G-20, BRICS, nor any coalition of the willing has the mandate, inclusivity, or legal architecture to substitute for it. Abandoning it would leave even less hope than persisting with it. The problem is that while one can hop on and hop off the CMP and the CMA, one cannot hop off the planet.

C.K. Mishra is former Secretary, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Government of India. A.K. Mehta is former Chief Secretary, Jammu and Kashmir and Additional Secretary, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Government of India