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Climate Justice Denied by Delays

Dec 23, 2025
4 min read

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Kuhaneetha Bai Kalaicelvan

Note: A critical response to this article, from Ambassador Byron Blake of Jamaica is available here

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Dec 23 2025 (IPS) - Opinions have been divided over the annual UN climate conferences. While some see COP30 in Belém, Brazil, as confirming their irrelevance, others see it as a turning point in the struggle for climate justice.

Accelerating decline

Negotiations continued there as the 1.5°C target slipped beyond reach.

As the world accelerates toward catastrophic warming, ecological systems are collapsing, and millions across the Global South face increasingly life-threatening situations.

Rising sea levels, extreme heat, droughts and flooding are undermining food security, displacing communities, and exacerbating inequality and living conditions.

The economic costs of climate disasters are accelerating. Social and human costs continue to rise, with lives, livelihoods and ecosystems destroyed.

Fiscal austerity and indebtedness are making things worse. Instead, governments increase military spending and subsidise fossil fuels, accelerating planetary warming.

Business interest in ‘green transitions’ focuses on new profit-making opportunities. As renewable energy grows, energy supplies increase as fossil fuels are slowly replaced.

COP of Truth?

In his opening speech to the thirtieth Conference of Parties (COP30) in Belém, host President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva promised it would be the ‘COP of Truth’.

He urged world leaders and governments to demonstrate their commitments by presenting their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) for its Global Mutirão (community mobilisation) outcome.

Although not officially present, the US continued to frustrate the climate talks by urging petrostates to resist efforts to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

The COP30 Climate Change Performance Index exposed governments’ weak commitments to combating planetary warming over the past 21 years.

Its report analysed the policies of 63 countries responsible for 90% of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The top three spots were kept empty to emphasise that no country has shown sufficient ambition to do so.

For 2025, Saudi Arabia took last place, with the US, Russia and Iran not far behind. Trump’s latest policies have set the US further back.

Meanwhile, the White House threatened sanctions and tariffs against governments that support a global tax on GHG emissions by international shipping.

Just transition?

COP30 in Belém continued to fail to achieve what is urgently needed: binding GHG emission cuts, phasing out fossil fuels, meaningfully compensating for past losses and damages, or better financing for climate adaptation.

COP30 adopted the Belém Mechanism for Just Global Transition – a new UNFCCC arrangement to overcome the fragmentation and inadequacy of such efforts worldwide.

However, the mechanism lacks both finances and plans to protect those harmed by decarbonisation initiatives. Nor are there resources for ‘green industrialisation’.

Climate justice is still misrepresented as threatening livelihoods rather than as key to survival. The climate justice movement must convince the public that it is key to social progress.

Climate finance setback

Lula appealed again for increased climate financing for the Global South following the dismal record since the 2009 Copenhagen COP.

Brazil also launched the Tropical Forests Forever Fund (TFFF) to incentivise countries conserving their forests. Although it failed to raise its target of $25 billion, 53 countries endorsed the TFFF, with pledges in Belém totalling $6.6 billion.

Belém also offered new suggestions for climate finance, in its ‘Baku to Belém (B2B) Roadmap to 1.3T’ (USD1.3 trillion), and the report of the COP30 Circle of Finance Ministers (CoFM).

The CoFM involved 35 finance ministers representing three-fifths of the world’s population and its GHG emissions.

The COP30 promise to “at least triple” finance for developing countries’ climate adaptation by 2035 was again blocked by the Global North. LDC requests for grant financing were also ignored yet again.

Promoting voluntarism

Brazilian COP30 chair Corrêa do Lago proposed various compromises to encourage those disappointed by UN processes to take climate action.

His proposed ‘voluntary roadmap’ to transition from fossil fuels will be discussed at the Colombia/Netherlands-led ‘coalition of the willing’ conference in April 2026.

The chair’s other voluntary roadmap for forest conservation followed the COP30 agreement’s failure to condemn deforestation with stronger language.

The adoption of the 59 compromise indicators for the Global Goal on Adaptation was delayed by poorer African countries’ inability to afford immediate implementation. The compromise was a two-year delay, referred to as the ‘Belém-Addis vision’.

Belém as turning point

For the first time, the US was officially absent from the Belém COP. With over 56,000 delegates registered, attendance was second only to Dubai, with more than 1,600 business lobbyists present.

COPs make slow progress by painstakingly extending the consensus for climate action. Belém may shift the COPs’ focus from negotiations to initiatives, a precedent which can be abused or advanced.

Belém’s Mutirão Decision (Action Agenda) focuses on delivery, drawing from the ‘whole of society’. Its 30 measurable

Key Objectives were based on the 2023 Global Stocktake.

While Belém’s outcomes fell short of most expectations, many acknowledge Brazil did its best under trying circumstances. Nonetheless, climate justice is being denied by the continuing procrastination of powerful vested interests.

Although not quite the ‘COP of Truth’, inclusion and implementation that Lula promised, Belém reversed the backward slide of recent COPs, which the Global South must build upon before it is too late.

Related IPS Articles:

Available online here: Climate Justice Denied by Delays

Trump Reboots US National Security Strategy, Foreign Policy

Dec 16, 2025
4 min read

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Kuhaneetha Bai Kalaicelvan

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Dec 16 2025 (IPS) - The new US National Security Strategy (NSS) repositions the superpower’s role in the world. Hence, foreign policy will be mainly driven by considerations of ‘making America great again’ (MAGA).

Changing course

The new NSS no longer presumes US world leadership and alliances based on values. It breaks with earlier post-Cold War foreign policy, upsetting those committed to its sovereigntist unipolar world.

Quietly released on December 4, it is certainly not an easily forgettable update of long-established positions, cloaked in obscure bureaucratic and diplomatic parlance.

Mainly drafted under the leadership of ‘neo-con’ Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio, it is already seen as the most significant document of Trump 2.0.

It asserts, “The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over.” Instead, foreign policy should now prioritise advancing US interests.

New priorities

The NSS implies the US will no longer be the world’s policeman. Instead, it will exercise power selectively, prioritising transactional rather than strategic considerations.

It emphasises economic strength as key to national security, rebuilding industrial capacity, securing supply chains and ensuring the US never relies on others for critical materials.

Even if the Supreme Court overrules the President’s tariffs, the US has already secured many concessions from governments fearful of their likely adverse impacts.

The NSS is ostensibly based on MAGA considerations involving immigration control, hemispheric dominance, and cultural ethno-chauvinism.

Mainstream commentators complain it lacks the supposedly enlightened values underlying foreign policy in the US-dominated world order after the Second World War.

They complain the new NSS is narrow in focus, redefining interests, and sharing power. Its stance and tone are said to be more 19th-century than 21st-century.

Besides pragmatic imperatives, mixed messages may be due to unsatisfactory compromises among rival factions in Trump’s administration.

MAGA foreign policy

Long-term observers see the NSS as unprecedented and blatantly ideological.

White supremacist ideology influences not only national cultural politics but also foreign policy. The NSS unapologetically promotes Judaeo-Christian chauvinism despite the constitutional separation of church from state.

MAGA’s ‘America First’ priority is evident throughout. Border security is crucial as immigration is deemed the primary national security concern.

For Samuel Huntington, immigration threatens the US by making it less WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant).

The NSS blames social and economic breakdown on immigration. Inflows into the Western Hemisphere, not just the US, must be urgently stopped by all available means.

Ironically, the US has long been a nation of immigrants, with relatively more immigrants than any European country. Its non-white numbers are almost equal to whites.

Trump’s neocolonial interpretation of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine emphasises the Americas as the new foreign policy priority.

Foreign rivals must not be allowed to acquire strategic assets, ports, mines, or infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean, mainly to keep China out.

Trump’s NSS prioritises the Western Hemisphere, with Asia second. Africa receives three paragraphs, primarily for its minerals.

Europe is downgraded to third, due to its ostensible immigration-induced civilizational decline. Surprisingly, the NSS urges halting North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) expansion.

China near peer!

The NSS policy on China is widely viewed as unexpectedly restrained. China remains a priority, but is no longer its primary antagonist; it is now a peer competitor.

Now, the US must rebalance its economic relationship with China based on mutually beneficial reciprocity, fairness, and the resurgence of US manufacturing.

The US will continue to work with allies to limit China’s growth and technological progress. However, China is allowed to develop green technologies due to US disinterest.

Meanwhile, US hawks have ensured a military ‘overmatch’ for Taiwan. The NSS emphasises Taiwan’s centrality to Indo-Pacific security and world chip production.

The NSS warns China would gain access to the Second Island Chain if it captured Taiwan, reshaping regional power and threatening vital US trade routes.

With allied support, the US military will seek to contain China within the First Island Chain. However, Taiwan fears US support will wane after TSMC chip production moves to the US.

The NSS expects the ‘Quad’ of the US, Australia, Japan and India to enhance Indo-Pacific security. For Washington, only India can balance China in Asia, and is hence crucial to contain China in the long term.

Regional reordering

The NSS also downgrades the Middle East (ME). Conditions that once made the region important have changed.

The ME’s importance stemmed from its petroleum and Western guilt over Israel. Now, the US has become a significant oil and gas exporter.

Critically, the US strike on Iran in mid-2025 is believed to have set back Tehran’s nuclear programme.

The ME seems unlikely to continue to drive US strategic planning as it has over the last half-century. For the US, the region is now expected to be a major investor.

As US foreign policy is redefined, the world worries. The ME has been downgraded as Latin America has become the new frontline region.

Much has happened in less than a year of Trump 2.0, with little clear or consistent pattern of continuity or change from his first term. But policies have also been quickly reversed or revised.

While the NSS is undoubtedly important and indicative, it would be presumptuous to think it will actually determine policy over the next three years, or even in the very near future.

Related IPS Articles

Available online at: Trump Reboots US National Security Strategy, Foreign Policy

Continued Inaction Despite G20 Report on Worsening Inequality

Nov 26, 2025
4 min read

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Kuhaneetha Bai Kalaicelvan

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Nov 26 2025 (IPS) - Although inequality among countries still accounts for a far greater share of income inequality worldwide than national-level inequalities, discussions of inequality continue to focus on the latter.

South African initiative

The G20 Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts on Global Inequality, chaired by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, was commissioned by South Africa’s 2025 presidency of the G20, the group of the world’s twenty largest national economies.

South Africa (SA) and Brazil, the previous G20 host, have long had the world’s highest national-level inequalities. However, their current governments have led progressive initiatives for the Global South.

Although due to take over the G20 presidency next year, US President Trump refused to participate in this year’s summit, inter alia, because of alleged SA oppression of its White minority.

Inequality growing faster

The G20 report utilises various measures to show the widening gap between the rich and the poor.

National-level inequality is widespread: 83% of countries, with 90% of the world’s population, have high Gini coefficients of income inequality above 40%.

While income inequality worldwide is very high, with a Gini coefficient of 61%, it has declined slightly since 2000, primarily due to China’s economic growth.

Meanwhile, wealth concentration has continued. Wealth inequality is even greater than income inequality, with the richest 10% owning 74% of the world’s assets.

The average wealth of the richest 1% grew by $1.3 million from 2000, accounting for 41% of new wealth by 2024! Private wealth has risen sharply since 2000, while public assets have declined.

Besides income and wealth, the report reviews other inequalities, including health, education, employment, housing, environmental vulnerability, and even political voice.

Such inequalities, involving class, gender, ethnicity, and geography, often ‘intersect’. The promise of equal opportunity is rarely meaningful, as most enjoy limited social mobility options.

The report thus serves as the most comprehensive and accessible review of various dimensions of economic inequality available.

Harmful effects

The G20 report condemns ‘extreme inequality’ for its adverse economic, political, and social consequences.

Inadequate income typically means hunger, poor nutrition and healthcare. Economies underperform, unable to realise their actual potential.

Inequality, including power imbalances, influences resource allocation. Such disparities enhance the incomes of the rich, often at the expense of working people.

Natural resources typically enrich owners while undermining environmental sustainability and social well-being.

The report argues that economic inequality inevitably involves political disparities, as the rich are better able to buy influence.

New rules and policies favour the rich and powerful, increasing inequalities and undermining national and worldwide economic performance.

High inequality, due to rules favouring the wealthy, also undermines public trust in institutions. The declining influence of the middle class threatens both economic and political stability, especially in the West.

Drivers of inequality

The report argues that public policy can address inequalities by influencing how market incomes are initially distributed and how taxes and transfers redistribute them.

Market income distribution is determined by asset distribution (mediated by finance, skills, and social networks) and among labour, capital, and rents. Returns to shareholders are prioritised over other claims.

Increased inequality in recent decades is attributed to weakened equalising policies, or ‘equilibrating forces’, and stronger ‘disequilibrating forces’, including wealth inheritance.

New economic policies over recent decades have favoured the wealthy by weakening labour via market deregulation and restricting trade unions.

Tax systems have become less progressive with the shift from direct to indirect taxes, lowering taxes paid by large corporations and the wealthy. Fiscal austerity has exacerbated the situation, especially for the vulnerable.

Financial deregulation has also generated more instability, triggering crises, with ‘resolution’ usually favouring the influential.

Privatisation of public services has also favoured the well-connected, at the expense of the public, consumers, and labour.

International governance

International economic and legal institutions have also shaped inequality.

More international trade and capital mobility have lowered wages, increased income disparities and job insecurity, and weakened workers’ bargaining power.

Liberalising financial flows has favoured wealthy creditors over debtors, worsening financial volatility and sovereign debt crises.

International inequalities have adverse cross-border effects, especially for the environment and public health.

Overconsumption and higher greenhouse gas emissions by the rich significantly worsen planetary heating.

International health inequalities have been worsened by stronger transnational intellectual property rights and increased profits at the expense of poorer countries.

International tax agreements have enabled the wealthy, including transnational corporations, to pay less than those less fortunate. Meanwhile, Oxfam reported that the top one per cent in the Global North drained the South at a rate of $30 million per hour.

Inaction despite consensus?

The report claims a new analytical consensus that inequality is detrimental to economic progress, and reducing inequality is better for the economy.

Inequality is attributed to policy choices reflecting moral choices and economic trade-offs. It argues that combating inequality is both desirable and feasible.

Recent research from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has criticised growing national inequalities.

However, there is no evidence of serious efforts by the G20, IMF, and OECD to reduce inequalities, especially inter-country, particularly between North and South.