In June 2025, over 200 civil society organizations called for reform of the international climate change process. They released the call in the margins of the Bonn meeting, an inter-sessional to prepare for the 2025 COP (that is, Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Conference on Climate Change – meeting). This year it is the 30th such meeting, or COP30, and will take place in Belem, Brazil, 10-21 November 2025.
Talk of reform is a fact of life at the UN. Sometimes it is performative, and many times it is posturing to appear knowledgeable. But there are times when such a demand is for valid reasons, made by people who really know the process not just wanting to appear they do. This call by the civil society is of that valid kind. These 200+ organizations really know the climate change process, likely better than the people who work on climate change at the UN. And they genuinely want the process to work better, and faster. This is because many work in the field and see more clearly than most of us the threat of changing climate on the planet. For them it is not hypothetical, it is the reality. Hence their valid sense of urgency.
I saw the news of this call in Climate Home News a publication that has been a great source of climate change information. (Unfortunately it recently went behind a paywall which is bad for researchers of limited incomes such as those working in NGOs and/or in developing countries.) The full text of the reform call is available on the Centre for International Environmental Law (CIEL) website. CIEL is one of the lead organizations that launched the reform call.
What do the civil society actors want changed? The press brief gives the following list:
- Restore Power and Equity
- End the Trade Show and Stop Corporate Capture
- Move Away from Accountability-Free Blackbox Negotiations
- Respect and Protect Human Rights
- Align and Strengthen International Climate Governance
Although all five elements deserve attention, I will focus on the first two items here.
The first item is a demand for decision making by vote instead of by consensus. When the parties of the climate change Convention gathered to hammer out the rules of procedure of the new Convention back in 1995, decision making by vote was an option. Several oil producing countries (among them the US, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait) strongly opposed. Lobbyists for oil producing companies provided equally strong support. The Convention’s rules of procedure are still outstanding due to continuing disagreement on Rule 42 which is on decision making. This Rule provides two options: one asking for a two third majority and the other requiring consensus based decision. There is a very good description of how all this unfolded here. And here is a review of the legal vacuum this situation has created over the years of the UNFCCC COP meetings.
At the risk of being simplistic, the point of all the lobbying and opposition to decision making by vote is two fold. First, consensus based decision making is easier to control by who can bully the process. If you don’t like the emerging consensus, you object and monkey wrench the outcome. If the objection comes from a powerful country with a large purse of money, like the US, it is a more impactful monkey-wrench. Second, decisions by consensus are by their nature weak decisions which industrialized countries prefer in climate change – these reduce their financial and other obligations. Why is this? Because to get to consensus the negotiating group keeps gravitating to the lowest common denominator. In contrast, decisions by vote have the potential to generate stronger outcomes, especially when the majority vote uses compelling facts and science. In climate change, if we had been applying decisions by vote, the world community might have agreed to an official warming limit of 1.5 degrees much earlier. Similarly we might have stronger follow up to decisions as voting would have made it easier to name and shame non-compliance.
Decisions by consensus is high level and advanced. It is humanity at its best. To find common ground you need to listen and give in a little while being honest as you protect your interests. But all that works when there is mutual trust. This today is in short supply worldwide.
The eroding mutual trust is one of the reasons why the multi-lateral system has become so fragile. Trust in inter-governmental negotiations has been eroding with many promises made but few, if any, kept. Over the years of sustainable development negotiations with which I am well familiar, so many promises of finance and technology transfer were made to developing countries but much of it never happened. And the latest blow to the eroding global trust is the growing populism across the world affecting trust both between and within countries. Today “discourse” is replaced by bullying, lies and manipulation. In this environment, striving to build consensus leaves you vulnerable to people who will pretend to have agreed at best or more likely bully you into submission.
So we have a a stick with both ends in the mud: you cannot have decisions by vote but you also cannot really build trustable consensus. No wonder we did not get too far in preventing climate change!
The second item is about the growing corporate presence in COP meetings. Business and industry is one of the recognized stakeholder groups of the UNFCCC process. Its representatives participate through their industry associations accredited as business and industry NGOs – or BINGOs. Some also attend as part of their government’s official delegation which gives them more access than coming in as a non-governmental representative. In the recent years, a third route has been in effect with a petrostate becoming the meeting host. The meeting host is automatically the meeting President so they have direct access to influencing the agenda, process and the participants.
The number of corporate participants in COP meetings has been climbing upwards. For example it was reported that at COP26 in Glasgow, fossil fuel industry was present with around 500 participants. At COP28 in Dubai the number was 2456 and at COP29 in Baku, it was 1773.
One could argue “the more the merrier” if similarly large numbers of civil society and community based organizations also participated with the same level of access and resources. But that is never the case. In fact, non-governmental participants from locations most affected by climate change, such as Sub-Saharan Africa and South East Asia, are often unable to attend due to travel cost, and/or lack of visa to enter the host country. The sheer number of corporate participants crowd out the voice of other stakeholder groups and reduce their impact.
Furthermore, the participation purpose of corporate representatives is hardly ever to make a genuine contribution. It is instead damage control by preventing adoption of stricter standards or similar decisions that might affect their bottom line. Even when their participation appears benevolent there is an ulterior motive. For example, in the last 10-15 years as carbon dioxide removal (CDR) became a growth sector, many private sector participants were in COP meetings to garner support for this technology. It is presented as a way to manage the changing climate. At first look this may seem like a useful technological solution. In fact, I included CDR related developments in my sustainability lectures to business students. But CDR is supposed to be a complement to significant reductions in fossil fuel use not a way to allow business as usual.
The reform call does not mention solutions to growing corporate presence. Perhaps ways to cap the total number of participants from one type of stakeholder group could be considered? Does the oil industry need over 2000 representatives to contribute to the process and protect its interests? Can they still be represented by smaller delegations? Similar caps can also be placed on the Convention parties some of which (the US, some European countries) participate with delegations in the many hundreds. Why not limit every one in some way. If a group reaches its cap maximum, and still wants to bring additional people they would need to “offset” the additional people by sponsoring representatives from severely under represented groups. Sort of a cap-and-trade for participation?
There have been demands to reform the climate change process over the years. For example only a few years ago, in August 2022, a different group of civil society organizations made a reform call in the margins of COP27 in Egypt. That call was exclusively on corporate participation and the conflicts of interest it created. There are also academic studies of the various reform ideas. One recent such study that I would recommend is this article published in Earth System Governance, written by N. Nasiritousi, A. Buylova, and B. Linnér, (January 2025), if the reader is interested.
Recognizing that calls for reform have been made before should not reduce the growing urgency of finding a better way to manage the already changing climate. The latest reform call that is the focus of this article exudes such a sense of urgency. Perhaps this is mixed with my own sense of urgency after having lived through the hottest summers every year during the last 10 summers, and having seen unusual amounts of rain fall, as well as the incessant news of communities devastated by floods or drought. Fast sea level rise, melting glaciers, and growing number of climate refugees were “theoretical” back in the 1980s, expected at the end of the 21st century. Less than half a century later they are our reality.
Is there a hopeful message somewhere here? Perhaps it is in the youngest generation coming up. During my UN career, I met with and briefed countless numbers of young people visiting the UN, to learn about the organization and about my field of work (sustainable development). As I briefed them, I would wonder how these minimally interested young people would fare for the planet. Those young people are today the parents of the youngest generation of activists in their teens like those in the Sunrise Movement or in Fridays for Future. Their interest is different than their parents’ generation. The current young generation genuinely wants to fix the world and its climate. They are also not easily pushed into submission by bullying or manipulative misinformation. There is hope!
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