© Photography by Prof Lorraine Whitmarsh
Words by Prof Lorraine Whitmarsh MBE (CAST Director) & Ruth Townend (PhD Researcher)
As COP30 kicks off in Belém, Brazil, we take stock of the UK Government’s new carbon plan, signals from the UK’s submissions as part of the Paris Process, and the potential for breakthroughs on people-centred approaches at this year’s 30th UN climate conference.
The end of October saw the publication of the UK Government’s Carbon Budget & Growth Delivery Plan – responding to the legal requirement to provide credible climate actions to deliver the country’s fourth, fifth and sixth carbon budgets. The framing of the Plan around tangible social and economic benefits of climate action – “lower bills, skilled jobs, warmer homes and cleaner air” – is noteworthy and aligns with CAST’s work on the importance of co-benefit framing and multi-solving to engage diverse audiences and deliver wider societal objectives. It also challenges the widespread assumption (which was explicit in the foreword to the 2021 UK Net Zero Strategy) that going green means sacrificing quality of life. In fact, most demand-side measures actually improve wellbeing, and people who take environmental action tend to be happier.
The new Plan, however, continues to place a strong emphasis on technological solutions to tackling climate change. This techno-optimism has long dominated mainstream climate policy, despite robust critiques (not least noting the immaturity of key technological ‘solutions’ like sustainable aviation fuels and hydrogen). Yes, technological solutions are critical – but they fall short relative to a more people-centred approach.
Social transformation and behavioural change are critical for reaching statutory climate targets, as well as for achieving wider social, economic and environmental policy objectives. Moreover, the scale of this behaviour change is profound: new analysis by the Hot or Cool Institute shows that staying within 1.5 degrees of warming requires an 86% reduction in the average UK carbon footprint by 2035. This doesn’t only implicate households; behaviour change is also needed within organisations and communities. In other words, we need to transform how we travel, what we buy and eat, how we work and play – working with people to co-design and deliver measures to achieve climate and wellbeing goals.
Delivering this requires a joined-up strategy to involve the public in both decision-making on and delivery of climate action. The need for a UK public participation strategy on climate change is something CAST has long called for, as have others (not least, the government’s own climate advisors). This strategy, due for imminent publication, could help reorient climate policy towards a more people-centred focus and, by unlocking ‘people power’, and so accelerate climate action in the UK.
As the UK and 195 other Parties descend on Belém for COP30, they do so having already articulated commitments to ‘people power’ as part of two international treaties: the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement. Under the Agreement, Parties shall “…enhance climate change education, training, public awareness, public participation and public access to information” while under the Convention they shall “promote and facilitate…public participation in addressing climate change and its effects and developing adequate responses.”
The word ‘adequate’ here is key. Its implications are helpfully laid out in Chapter 5 of the IPCC’s latest assessment report on mitigation. Spoiler: social transformation and behavioural change play a vital part. So, at COP30, what progress on public participation might we expect?
The answer, at least in part, is ‘ACE’. Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE) spans commitments on public participation under the Agreement and Convention, with a particular focus on inclusion of women, children, and wider marginalised groups, who are vital in the development of just and effective responses to the climate challenge. Notable in their absence, however, are commitments to address the role of those with high socio-economic status as part of ACE. These groups’ carbon footprints are far larger, and both CAST and IPCC single them out as potential role models of low-carbon lifestyles and advocates for stringent climate policies.
Countries’ national responses to ACE are laid out in their climate plans (nationally determined contributions or NDCs), a new round of which has been trickling in over the course of 2025. Of the 64 NDCs submitted and included in the synthesis, all reported using at least one element of ACE in adaptation or mitigation measures. Further, “84 per cent of Parties reported on efforts to raise public awareness of climate change with a view to fostering changes in behaviour and lifestyle.” This is an uptick from 64 per cent in previous NDCs.
The UK’s climate plan covers ACE and public participation, alongside toting the aforementioned imminent Public Participation Strategy. A preview of this Strategy in the NDC, however, like the UK’s Carbon Budget and Growth Delivery plan, seems likely to be techno-optimistic in tone: it “will include how we support people to adopt new technologies” but no other reference to behaviour change in the Strategy is made.
COP30 will also provide an opportunity to review countries’ first reports on their activities under the Paris Agreement (biennial transparency reports or BTRs). Another UNFCCC synthesis reports “a wide range of approaches, key underlying assumptions and drivers, parameters and models for preparing projections of GHG emissions and removals” from parties. Behaviour change, however, is mentioned only once, at the end of a long list of key assumptions and drivers behind countries’ emissions projections, and is reported as being included only ‘to some extent’ in BTRs.
During COP30, the Brazilian Presidency will host an ‘ACE Presidency Event: Empowering an Informed and Engaged Society for Effective Climate Action.’ This prominence of ACE ties in with Brazil’s attempts to broaden the definition of success for the multilateral negotiations. Paris Agreement parties, by their own measure, are falling far short of delivering climate action at the speed and scale needed to meet Paris targets. A key part of Brazil’s COP strategy is its call for a global ‘Mutirão’ through which wider civil society can play a part. The Brazilian presidency describes Mutirão as ‘a major global effort for climate action… a firm and inspiring call to join forces in a coordinated, diverse, and transformative mobilization.”
Mutirão seeks to capitalise on communities’ desire for change, yet it apparently ignores the role of governments in enabling or constraining community action. While public participation is both a commitment and a necessity in achieving Paris goals, any shift of focus and responsibility from laggard governments back onto individuals must come with heavy caveats. Public participation happens in political settings. Politics and policies enable, or (more often) constrain ‘people power’ through setting (to borrow a UN phrase), inter alia, infrastructure, narrative, impetus and incentives for action.
For the Mutirão to be effective, Parties at COP30, and in the ACE Presidency Event in particular, will need to be honest about this dynamic between politics and people. For the global public to be part of ‘adequate’ responses to climate change is challenge enough. To ask them to fight their own government for the opportunity to do so may be too much to ask.
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