By Purwanto Setiadi, former Tempo journalist and co-founder of CommsLab, a communication ecosystem strategist on sustainable future.
COP30 failed to stop fossil fuels and deforestation. The next chance belongs to civil society.
All delegates have returned to their respective countries, perhaps relieved to have met their targets. Yet the 30th UN Climate Conference (COP30) was not what its hosts had envisioned as the “COP of Truth.” Held at the gates of the Amazon—a powerful symbol, to be sure—it still failed to deliver agreements to halt deforestation and phase out fossil fuels.
Yes, the conference produced a commitment to Indigenous peoples. But without these two breakthroughs, the increasingly dire warnings that the world is on track to exceed 1.5°C—indeed, likely to cross 2°C—were clearly not treated as urgent by most negotiators. At the current pace, and with seven of nine planetary boundaries already breached, the Earth is heading toward that threshold within the next five years.
By the end of the conference, one lesson was unmistakable: global diplomacy can outline the contours of ambition, but it cannot deliver the transformation needed to keep the planet livable. Such transformation requires power, not the symbolic power of speeches or communiques, but the power of organized, sustained, and uncompromising social movements. And after COP30, civil society faces a new set of urgent struggles that will determine whether the world continues to move toward the thresholds scientists warn could be crossed within the next few years.
It is therefore inevitable that the next phase of climate action will be determined not in the negotiating room, but by what civil society chooses to fight for. And that struggle must be broader than mere policy victories; it must target the political and economic systems that have kept fossil fuels and deforestation politically acceptable despite overwhelming evidence of their harms. If governments at COP30 are unable to deliver even the bare minimum—a commitment to halt deforestation and a mandate to phase out fossil fuels—then it is the movements that must reshape the conditions under which future governments operate.
One of two fundamental steps is for civil society to force a decisive break with the fossil fuel economy, starting with a clear and unified push to join and strengthen the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty initiative. This treaty is more than a diplomatic tool; it is a mechanism for resetting political expectations. By demanding an immediate halt to new fossil fuel exploration and a legally binding phase-out, it changes the very basis of what constitutes “reasonable” climate action. The more governments, cities, and institutions commit, the harder it will be for future COPs to consider fossil fuel expansion normal or negotiable.
But joining the treaty is only the beginning. Movements must combine it with campaigns that make a fossil-free pathway feasible and just: public ownership of the energy system so that phasing out doesn’t lead to energy poverty; democratic control of utilities so that citizens have real control over transition decisions; and financial mandates that require banks and state-owned enterprises to shift investments away from coal, oil, and gas. Without these structural changes, “phasing out” will remain a slogan repeated by negotiators without ever being implemented.
The other fundamental step is to target forests whose protections were not agreed upon at COP30. Protecting these forests, including those in Indonesia, requires more than new monitoring systems or carbon offset programs. It requires defending Indigenous peoples’ land rights, combating opaque financing that enables illegal logging and plantation expansion, and challenging development models that still treat forests as commercial assets rather than living infrastructure for the planet’s climate stability.
Civil society has long led these efforts; now they must expand them into national and cross-border campaigns capable of challenging the entrenched interests that are blocking progress in Belém.
Then there is the struggle over the global financial architecture itself. Countries in the Global South will not be able to wean themselves off fossil fuels or protect ecosystems if international debt, volatile capital flows, and unfavorable trade rules continue to encourage them to maintain extractive growth. Therefore, movements must raise demands that link climate justice to systemic financial reform: debt cancellation and debt-for-nature-swap, progressive taxation, capital controls, regional financing pools, and mechanisms that allow countries to implement restorative economies that will not replicate carbon-intensive pathways. These issues may seem remote from the COP negotiating text, but they shape the real-world choices available to governments long before delegates arrive at any summit.
Civil society must also maintain the political space needed to fight for these causes. As it happens around the world, environmental defenders face increasing repression—from criminalization and surveillance to outright violence. The climate movement will not succeed if activists cannot operate safely. Protecting civic space, strengthening freedom of expression, and ensuring that Indigenous communities, journalists, youth, and scientists can organize without fear must be at the heart of climate demands, not secondary ones.
Last, but not least, movements need to reclaim the narrative. Governments presented COP30 as the “COP of Truth” primarily because it took place at the gates of the Amazon—a symbolic choice meant to signal moral clarity. But symbols are no substitute for action. Civil society must articulate a different narrative: that truth is found not in holding summits in iconic locations, but in taking risks, confronting powerful industries, and aligning policies with what science has been repeating for decades.
Such a narrative shift is crucial not only for political accountability, but also for building the popular support needed to enact transformative climate policies at the national and local levels.
None of these struggles will be easy. They require alliances across sectors, political identities, and even geographies—alliances capable of challenging not just individual governments but also long-standing patterns of exploitation. But these are important struggles, and they will ultimately determine whether multilateral processes can produce more than carefully worded statements.
And that brings us back to Belém. During COP30, negotiators may have felt satisfied with meeting their procedural targets. But outside, the world they represent is entering an era marked by rising temperatures, dying forests, and shrinking room for action. The failure to reach agreement on fossil fuels and deforestation is not just a diplomatic disappointment; it is also a reminder that politics is still lagging far behind the planet.
Yet the summit revealed something else: that power doesn’t just flow from the negotiating table. It emerges when Indigenous leaders break through security lines to demand recognition, when young people take over alleys long isolated from dissent, when communities reject the slow violence of incrementalism. These moments, though brief, demonstrate what true climate leadership looks like: undiplomatic, unpolished, but urgent and collective.
So, when all the delegates go home relieved to have achieved their agenda, civil society must do the opposite: refuse to budge, refuse to normalize a year-long delay, refuse to accept that the government can continue to ignore science. If the next five years are truly important—and they are—this is when movements must shape the future that negotiators in Belém refused to confront.
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