Elite capture and fossil lies: Time for
climate realism and a fair-shares reset
A
new civil-society report, Inequity, Inequality, Inaction,
delivers a stark verdict: three decades after the Rio Earth
Summit and a decade on from the Paris Agreement, governments
are still protecting profits over people – shielded by elite
capture and fossil-fuel disinformation. Climate cooperation
is breaking down, and COP30 must deliver a fair-shares reset
rooted in justice, not greed.
The report shows that
Global North countries have failed to cut emissions and are
still expanding oil and gas, while also failing to deliver
promised finance. The global finance system is failing too:
instead of providing public funds at the scale needed, it
traps many countries in debt and dependence. While the
Global South is closer to meeting its fair share, it still
needs to take more effective climate action but is all too
often held back by this debt and lack of funds. Climate
cooperation is paralysed, and global goals will remain out
of reach unless COP30 delivers a reset – moving from loans
to grants, from profit-driven finance to public support that
enables countries to invest in clean energy, resilience, and
jobs.
The collapse of ambition at COP29 in Baku left
trust in ruins and cooperation stalled. The Global South’s
calls for trillions in real public finance were met with
token pledges and false accounting, leaving the poorest
nations trapped between debt and disaster. COP30 in Belém
is therefore more than another negotiation – it is a chance
to rebuild trust, deliver fair shares, and keep climate
ambition alive.
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The report also warns that inequality
within countries is driving the crisis. The global rich can
shield themselves from many climate impacts while pushing
the costs of transition and disaster onto workers and
overstretched public systems. This elite capture –
particularly by fossil fuel interests – of crucial political
processes is deepening injustice, fuelling political
paralysis, and blocking the stronger action needed to keep
us within climate limits. This paralysis extends to
militarised conflicts that divert trillions from climate
action – COP30 must redirect those resources to peace and
genuine multilateral cooperation.
In the face of this
systemic failure, incrementalism is obsolete. COP30 must
confront this political reality with a new climate realism –
one that pushes ahead with rapid transformative change
anchored in equity, justice, and cooperation.
Climate
failure isn’t about a lack of ambition – it’s about
injustice. COP30 must prove that ambition and justice are
not opposites but inseparable: only fair shares can unlock
the scale of action needed.
What COP30 must
deliver
The report identifies three
breakthroughs COP30 must achieve:
1. Fair-shares NDCs:
clear commitments on finance and fossil fuel
phaseout.
2. A finance reset: a radical overhaul of
international financial architecture, shifting from debt and
loans to substantial public, grant-based support, including
debt cancellation and global taxation.
3. Just
transition frameworks: putting workers, women, youth, and
Indigenous peoples at the centre, breaking elite capture
through progressive taxes and zero-carbon economic shifts,
while redirecting militarised resources towards peace,
cooperation, and strengthened democratic institutions and
human rights law, with protection for jobs, schools,
healthcare, housing, and transport.
Tasneem
Essop, Executive Director, Climate Action Network
International, said: “Climate ambition and
climate justice are not competing visions – they are one and
the same. But both are being strangled by elite capture and
fossil lies. Belém must break that grip, reset cooperation
on fair shares, and put power back in the hands of people
and communities. The Global North must end its wealth
hoarding and deliver its overdue debt – in trillions for
climate finance, in a rapid fossil-fuel phaseout, and in
restoring trust through real solidarity, not empty
rhetoric.”
Hemantha Withanage, Chair,
Friends of the Earth International: “Ten years
after the Paris Agreement we see the familiar story of
wealthy Global North countries falling far short of
delivering their fair share of emissions reductions and
international climate finance, even as they gaslight and
blame larger Global South countries for the accelerating
climate crisis. Conversely, the majority of Global South
countries, despite facing severe climate impacts, have made
pledges close to, or exceeding their fair share of climate
action. What is stark in this analysis is the role of elites
in perpetuating this disastrous and wilful inaction. We must
tackle inequality and elite emissions by confronting power,
privilege, and historical injustice and fighting for system
change.”
Alex Rafalowicz, Executive
Director of the Fossil Fuel Treaty
Initiative: “The new report shows how
fossil fuels drive inequality in every sense – within
nations, enriching elites at the expense of the people, and
between nations, trapping vulnerable countries in poverty
and debt. It reveals decades of sabotage: wealthy countries
expanding fossil fuel exploitation while depriving the
Global South of financing. We must end this injustice by
tackling its source: delivering fair-share funding,
equitably phasing out fossil fuels, and prioritizing people
over profits. This crisis has never been about a lack of
solutions, but about making the right political choices.
Countries like Colombia and the Small Island States are
leading the charge to build a fossil-free future through a
Fossil Fuel Treaty. They are proving that true climate
leadership comes from those most impacted, not from
polluters blocking progress. The path forward is clear, the
question is whether governments will finally follow the
courage of those already leading the
way.”
Niranjali
Amerasinghe, Executive Director, ActionAid
USA: “After 10 years of the Paris
Agreement, it is absolutely unacceptable that rich developed
countries are failing to contribute their fair share of
climate action. These countries – especially the United
States – have not cut emissions sufficiently in the past
decade. Worse, they also are not making meaningful
commitments to accelerate action in the future, even as
global temperature goals are breached and the science is
extremely clear that much more urgency is needed from the
world’s historical polluters. On top of that, rich countries
are also failing utterly to provide climate finance –
support for poorer and more vulnerable countries to
implement their own climate goals. Climate finance is a
cornerstone of the Paris Agreement; without it, the entire
structure of international climate cooperation falls apart.
Rich countries must do their part – there is no time left to
wait.”
Lidy Nacpil, Coordinator, Asian
Peoples Movement on Debt and Development,
APMDD: “The Report proves that the NDCs
approach to international climate action where governments
simply define what they are willing to do without any due
regard for the consequences for the common climate goal, or
for the principles of equity and fairness, and for what the
science says is failing. Governments must be compelled
through citizens actions to do what is right for humanity
and for the planet. This is a call that we, all
citizens of the world, must step up and escalate pressure on
all governments, but especially those from the Global
North.”
Mark Lutes, WWF Senior Advisor
Global Climate Policy: “At a time when
the need for scaled up climate action and support is
blindingly obvious, and global conflicts and
authoritarianism threaten to displace cooperation and
multilateral institutions, a principled equitable approach
to global climate action is more important than ever. This
report cuts through the excuses and provides a clear vision
for who should do what when as part of a fair and equitable
effort-sharing to meet our shared climate
objectives.”
Mariana Paoli, Global
Advocacy Lead, Christian Aid: “This
year’s report is a wake-up call for the climate community
and beyond. The energy transition we urgently need — one
that phases out fossil fuels and centres fairness — will
not happen without a radical shift in the global economy and
a deep reform of the international financial system. Without
structural change, climate action will continue to fall
short. The climate crisis is a justice crisis.
Developed countries must take responsibility not only for
their failure to deliver meaningful climate action, but also
for perpetuating a global economic system that entrenches
inequality and neo-colonial control. To unlock real
progress, we need to democratise economic decision-making
and redirect financial flows toward the global South. It’s
time for wealthy nations to act in the interests of the
global majority.”
Tom Athanasiou,
Climate Equity Reference Project: “Paris
could have been a turning point. It posited a world in which
all countries — both the wealthy and the rest — would do
their parts, as they saw them, to stabilize the climate
system. The Paris Agreement wasn’t ideal — there were no
agreed national fair shares, and of course there was no
enforcement. But there was a chance, and it was
real.
“Today, ten years later, the guarded hope
has dissipated. How could it not, when the wealthy have
utterly failed to do their fair shares? The Global South
countries — with important exceptions — have done better,
but absent the finance and technology support they need to
leapfrog to a post-carbon world, it has not been enough.
They have not been able to break the death grip of the
fossil fuel complex.
“In this report,
we’ve looked back upon the squandered opportunities of the
last decade, and drawn conclusions. We have, in particular,
concluded that the finger of blame must be pointed at the
world’s rich, who have used their wealth to amass far too
much political power, and used that power to service their
conceits and self-interests. This is not exactly news, but
neither have the dots been clearly connected. The brutal
fact is that the world’s rich could easily afford to
finance a global just transition. The necessary
expenditures, though huge, are far smaller than their
holdings. They would hardly know the
difference.
“There is little time now.
Even as the governments deadlock, the natural world is
hitting its first tipping points. This really is, now, the
time of
consequences.”
