COP30 CEO says gender and just transition are among the conference’s most important topics

Conference Executive Director, Anna Toney, said: land This Tuesday, 11. This optimism comes one day after Tony celebrated the nations’ consensus on the official agenda for the event.

“All topics are of course very important. But gender and just transition are among the most important topics. Today, we are asking the facilitators to provide a ‘cleaner text’, so that we can now reach agreement on the topic of just transition,” he said.

According to the CEO, larger groups are developing increasingly stronger and more coherent proposals. “On the second day, you already see the negotiators talking about very specific topics in the negotiations, which gives us a lot of hope that yes, we will reach negotiating texts,” he added.

At the COP, negotiations last for two weeks and every word of the global climate agreements is contested. 10 years ago, at the Conference of the Parties to the Paris Agreement, a stalemate over a single word delayed final agreements by more than a day.

Discussions are taking place in particular in the Blue Zone, a space restricted to diplomatic delegations, UN agencies, observers and the press. But before final agreement, delegations need to reach consensus on the agenda and have their say on what they want to include.

At COP30, one of the challenges is to include climate finance as a core topic. Facilitators assist in this process, producing documents summarizing the views of delegations, and searching for coherent proposals for joint discussion and final agreement.

At the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai, the outcome was optimistic, as for the first time the need to end fossil fuels was included in the final text. Furthermore, the first global review of the Paris Agreement has been completed. The 29th COP in Azerbaijan did not achieve significant achievements. It was expected that the final text would focus more on the end of fossil fuel use, which ultimately did not happen.

Disappointing expectations at COP29 were that Baku would resolve the climate finance debate, an issue that resurfaced at COP30 with Brazil’s launch of the Tropical Forests in Forever Fund (TFFF). Although rich countries have committed to contributing at least $300 billion annually until 2035, there is no agreement on how to repay this financing. The United Nations criticized this amount, claiming that it covers only 15% of the real need.

*This report was produced as part of the Climate Change Media Partnership 2025, a journalism fellowship organized by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.