Tearfund at COP30: what, where, when, why and who?

The Tearfund team in Latin America, led by Miriam Moreno, have spent months preparing for this conference, mobilising churches from across the region to engage on the issue of climate change. The team includes church leaders, youth activists, and representatives from indigenous groups in Brazil, bringing their perspectives and experiences to the conversation. They will be joined in Brazil by environmental scientist, climate activist and Tearfund ambassador Laura Anderson, also known as Less Waste Laura, alongside our Climate Policy Advisor, Hannah Eves.

This is not the first time that Brazil has hosted a UN climate conference. In 1992, world leaders gathered for the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and agreed to take collective action to combat climate change. It was at this historic meeting that the UN system for tackling climate change was established. COP30 marks a full circle moment to take stock of what has, and hasn’t, been achieved on climate.

Why is COP30 relevant to people living in extreme poverty?

The impacts of the climate crisis are hitting the world’s poorest communities first and hardest, making poverty worse. We see this every day in the communities we work alongside.

The changing climate is driving more frequent and unpredictable extreme weather events, such as floods, drought and heatwaves. Lower income countries have fewer resources to adapt and recover from these, so the impact on their homes and livelihoods is devastating. This is unjust and will only get worse unless we take action now.

COP30 is significant because it marks ten years since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015. A landmark agreement on tackling climate change, the Paris Agreement established a pattern for countries to report on climate change every five years, which means that, over the course of 2025, countries have been announcing their new targets or NDCs (Nationally Determined Contributions). This COP will be a moment to look at those targets, ramp up ambition to cut emissions, and make a tangible difference to the lives of people living in extreme poverty.

What is Tearfund hoping to achieve at COP30? 

At COP30, Tearfund staff in Latin America and policy colleagues from the UK will be:

• calling on world leaders to fulfil their climate finance promises and deliver support for communities facing extreme poverty around the world.
• mobilising the church in the region to raise a prophetic voice for climate justice and bring it to COP30.
• lobbying UK negotiators on climate finance and other key issues that affect our global neighbours living in poverty.
• seeking opportunities to highlight climate issues in the media, and drawing attention to stories of the impact of the climate crisis on the communities we serve.
• calling our supporters to pray with us, bringing the outcomes of this conference and the challenge of the climate crisis before our creator God.

The solutions exist, but we need continued collaboration on a global scale to implement and hold governments accountable to the promises they have made. Words are not enough if promises made by those in power are not kept.

Your prayers and support play a vital role in helping us achieve all that we hope to at COP30. Take a look at this article to see how you can partner in prayer for COP30 and lift up to God everyone affected by the climate crisis.

What is Climate Finance?

Communities who have contributed the least to causing the climate crisis are bearing the brunt of it and have the fewest resources to adapt.

For example, a community living with severe drought, made more likely by climate change, will see an impact on their ability to grow food and make a living. This is profoundly unjust. If this community had the financial resources to invest in climate-smart methods of farming, however, then they could adapt to the extreme weather conditions, provide themselves with nutritious food, and care for the soil so it remains fertile for generations to come. A win-win for people and the planet.

Financial innovations to help communities adapt to extreme weather are already making a difference, but we need more backing to meet the scale of the crisis and its impacts on people living in poverty. Agreement from wealthy nations to support lower income countries financially as they tackle this challenge has been a large part of international climate negotiations. But, the amount of money and how it is delivered has been a point of contention for years.

What is Tearfund asking governments to do?

At COP29, a new global target for climate finance was agreed, which fell far below the amount of money climate-vulnerable countries need. Climate finance could be a significant part of creating resilience to climate breakdown and investing in local communities, but at the moment the pot is simply too small and too difficult to access. Wealthy nations must keep their word, including the money that is owed to support lower income countries to adapt to climate change.

At COP30, Tearfund will be calling on governments to raise ambition on climate finance to deliver the support needed so that the communities we serve can adapt to the impacts of climate change.

*What does our Christian faith have to do with the climate crisis?

Our faith in Jesus causes us to respond to the climate crisis for two reasons. Firstly, because he calls us to care for creation, and secondly because he models how we should seek justice. These are part of our personal discipleship, and also acts of compassion that demonstrate God’s love for the world around us.

Creation was made by Jesus, through Jesus and for Jesus. Colossians 1:16 says: ‘For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.’

Creation is full of life and awe-inspiring beauty, reflecting the glory of its creator. He declared it to be good and we depend on the natural world for life itself. Yet, the climate crisis is destroying nature and putting millions of lives at risk.

Proverbs 31:9 says: 'Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy’, yet the climate crisis pushes millions of people further into poverty. This demands our response. Read more about how our approach to tackling the climate crisis is motivated by faith here.

Seven facts for COP30

1. Every year, an estimated 26 million people are pushed into poverty by extreme weather events and natural disasters.
2. The Amazon rainforest is one of the most biologically diverse ecosystems and home to about three million species of plants and animals, as well as one million indigenous people. Yet, up to 47 per cent of the Amazon Rainforest is at risk of collapse by 2050.
3. The agriculture sector and food systems are responsible for up to 37 per cent of global man-made emissions. Even if fossil fuel emissions were halted immediately, current food system trajectories alone would still push us beyond the 1.5°C threshold of global warming that was proposed by scientists as a safe target to stay beneath.
4. At least 146 land and environmental defenders were killed or disappeared globally in 2024 and about 82 per cent of those cases occurred in Latin America.
5. The climate crisis is expected to increase inequality within every single country around the world.
6. In the first six months of 2025, the world’s wind and solar farms generated more electricity than coal plans for the first time.
7. The host city for COP30, Belém, has been nicknamed the ‘Gateway to the Amazon River’ and the word Belém is the Portuguese word for Bethlehem.