Rollbacks in Brussels overshadowed Europe’s presence at COP30 in Belém, while Indigenous movements, civil society and frontrunner nations pushed forward plans for agroecology, plant-rich diets and fair climate transitions. Investigative researcher and reporter Rachel Sherrington joins the dots between Belém and Brussels.
COP30 closed in Belém on 22 November under a cloud of frustration. Fossil-fuel producers led by Saudi Arabia succeeded in stripping references to phasing out oil and gas from the final text, while high-income countries once again arrived with limited ambition. As delegates questioned whether the summit process itself now needs an overhaul, food systems — a leading driver of deforestation in the Amazon region where the COP took place — sat at the centre of many tensions.
Over the past three years, food systems have risen rapidly up the COP agenda. In Brazil, they featured prominently in the presidency’s Action Agenda and discussions around a global deforestation roadmap. Yet negotiations have continued to sidestep politically uncomfortable issues: phasing out food systems’ dependence on fossil fuels, tackling methane emissions from industrial livestock, and confronting agriculture’s role as the world’s leading driver of forest loss.
Against this backdrop, EU leaders arrived in Belém promising to “walk the talk”. Instead, their delayed and weakened climate target — combined with climate-finance shortfalls and environmental rollbacks advanced in Brussels during the summit itself — led many delegates to accuse the bloc of hypocrisy on forests and food.
Outside the negotiating rooms, however, signs of momentum were visible. Record Indigenous participation, mass civil-society mobilisation for agroecology, and a new diplomatic push for plant-based, diversified diets led by Denmark suggested that even as formal talks faltered, food-systems transformation was advancing elsewhere.
Forest rollbacks at the ‘Forest COP’
Forests were central to COP30, hosted on the edge of the Amazon — home to immense biodiversity and a vital global carbon sink. Agriculture, driven in part by international demand for commodities such as beef, sugar and coffee in markets including Europe, remains the leading cause of forest destruction.
Yet in the same week that the EU’s climate chief emphasised the bloc’s commitment to ambitious action, lawmakers in Brussels were moving in the opposite direction. On 17 November — the start of the summit’s second week and, ironically, its designated food day — officials in the Council of the European Union adopted a position proposing a full one-year delay to implementation of the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR).
Introduced in 2023, the law requires companies to prove that imports into the EU — including Brazilian beef, cocoa and soy — are not linked to deforestation after 2020. NGOs hailed it as a potential “game changer”. A June 2025 analysis by Global Witness found the EUDR could protect a forest area the size of Austria over five years.
The EU cited problems with its IT systems as the reason for postponement. But Giulia Bondi, a senior campaigner at Global Witness, said the decision reflected “short-term political calculations” that ignored the long-term importance of forests in stabilising the climate and underpinning global food systems.
Writing from Belém, Bondi said: “While the most important climate talks of the year are happening at the doors of the Amazon, the EU is dismantling its strongest tool to stop being complicit in forest destruction. The gap between commitments and action is widening more than ever.”
Despite last-minute calls from environmental groups to halt the delay, the EU confirmed both the postponement and less stringent requirements for smaller operators during trilogue talks on Friday.
An agriculture-shaped hole in the EU’s climate target
A second credibility gap emerged in the EU’s updated nationally determined contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement. Released late after tense internal negotiations, the plan lacked concrete targets to reduce agricultural emissions — particularly methane.
The omission alarmed experts. UN climate scientists say global methane emissions must fall by 45 percent this decade to limit warming, yet agriculture accounts for 54 percent of Europe’s methane output. Analysis by environmental group Mighty Earth showed the NDC relies almost entirely on the EU’s “effort-sharing regulation” — a policy that, according to the EU’s own calculations, has cut agricultural emissions by just 5 percent since 2005.
The gap raised questions about the EU’s commitment to the Global Methane Pledge, launched at COP26 with a promise to cut methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030. Critics note that while fossil-fuel methane faces increasing regulation, measures to curb livestock emissions remain largely voluntary.
Political pressure has since reinforced that imbalance. In the face of farmers’ protests and industry lobbying, livestock emissions were largely exempted from the Industrial Emissions Directive — one of the EU’s main regulatory tools for curbing emissions of methane.
“The NDC’s lack of commitments on methane from agriculture is hard to justify,” said Jurjen de Waal of Mighty Earth. “The EU was a champion of methane reduction just a few years ago. Governments can’t claim climate leadership while ignoring the sector that dominates their methane footprint.”
Fossil fuels and finance: the credibility gap
While food systems gained prominence at COP30, fossil fuels — responsible for more than two-thirds of global emissions — remained the focus of negotiations. The two issues are deeply intertwined.
The fossil-fuel economy is already destabilising agriculture through extreme heat, drought and unpredictable rainfall. At the same time, industrial food systems remain heavily fossil-fuel dependent, accounting for an estimated 15 percent of global energy demand through fertilisers, pesticides, transport and cold chains.
During the summit, the EU joined a push led by small island states for a global fossil-fuel phase-out roadmap. More than 80 countries backed the proposal, but it collapsed under opposition from Saudi Arabia, India and others. While Europe’s support was welcomed, many delegates questioned how the bloc could call for sweeping transitions abroad while falling short on finance.
As at previous COPs, resistance to ambitious climate roadmaps was closely tied to demands from parts of the Global South for firm commitments on climate finance. The IPCC and other scientific bodies have repeatedly warned that inadequate funding remains the single biggest barrier to climate action.
Despite pledging more climate finance than any other region, much of the EU’s promised funding remains undelivered, with significant portions coming as loans rather than grants — increasing debt burdens many developing countries say are already unsustainable. Climate adaptation finance stands at just one-twelfth of what developing countries require, while smallholder farmers face an estimated $75 billion shortfall in support to adapt and survive.
Alongside its backing for a fossil-fuel roadmap, the EU has also played a progressive role in food-systems discussions, supporting agroecology under the Sharm el Sheikh work programme on agriculture. But campaigners say that, as with fossil fuels, progress risks being undermined by the lack of funds.
“The biggest gap between words and action is finance,” said Marie Cosquer, an analyst with French NGO Action Contre la Faim. “The EU has made positive moves on agroecology and fossil fuels, but advancing ambitious roadmaps without providing the finance to make them possible is simply not credible.”
Others cautioned against reducing the EU’s role to simple hypocrisy. Sven Harmeling of Climate Action Network International said some inconsistency is inevitable in a transition of this ambition.
“Some hypocrisy is unavoidable during the transition, but it’s better for the EU to proactively push for cooperation and processes on fossil fuels — even amid internal struggles — than to stay silent until it’s fully fossil-free,” he said. “The key is transparency about internal resistance, while continuing to accelerate the transition step by step.”
Green shoots beyond the negotiations
Even as talks faltered inside the summit halls, COP30 also revealed growing momentum for food-systems transformation beyond the formal process.
Across Belém, the People’s Summit brought together an estimated 70,000 smallholders, Indigenous leaders, youth activists and civil-society groups. Their declaration called for a shift towards agroecology, food sovereignty and democratic control of food systems — approaches many argue are more resilient to climate shocks than industrial agriculture.
Within official circles, coalitions of ambitious countries also sought ways to move beyond deadlocked negotiations. Colombia — one of the strongest advocates for a fossil-fuel phase-out — announced plans to host an international conference on a just transition away from oil and gas in 2026, co-hosted by the Netherlands.
A similar dynamic emerged around food. Denmark, which adopted a national action plan in 2021 to expand plant-based food production and consumption, used COP30 to encourage other governments to explore comparable strategies. Danish officials held talks with counterparts from Brazil and elsewhere, framing plant-rich diets as a mainstream environmental and economic opportunity rather than a culture-war issue.
Backed by €168 million in public funding, Denmark’s plan supports farmer training, research and development, and plant-based food in schools and public institutions. Crucially, it avoids framing dietary change as a zero-sum conflict with livestock farming, instead presenting plant-based production as a complementary revenue stream.
“For us, the key is showing that this doesn’t have to be a civil war between agriculture and environmentalists,” said Rune Drag Christoffersen of the Danish Vegetarian Society. “It’s common-sense, modern farming to acknowledge that we should eat more greens. Farmers already grow plants — and in many cases there’s more money in producing food for people than for feed.”
Countries such as Portugal are now exploring similar pathways. Denmark has also used its influence within the EU — where it has held the rotating presidency since June — to help advance the conversation.
Leaders including the UN Secretary-General have urged governments to maintain faith in the COP process, which — despite under-delivering relative to the Paris Agreement’s goals — has helped slow the pace of global emissions. Yet in Belém, many found greater cause for optimism beyond the negotiating halls, where Indigenous leaders, civil society and a handful of ambitious governments moved ahead on food-systems transformation without waiting for consensus.
This article is produced in cooperation with the
Heinrich Böll Stiftung European Union.
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