As a climate justice advocate working on the frontlines in Nairobi, I have witnessed a painful disconnect between the slow, diplomatic choreography of global climate talks and the urgent, devastating realities faced by communities across the Global South.
The establishment of a Loss and Damage fund at COP27 was a landmark moment, a testament to decades of relentless advocacy from the world’s most vulnerable nations. But a fund in name only is a cruel illusion.
The political haggling and procedural delays that have followed have made a mockery of this promise, proving that without a radical shift in approach, the fund risks becoming an empty symbol.
This is why COP 30, meeting in the heart of the Amazon in Belém, Brazil, must be singularly focused on one objective: transforming the Loss and Damage fund into a functioning, financed engine of justice, with a rigorous action plan and a strict timeline for disbursement.
 The central issue must be the needs, leadership, and sovereignty of the Global South.
The time for vague pledges and voluntary contributions is over. The current model, which treats climate reparations as charity, is a profound failure.
 It allows historical polluters to hide behind accounting tricks while countries like mine, Kenya, and our neighbors across Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, are forced to take on crippling debt to rebuild from climate-fueled disasters we did not create.
When a village in Northern Kenya is wiped out by a drought that starves their livestock, or when a community in the Philippine sees their homes washed away by a super typhoon, they are paying the price for the industrialized world’s emissions.
This is not a future risk; it is a present-day, ongoing catastrophe that demands restitution, not just sympathy.
For COP30 to be judged a success, it must conclude with what I call the "Belém Mandate." This must be a binding agreement that delivers three non-negotiable outcomes.
First, a quantified and equitable funding target, moving from a beggar’s bowl of ad-hoc pledges to a science-based, needs-assessed financial target in the hundreds of billions, delivered as grants, not loans. Second, a transparent and accessible disbursement framework governed with equitable representation from the Global South, ensuring that funds can flow directly to national and local institutions without being bogged down in soul-destroying bureaucracy.
And third, a strict, actionable timeline that holds the world accountable: binding financial commitments secured by COP31, the fund fully operational and disbursing to at least 50 projects by 2026, and the initial target fully disbursed by 2028.
Holding COP30 in Belém is a powerful symbol. It places the conference in a region that embodies both the world’s ecological lungs and its deep climate wounds.
The nations of the Global South must form a unified, unyielding bloc, led by Brazil, the Alliance of Small Island States, and the African Group of Negotiators. They must refuse to leave Belém without this concrete action plan. The old narrative of climate talks—where the South begs and the North deliberates—must be inverted.
The credibility of the entire UN process is on the line. If we cannot operationalize the most basic principle of justice—that you pay for the damage you cause—then these annual gatherings are merely a costly form of climate denial. COP30 must be the moment the world finally listens, not to our speeches, but to our demands for a binding, funded, and actionable future. Anything less is a failure we cannot afford, and a betrayal we will not accept.
Aaron Greene is a climate justice advocate and the Executive Director of Community Engage, a grassroots environmental conservation and climate justice advocacy organisation based in Nairobi, Kenya.
