COP30 Belém. Geografia politica della crisi climatica: un fallimento negoziale?

The COP30 held in Belém do Pará in November 2025 represents an emblematic case of the structural crisis of multilateral climate governance. Despite the strong symbolic significance of the Amazonian location and the expectations generated ahead of the conference, the negotiation outcome confirmed the limited capacity of the UNFCCC process to deliver meaningful progress on mitigation, climate finance, and the phase-out of fossil fuels. This article offers a political-geographical interpretation of COP30, analysing it as a space of contestation in which global inequalities of power, responsibility, and decision-making capacity become particularly visible. Drawing on official scientific and institutional sources (IPCC, UNEP, UNFCCC, IEA) and engaging with critical geography and political ecology, the analysis shows how the negotiation deadlock reflects a form of climate governance characterised by variable geometry, marked by the dissociation between ecological centrality and political marginality, the structuring role of energy and financial networks, and the persistent influence of fossil fuel interests. In this context, COP30 emerges simultaneously as a negotiation failure and as a threshold of transformation: the lack of agreement on fossil fuel phase-out points to emerging forms of selective and polycentric cooperation, exemplified by the initiative of countries that met in Santa Marta, Colombia, in 2026 to discuss energy transition outside the UN framework. The article interprets these developments as signals of an ongoing reconfiguration of global climate governance, whose outcomes remain uncertain but politically significant.