Rio to COP30: Three Decades of Promises and Lost Rights

M. Zakir Hossain Khan

COP30 in Belém is not just another annual climate meeting; it is the 32-year report card of the global governance architecture conceived at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. And that report card shows this: delivery has been sporadic, cosmetic, and perilously disconnected from the physics of climate breakdown.

The Amazon, once celebrated in Rio as an ecological miracle, is now nearing an irreversible tipping point. Even the communities who protected it for millennia are demonstrating against COP30—not because they oppose multilateralism, but because multilateralism has repeatedly marginalised them.

Rio Promised Rights, Participation and Protection — But Delivery Remained Fragmented

The Rio Summit gave birth to three pillars of international environmental governance: the UNFCCC (climate), CBD (biodiversity) and UNCCD (desertification). Each of them was expected to be participatory, equitable and accountable. Over time, however, delivery has deteriorated:

Rio has achieved only 34 per cent of biodiversity commitments (CBD GBO-5).

CO₂ emissions have increased by more than 60 per cent since 1992.

The world is heading towards 2.7°C warming under current policies (UNEP 2024).

Funding obligations remain chronically overdue, and adaptation needs are three times higher than current financial flows.

Rio gave the world a vision. COP30 shows that vision remains largely unrealised.

The Rights Gap: The Missing Link Between Rio and Belém

Although Rio pledged to involve Indigenous peoples, today they receive less than 1 per cent of climate finance. Meanwhile, carbon market-related land grabs and resource exploitation have grown because climate decisions lack binding power. This is not merely a delivery gap but a rights gap. COP30 may be technically stronger, but it still fails to correct the structural imbalance that Rio left unresolved: decision-making without custodianship.

A Sleepwalking System: Rio’s Weakness Magnified by COP30

Rio created three overlapping conventions without a unified governance structure. Over the decades, climate, oceans, food, forests, finance, security and technology expanded under the UNFCCC; traditional knowledge, access and benefit-sharing under the CBD; and migration, peace and livelihoods under the UNCCD.

The result is an institution too broad to govern effectively—producing watered-down decisions and weak accountability. COP30 is taking place within a system never designed to confront a planetary emergency of this scale.

The Amazon: Rio’s Ultimate Test

Rio celebrated forests as the lungs of the planet. Three decades later:

The Amazon has lost 17 per cent of its cover and is nearing the 20–25 per cent dieback threshold.

Violence against Indigenous land protectors continues to rise.

Carbon markets risk encouraging extraction in the name of “green growth.”

The Amazon does not need another pledge. It needs power—power for those who protect it. That was missing in Rio, and it remains missing at COP30. The frustration and agitation of Indigenous peoples at COP30 reflect systemic failures to uphold their rights and include them in decision-making.

Youth: The Post-Rio Generation Betrayed by Incrementalism

The post-Rio generation—those born after 1992—now make up more than half of the world’s population. They inherited a world with:

a) tripled fossil fuel subsidies;

b) soaring climate debt;

c) worsening biodiversity collapse;

d) escalating climate disasters;

e) chronic failure to deliver the promised $100 billion per year.

Their impatience is not emotional; it is rational. A system built for a slow-moving crisis in 1992 cannot manage the rapid emergency of 2025.

Natural Rights-Led Governance (NRLG): Completing What Rio Began

Natural Rights-Led Governance (NRLG) offers the structural correction that Rio avoided:

a) recognising nature as a rights holder, not a resource;

b) making Indigenous peoples co-governors, not consultants;

c) enforcing ecological and rights-based obligations, not voluntary reporting;

d) directing finance to custodians instead of losing it in bureaucratic channels;

e) ensuring accountability through law rather than political discretion.

NRLG is not an alternative to Rio’s vision—rather, it is the long-overdue update that can turn that vision into reality.

The Verdict: COP30 Advances, but Rio’s Unfinished Business Remains

COP30’s stronger fossil fuel language, clearer adaptation metrics and pressure on financing mark progress—but progress that is insufficient. It advances paperwork, not power structures. Without non-negotiable rights, the journey from Rio to COP30 will remain a tale of grand promises, half-fulfilled and increasingly risky.

What the World Must Do Now

Integrate nature and Indigenous rights into COP decisions.

Build governance based on custodianship and shared decision-making.

Create an NCQG system that sends finance directly to communities.

Replace voluntary pledges with binding commitments, aligned with the ICJ’s advisory opinion on natural rights as a foundation for human rights.

Use NRLG as the backbone of future multilateral climate action.

Rio taught us what must be done. COP30 teaches the consequences of delay. The next 30 years will not forgive the failures of the past 30. The world must shift from promises to power, from negotiation to justice, and from Rio’s dream to NRLG-driven delivery. The deadline is not 2050. It is now.

Rio promised justice and rights, but COP30 provides a harsher lesson: the world delivered promises, not protection. Emissions rose, ecosystems collapsed, finance failed to reach its targets, and Indigenous guardians of the last forests still receive less than 1 per cent of climate funding and almost no voice. This is not a policy gap but a governance and rights failure. Without a rights-based transformation anchored in natural rights and Indigenous co-decision, COP30 will be remembered not as a moment of repair but as the moment the system revealed its limits. The deadline is not 2050. It is now.

M Zakir Hossain Khan is the Chief Executive of Change Initiative, a Dhaka-based think-tank; Observer of the Climate Investment Fund (CIF); and Architect and Proponent of Natural Rights-Led Governance (NRLG).