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The Dubai-hosted COP28, the first annual UN climate summit to be held in the Gulf, saw almost 84,000 people attend. By comparison, COP30 in Brazil will have a much smaller participation, with only about 12,200 people having signed up as of Oct. 8, according to preliminary data from the UN.
This will not be the only key difference between COP30, which starts on Monday, and many of its predecessors. Brazil has also declared that this month’s big event marks a decisive shift to a “postnegotiation” phase of climate diplomacy, with efforts now focused on action and implementing the existing climate commitments made by nations across the world.
This includes the Middle East, which today has an increasingly visible role in the global climate debate, as was shown by COP28 in Dubai and COP27 in Egypt. The Paris Agreement was signed into law as early as 2016 by multiple key countries in the region, including the UAE and Jordan. Today, ��������, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Iraq and Bahrain are among the nations that have made net-zero commitments for the period between 2030 and 2060.
One manifestation of the on-the-ground change that Brazil is seeking in the aftermath of COP30 can be seen in the growth of domestic climate legislation and regulations adopted by various nations. As studies published by the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics reveal, the number of global warming laws and policies in the 100-plus countries under review has grown from just over 50 in 1997 — at the time of the Kyoto treaty — to more than 5,000 in 2025.
This is an astonishing change in the global sustainability landscape compared to the last major global environmental conference in Brazil — the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. It was then that the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was established. This became the baseline for modern Conference of the Parties, or COP, meetings.
The Grantham Institute database indicates that Middle Eastern nations have collectively passed more than 100 significant climate-related laws and policies. These, along with thousands of others, will be scrutinized in Brazil in the coming days with a view to delivering on the commitments as speedily as possible and then building on them in the coming years to expand climate ambition.
The view of the Brazilian hosts is that COPs only constitute one “moment in the year.” They argue that what also matters is what cities, regions, businesses, investors, civil society and governments do in the future, during the other 50 weeks of the year.
To that end, one of the consequences of the growing range of climate laws and policies across the world is the increasing possibility of what may ultimately become a truly global carbon trading market. This could be a game-changing economic and political development.

Middle Eastern nations have collectively passed more than 100 significant climate-related laws and policies.

Andrew Hammond

Dozens of countries and cities, states and provinces across the world already use carbon pricing mechanisms or are planning to do so. A wide cross-section of the national, regional and local leaders who administer these schemes were in Brazil last week for preliminary meetings before the COP30 summit officially started.
While much attention inevitably focuses on the 27-country EU Emissions Trading System, the first such international scheme, there is fast-paced action across the globe.
In the Middle East, multiple countries are seeking to take part in embryonic carbon trading markets, such as ��������’s Regional Voluntary Carbon Market Company, founded by the Public Investment Fund and the Saudi Tadawul Group.
Moreover, the UAE Carbon Alliance, which includes a coalition of firms aiming to develop and grow a carbon market in the nation, has pledged to buy several hundred million dollars of African carbon credits by 2030. The goal is to help spur Africa’s carbon credit generation potential and help the UAE deliver on its climate pledges.
In the huge Asia-Pacific region, a standout development is China’s emissions trading system. This is now the world’s largest in terms of covered emissions, as it is estimated to account for about 8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, or more than 60 percent of the nation’s huge emissions.
However, China is far from alone in the region in moving in this direction. For instance, Vietnam and South Korea have their own carbon market schemes.
At the heart of these promising developments is the growing belief that carbon trading is the most economically efficient way to meet the political ambition of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Along with other countries in the vast Asia-Pacific like New Zealand, Thailand and Indonesia, this could become another regional carbon trading hub in the battle against global warming.
Going forward, this system may be linked with the EU scheme, which will also eventually be aligned with that of the UK. Linking Europe and the Asia-Pacific in this way, alongside other regions including the Middle East and Africa, is a potential game-changer.
Indeed, it is possible to envisage a wider scheme also involving the Americas and other regions. A global carbon hub linking continents could include state-level schemes in the US, including in California and the Northeastern states’ Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
So, at a time of growing pessimism in the climate change debate, there are some promising developments, including a nascent global carbon market. This could become a key development in the fight against climate change, while also reflecting the ambition of COP30’s Brazilian hosts to move climate diplomacy from negotiation to implementation.

• Andrew Hammond is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.