Climate Developments Ahead of COP30

Ahead of COP30, Bangladesh civil society held a Pre‑COP30 National Sharing and Planning Meeting and established a National Climate Justice Forum to consolidate advocacy priorities and ensure marginalized and climate‑vulnerable communities are included in national and international negotiations. A Potsdam Institute co‑authored study published in PNAS shows that carbon pricing combined with redistribution — either a globally uniform price with transfers to poorer countries or country‑differentiated pricing with domestic revenue recycling — can accelerate the energy transition while raising welfare and reducing inequality, underscoring the need to design climate policy that protects the poor to sustain public support. Meanwhile, Vanuatu is drafting a UN resolution to translate the International Court of Justice’s unanimous July 2023 advisory opinion — that states have legal obligations to protect the climate and uphold human rights — into concrete political action to curb fossil‑fuel industry influence, and it aims to build a cross‑regional coalition to table the measure after COP30. Vanuatu’s climate minister Ralph Regenvanu says the effort seeks an architecture outside traditional COP processes to force state compliance, though some states have pushed back on referencing the ICJ opinion in climate negotiations. Separately, Circle is reportedly exploring reversible transactions for its USDC stablecoin to offer fraud recourse for users and attract institutional clients, a change that would trade off crypto transaction finality for greater consumer protection.