Ahead of COP 30: Protecting the Climate from the Financial System

The thirtieth conference of parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP30), scheduled for November 2025 in Belém, Brazil, deep in the Amazon rainforest, marks the tenth anniversary of the Paris Agreement. While antecedents give no confidence that the effective solutions to the polycrisis will come solely from a conference of the actors that have caused the crisis, this milestone conference will serve as a critical opportunity to review global progress since the agreement, discuss future climate ambitions, and strengthen collective action on climate change.

But let us take a moment, not to clap but to reflect on the cover image attached to this piece. At first glance, a pine branch looks chaotic: needles jutting out in uneven directions, non-linear, thriving. Yet within that irregularity lies nature’s order and symmetry. Strip it apart, stack the needles neatly, and suddenly, it looks tidy. But the life is gone.

What appears as order is, in truth, chaos.

This paradox mirrors today’s financial system. Finance prides itself on structure — balance sheets, risk models, and neat categories of creditworthiness. But beneath the tidy columns lies fragmentation and distortion. Nature, by contrast, contains real coherence: ecosystems that regulate rainfall, store…