COP30: An opening in search of identity - and funding

COP30 has officially kicked off with an expectant and, paradoxically, restless atmosphere. The world arrives in Belém do Pará with the feeling that this could be a defining COP - but still without a consolidated dominant narrative. It's not enough to discuss targets. The debate is shifting to the most difficult dimension of all: how to finance adaptation in a world that is no longer just discussing mitigation - it is discussing survival.

Portugal is inaugurating its Pavilion precisely at this global crossroads. Under the slogan "Water that unites", the country is taking on as a diplomatic and strategic priority one of the government's transformative agendas: responding to the structural vulnerability of the territory in the face of water scarcity, coastal erosion and extreme events that are already cyclically affecting the country from North to South.

This thematic choice isn't just technical - it's political in the best sense. The investment in works such as the future desalination plant in Albufeira, the Pomarão water intake or the municipal programs to reduce losses in urban networks shows a clear vision: to prepare Portugal for a climate that has already changed, before the crisis becomes unmanageable and unaffordable.

In a COP that is searching for its own identity, Portugal presents a pragmatic identity: adaptation based on science, engineering and the ability to execute.

But there is the unavoidable variable: all of this requires funding - massive, stable and long-term. COP30 will be measured not just by declarations - but by real financial instruments that can scale up solutions.

If this COP manages to build financial bridges that are as solid as the diplomatic bridges it aspires to - it could finally emerge from this decade of transition with a credible course. The "water that unites" can thus be a metaphor and a warning: the planet no longer negotiates in the abstract. It negotiates in the concrete. And urgently.

COP30 starts now. So does action.

Watch here à Ceremony Inauguration of the Portuguese Pavilion at the 30th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change