“It is well within our power to secure a sustainable future”: Doing what needs to be done for our planet
With the UN’s annual climate change conference COP30 currently underway in Brazil, we spoke with Engineering graduate and climate activist Kirils Holstovs to hear his expert opinion on the pressing issue.
10 November 2025
Ahead of COP30 in Brazil, NCL in Action alumni changemaker Kirils ponders the future of our planet
Despite still being in the early stages of his career, Class of 2019 graduate Kirils Holstovs has been the driving force behind numerous local and global climate initiatives and has presented at three United Nations Climate Change Conferences (COPs). He is a passionate speaker and activist who inspires individuals and organisations to take systematic action on climate change and sustainable development.
In this blog, Kirils outlines his views on whether the COP conferences achieve meaningful change for our planet, and the top three things that need to happen to protect our future.
How effective are the COP conferences in tackling climate change?
Whilst at university, I really bought into the idea that civil engineering and adjacent industries were key to determining whether society would be on a sustainable development path and that we had a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a sustainable future.
My first experience of a UN COP conference was in 2021, when I was selected – amongst 400 young leaders worldwide – to attend the Pre-COP26 Youth4Climate summit. It was truly a life-changing experience for me. It allowed me to develop my skills for meaningful participation in high-level platforms, created friendships and connections all over the world, and massively broadened my perspectives about climate action.
I have been engaging with annual COPs since, representing the engineering and infrastructure sectors and young professionals’ perspectives, to help bridge the science and policy gap, and, importantly, the implementation gap.
So, as someone who has volunteered hundreds of hours to engage with COPs, their overall effectiveness has been an important question to answer for myself.
What inspired my passion for climate activism? Knowing that it is well within our power to limit climate change and secure a sustainable future.
For each of these global events, we knew the key objectives we needed to achieve to help avoid the more damaging and costly climate scenarios, and each of those COPs has fallen short. Time is not on our side, and with every year of inadequately ambitious mitigation action, there will be an ever-growing bill to settle on adaptation and resilience and, unavoidably, “loss and damage”.
Climate change, as a truly global and multifaceted problem, cannot be addressed without international cooperation. So, there absolutely has to be a platform that provides a process for international climate policy decisions and facilitates a global response based on commonly recognised principles and goals. Fundamentally, COP decisions can only work if they are recognised as legitimate and are implemented by the Parties.
The painfully slow progress at COPs and the resulting ambition gap is commonly attributed to the default consensus-based decision-making instead of a majority voting system, with the former often leading to the lowest common denominator decisions, well below what is needed to tackle one of the most complex challenges humanity has ever faced.
Climate change cannot be addressed without international cooperation. So, there absolutely has to be a platform that provides a process for international climate policy decisions.
Bolder and quicker
Some participants will always be willing and will have the capacity to be bolder and quicker than others. Therefore, many actions at COPs have been aimed at reducing barriers for action and helping reach positive tipping points for key sustainable solutions, which could be done without a consensus between all the Parties. These initiatives can be driven by groups of countries, subnational governments, businesses and partners from NGOs and IGOs (intergovernmental organisations), and their efforts are often acknowledged in COP decisions.
Examples of such impactful initiatives are the Marrakech Partnership, the Breakthrough Agenda, and the recently launched COP30’s Action Agenda, which mobilise more ambitious actions in collaboration between governments and non-state actors, covering the key emission sectors and areas of impact (such as energy, transport, buildings, construction materials and agriculture). Looking at those, one can be simultaneously encouraged by the amount of systematic effort being put in and overwhelmed by the wide-reaching implications of climate change on all parts of the economy, society and nature.
Each of those COPs has fallen short of delivering favourable outcomes for humanity and the planet. Time is certainly not on our side.
The bottom line, though, is that we need to both raise the ambition of our policies and to bridge the implementation gap. For example, the 2025 Emissions Gap Report published by the UN Environment Programme determined we were on a climate path of just below 3◦C warming by the end of the century under current climate policies, and around 2.5◦C with implementation of unconditional nationally-determined contributions (NDCs). It should also be noted that national policies forming the NDCs can have significant degrees of uncertainty and may simply not be supported by appropriate implementation plans. Thus, less than half of G20 members have been assessed to be on track to achieving their NDC targets, though a few G20 countries have been noted to have significantly narrowed the implementation gap.
While there are many things wrong with the COP process, we should not forget about the initiatives that deliver real-world impacts. Renewable sources of energy continue to break records and likely have passed their positive tipping point, with sources such as wind and solar becoming significantly cheaper than the lowest cost fossil fuels in 2024 globally, according to recent reports by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). The COPs may not always result in positive headline-grabbing pledges, but they serve as an important platform that allows you to showcase solutions, hear perspectives that you may not normally be exposed to and find partnerships for all year-round work.
What three things need to change to help save our climate?
Government commitment to global climate targets
There is no alternative to rapid, deep, and sustained reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris Agreement, which at its core depends on the phase out of fossil fuels. Governments should ensure that each sector has a plan which outlines a decarbonisation pathway in the context of the wider economy, provides confidence for investment, aligns local skills, ensures a just transition, and delivers robust action.
The COP process must also ensure that the global climate targets are met in an equitable way, recognising the need for a just transition of the Global South, supported by the major economies that have disproportionately contributed to climate change and benefitted from fossil fuels. The associated climate finance and investment deals should not be allowed to become “climate colonialism”, extracting the Global South’s resources required for the energy transition, creating debt burdens and imposing unfavourable conditions.
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There needs to be a just transition of the Global South, supported by the major economies that have disproportionately contributed to climate change and benefitted from fossil fuels.
Adapt and prevent
Secondly, accept that the climate has already changed and will continue to do so, bringing increasingly adverse impacts. The frequency and severity of extreme weather events are going up: more people become exposed to flooding and forest fires, critical infrastructure faces disruptions, food production becomes threatened, whole areas become uninsurable and so on. Those impacts already manifest themselves in hundreds of billions of pounds of losses globally every year, in addition to human and animal suffering.
Intuitively, prevention is cheaper and more effective than treatment. An analysis by the Environment Agency found that every £1 invested in flood defences prevents £8 of damage, of which £3 is direct saving for the government. To create sustainable solutions that offer the best value, mitigation and adaptation should be considered holistically and alongside other integral aspects such as nature-positivity and social value.
The sad reality is that for some, climate change means that their land may simply become uninhabitable. This year, the world has seen the first of its kind agreement on climate mobility, providing an option for citizens of Tuvalu to relocate to Australia, as the small nation’s islands are projected to be consumed by the rising sea levels this century.
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Reading yet another report on missing the global climate targets, it is not difficult to experience a level of climate anxiety.
Think sustainability at all levels
Finally, we need to meaningfully integrate sustainability into all levels of decision-making. Reading yet another report on missing the global climate targets or seeing impacts of another one in however-many hundred years event, it is not difficult to experience a level of climate anxiety, but for most, it is not possible and probably not desirable to continuously sustain that feeling. So, whether you are a student, an engineer or a senior policymaker, you generally have to get on with daily tasks. Climate action is a continuous, long-term and systematic effort, and we have to make sure that those day-to-day tasks are a part of sufficiently coordinated systems in which the sum of all pieces adds up to the required climate outcome whilst delivering the expected socio-economic value and restoring nature.
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To unlock quicker and more efficient action, investment decision-making should recognise interdependencies between the different systems and adequately account for costs, risks, externalities and co-benefits over an appropriate timeframe. Notable examples of such integrations include putting a price on carbon and measuring ecosystem services.
I am sure there may be many versions of this list, and it is certainly not limited to just three key things. Wherever you think your contribution to the solutions is more effective, each of us can help bring the required changes a little closer, and working together is in the interest of all of us.