Global Issues
Rescued from Fire: the World in 2025
TORONTO, Canada, December 22 (IPS) - Our traditional “year-ender” usually kicks off with a grim litany of world disasters and crises over the past 12 months, highlights IPS partners and contributors and culminates in a more positive-sounding finale. This time I’d like to begin on a more personal note intended also as a metaphor.
On November 20 when the UN climate talks COP30 in Belem, Brazil, looked set to spill over into extra time as delegates harassed by fossil fuel lobbyists haggled over a concluding text, fire broke out in the conference centre. Cue flames and panic.
As thousands looked for the nearest exit, a young Bangladeshi diplomat saw me and instead of joining the mass scramble, he gallantly led me through the crowds to safety. Thank you Aminul Islam Zisan for demonstrating when in crisis people can come together in unique ways.
Thankfully no one was killed in the fire; talks resumed and the Conference of Parties process survived in the form of a concluding document that could be interpreted as a small step forward in the global battle to stem the climate crisis, even while making only an oblique reference to the fossil fuels that are largely creating it.
COP’s survival was not assured given the US boycott ordered by President Donald Trump who dismissed climate change as “the greatest con job” in addressing the UN General Assembly in September.
The US absence from Belem in fact inflicted more damage to the US in terms of its global standing, just as Trump’s decision to shun the G20 talks running parallel in Johannesburg only deepened its reputational harm. Salt was diplomatically rubbed into its self-inflicted wounds by the dignity of G20 host President Cyril Ramaphosa who ignored US opposition from afar and steered adoption of a declaration addressing global challenges, notably the climate crisis.
Looking back, perhaps this was the week that quietly brought the curtain down on the Age of America. Unpredictability, chaos, violence and institutionalised cruelty are the early symptoms of the dramatic shift in 2025 towards unilateralism and protectionism.
Hundreds of Palestinians, including scores of children, have been killed since the US-brokered “truce” between Israel and Hamas began on October 11. Russian air strikes against Ukrainian civilian targets have also regularly punctuated Trump’s flip-flopping efforts to end a war he said he could finish on day one of his presidency.
Sharp cuts in US aid ordered by Trump in January have “fuelled a global humanitarian catastrophe”, according to a statement by the UN Human Rights Council on July 31. Citing two independent experts on poverty, food and human rights, the Council said: “More than 350,000 deaths stemming from the aid cuts have already been estimated, including more than 200,000 children.”
Famine is spreading with the conflict in western Sudan, and lack of finance has also led to cuts in vital UN aid to South Sudan. Over one million people caught in Myanmar’s largely forgotten civil war had their lifesaving support cut by the UN World Food Programme because of funding shortfalls.
Civicus, a global alliance of civil society organizations and activists working to strengthen citizen action, says these multiple and connected crises – conflict, climate breakdown and democratic regression – are overwhelming the international institutions designed to address the problems that states can’t or won’t resolve. US withdrawal from global bodies threatens to worsen this crisis in international cooperation.
But as CIVICUS’s 2025 State of Civil Society Report outlines, civil society has ideas about how to save the UN by putting people at its heart: a theme embraced at COP30 by Open Society Foundations President Binaifer Nowrojee who endorsed Brazil’s democratic leadership for elevating Indigenous and Afro-descendant voices and bringing human rights back to the centre of climate action.
In this rapidly shifting world order, Nowrojee sees the Global South stepping forward with new ideas and a new vision rooted in dignity, fairness, and protection of the planet.
Arguably the most important agreement emerging from COP30 was the Just Transition Mechanism which aims to ensure fair development of a global green economy, protecting the rights of all people, including workers, women and Indigenous people.
Coral Pasisi, Director of Climate Change and Sustainability for the Pacific Community (SPC), highlighted at COP30 how critical the situation has become for island nations experiencing accelerating climate impacts and hoping for meaningful breakthroughs in Belem. She raised the need for stronger support from developed countries for Loss and Damage.
The Gen Z demonstrators who have rocked regimes in South Asia and Africa are certainly stepping up with their visions for fairer futures for all, their protests aimed against nepotism and corruption among entrenched elites. They have been met with bullets in Bangladesh last year, and in Nepal – where the government was forced to resign in September – as well as Tanzania where hundreds were reported killed. Gen Z protests this year also rocked Indonesia, the Philippines and Morocco.
As Jan Lundius, a Swedish researcher, wrote in IPS: “Even though specific incidents triggered these upheavals, they were all due to long-term, shared grievances evolving from stark wealth gaps, rampant nepotism, and unlimited corruption. Above all, youngsters protested against members of powerful dynasties, favouring a wealthy and discredited political elite.”
A combination of conflict and climate disasters can have disastrous long-term consequences, particularly for children’s education. Initiatives supported by IPS like Education Cannot Wait (ECW) and the Safe Schools Declaration focus on providing quality, inclusive education to crisis-affected children to prevent long-term cycles of poverty and instability.
Hurricane Melissa which swept through the Caribbean in October served as a harsh reminder that 5.9 million children and adolescents in Latin America and the Caribbean could be pushed into poverty by 2030 due to loss of education as a result of climate change if governments do not intervene soon, according to UNICEF.
The World Bank estimated the physical damage inflicted by Hurricane Melissa on Jamaica at some $8.8 billion, or 41% of the country’s 2024 GDP.
However the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has also warned governments that they are underestimating or ignoring the inextricable links between climate change, nature loss and food security. Its latest assessment, approved by nearly 150 countries meeting in Windhoek, Namibia, warned that biodiversity is declining everywhere, largely as a result of human actions.
CGIAR, a global research partnership focused on food security, is facing a very different world from when it was founded nearly 50 years ago in terms of having to address climate change, biodiversity loss, and new conflicts, according to CGIAR Chief Scientist Dr Sandra Milach. A major focus is on equipping 500 million small-scale producers for climate resilience to protect their livelihoods and increase stable incomes.
A year-ender wouldn’t be complete in the run-up to festive celebrations without at least a mention of the major religious figures to dominate the news.
Pope Francis, one of the most outspoken pontiffs in modern times, died on Easter Monday. Chicago-born Robert Francis Prevost, 69, became his successor, the first North American elected to the role. Choosing to be known as Pope Leo XIV he called for an end to the ‘barbarity’ of the war in Gaza. He also took aim at climate sceptics and appealed for urgent actions to be taken by world leaders at COP30.
The Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, turned 90 in exile in India, and also made a call for peace in the world. To the delight of his followers, he made clear that he would be reincarnated and that only his trusted inner circle of monks would have the “sole authority” to locate his successor. China swiftly rebuffed his declaration, saying his successor must be approved by Beijing.
In 2025 the world marked 80 years since the end of the Second World War. Minoru Harada, a Buddhist monk and head of Soka Gakkai, recalled his childhood experience of the fire-bombing of Tokyo and pledged his organisation’s determination that no one should have to endure the horrors of war.
Farhana Haque Rahman is Senior Vice President of IPS Inter Press Service and Executive Director IPS Noram; she served as the elected Director General of IPS from 2015-2019. A journalist and communications expert, she is a former senior official of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.
IPS UN Bureau
© Inter Press Service (20251222105116) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service