Ecowatch: Why global talks matter

From Nov 10, 2025, onwards, the world – including Malaysia – will meet in Belem, Brazil, for this year’s climate talks. — Development Aid

WHEN international climate negotiations make the news, it is usually in the context of the annual Conference of the Parties (COP) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). These conferences dominate headlines, as world leaders debate how to tackle the climate crisis. Yet the climate COPs are only one part of a wider system of intergovernmental negotiations that shape our shared future.

Alongside climate, there are global processes on biodiversity, desertification, plastics, and oceans. These may sound distant, but they quietly determine the quality of the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the ecosystems we depend on. For Malaysia, and our Asean family, these talks are not abstract. They affect our forests, our coasts, our livelihoods, and our health. As COP30 convenes in November 2025 in Belém, Brazil, it is time to broaden our view.

Too often, international agreements are seen in isolation. Climate under the UNFCCC. Biodiversity under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. Desertification under the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. In reality, each of these agreements and processes form a web. Each influences the other, and together they determine whether humanity can stay within safe planetary boundaries.

One of the many ongoing meetings of stakeholders struggling to put together an effective plastics treaty – they have been trying since 2022. — International Institute for Sustainable Development/Earth Negotiations Bulletin

Consider plastics. Since 2022, countries have been negotiating a global treaty on plastic pollution. The talks are messy, progress is slow, and corporate lobbying is fierce. But if concluded, a plastics treaty could protect oceans, cut fossil fuel demand, improve air quality, and safeguard human health.

Or consider the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites). On the surface it is about animals. In practice, it also reduces the risk of zoonotic disease spillovers that can lead to pandemics. Viewed through the lens of planetary health, these processes are inseparable.

A photo from the 2011 meeting in Bali of the COP to the Montreal Protocol, one of the rare global climate treaties that worked. — Environmental Investigation Agency

History shows what is possible. The Montreal Protocol of 1987, designed to phase out ozone-depleting substances, remains the most successful international environmental treaty to date. It reversed the crisis of the ozone hole and prevented significant warming, since many banned chemicals were also potent greenhouse gases. Importantly, it offered financial and technical assistance to developing countries, ensuring no one was left behind. The lesson is simple: When global agreements are grounded in science, equity, and accountability, they can deliver transformative results.

That is why Malaysia cannot afford to ignore these negotiations. Our region is among the most vulnerable to the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. Rising sea levels threaten megacities: Jakarta, Manila, Ho Chi Minh City, and Bangkok. Forest degradation and peatland fires in Borneo and Sumatra trigger transboundary haze, with direct health impacts. Overfishing and marine plastics threaten the livelihoods of millions of people.

Every one of these challenges is shaped by multilateral processes. Climate negotiations determine the flow of finance for adaptation and just transitions. Biodiversity negotiations could set rules on how forest conservation is valued in global markets. Plastics talks could set the rules that shape South-East Asia’s role as one of the world’s largest users of plastic and importers of plastic waste.

Critics often dismiss negotiations as slow, bureaucratic, or even failures. The recent plastics talks in Geneva were widely labelled as such. But progress in diplomacy is rarely linear. Even when deals stall, the negotiations themselves clarify positions, force industries to innovate, and nudge societies to build alliances.

For small island states in the Pacific, these meetings are not optional; they are existential. Without them, they stand little chance of securing climate finance or marine protections. To brand these processes as pointless is to undermine the very platforms that give vulnerable nations a voice.

As COP30 approaches, global attention will turn to Brazil, and the Amazon. But we should not treat this as someone else’s story. Just as the Amazon is a global climate stabiliser, so too are South-East Asia’s rainforests, peatlands, and oceans. The choices made in Belém will reverberate across this region. And beyond COP30, a constellation of negotiations will continue to decide our collective future.

Global governance matters. These are the only mechanisms humanity has to confront crises that no country can solve alone. For Malaysia and its neighbours, the task is not to dismiss these processes as distant theatre, but to engage them with urgency, ambition, and solidarity.

If we fail, the rules of our survival will be written by others.

Prof Tan Sri Dr Jemilah Mahmood, a physician and experienced crisis leader, is the executive director of the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health at Sunway University. She is the founder of Mercy Malaysia and has served in leadership roles internationally with the United Nations and Red Cross for the last decade. She writes on Planetary Health Matters once a month in Ecowatch. The views expressed here are entirely the writer's own.