A fire at last month's COP30 UN climate conference — this year held in the Brazilian city of Belem, a gateway to the Amazon River — temporarily closed the Blue Zone where negotiations took place, and led to about a dozen being treated for smoke inhalation. That fire is a bit of an easy metaphor for both the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and the destructive, planet-warming influence wielded by fossil-fuel stakeholders over the proceedings. All that was missing, allegorically, was a fiery dumpster nearby.

This year's COP — the annual UN “Conference of the Parties” climate gathering — was the first to be hosted by Brazil since the original Earth Summit was held in Rio in 1992. Belém was selected by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva precisely because of the powerful symbolic message of hosting a climate conference in the Amazon. But the infrastructure in this impoverished city simply isn’t built to absorb 50,000-odd delegates, journalists, activists, observers, and other stakeholders. Lodging was scarce almost from the moment Belém was announced — rates of over $1,000 a night were common, even for small rooms, and many local residents were evicted to make room for attendees — giving an opening to forward-thinking owners of by-the-hour “love hotels” converting to overnight lodging.

But the selection of the Amazon offered some hope that COP30 would be different than the ones that immediately preceded it — COP28 and COP29, respectively, were held in the petro-states of Azerbaijan and the UAE, and were dubbed “the oil COPs” because of the record number of oil-industry lobbyists in attendance.

And though this wasn’t an “Oil COP” in name, it may as well have been. Fossil-fuel influence was impossible to miss in the final negotiated text, which leaned on ambiguous language about pursuing an “orderly and just transition,” failing to commit to a full phase-out of coal, oil, and gas — a loophole large enough for every major producer to stroll through. Delegates also inserted generous allowances for carbon capture and “abated fossil fuels” (meaning continued fossil use paired with uncertain carbon-capture offsets), a victory for petro-state lobbying.

All that said, was COP30 a success or a failure? It’s a bit more nuanced than that. There was a win for the process itself: multilateralism held, with 195 countries and entities managing to reach an agreement, even in the absence of the United States. But most importantly, COP30 failed to either secure a binding roadmap to phase out fossil fuels or even commit to a global deforestation end-date. The stronger action desired by most attendees simply went up in smoke.

SOCIAL GOOD MATCHMAKING

The world is more fractured and disjointed than ever before.The global economy, destabilized by a pandemic and the pressures of climate change, is being further disrupted by escalating geopolitical conflict and erratic tariff measures. These forces are having a severe impact on local communities.

But the core belief of two nonprofits, Pyxera Global and Common Impact, is that convening key stakeholders from the public sector, private sector, and civil society via skills-based volunteering (SBV) — can address — and solve — the world’s most pressing problems. And now Pyxera Global and Common Impact are joining forces.

Both nonprofit organizations, partners of BSL, have been decades-long leaders in SBV, which specifically aligns the talent, expertise, and skill sets of some of the world’s most well-known brands’ employees, and pairs them to those most in need of those skills. Such social-good matchmaking yields wins across the board for all stakeholders:

• for the small community-based nonprofits that need scale and skills
• for the brands themselves looking to make impact
• for the brand’s employees searching for both more meaningful ways to give back and a path to wellness benefits
• for the communities in which both the nonprofits and the brands are based
• and for the global community, which can embrace the new, fruitful solutions derived from these pairings, and scale them as needed to tackle the common, pervasive issues that distress countless other regions.

HOW TO TELL 'SLOP' FROM SHINOLA

The private sector is transforming exponentially with AI, but nonprofits — which could also benefit greatly from that technology — are facing a sizable readiness gap. How are charitable organizations — already bedeviled by government-funding cuts, shrinking donor bases, inflation, and political uncertainty — supposed to navigate and adapt to this increasingly game-changing tool?

That was one of the topics covered by the "Re: Conference," an all-day event produced by BSL partners Hudson Ferris (a boutique fundraising firm) and Civic Hall (a state-of-the-art learning and training center) in New York last month, addressing the tectonic shifts — from fundraising to operations, from governance to communications — currently impacting nonprofits.

Pyxera Global CEO Deirdre White surfaced the readiness gap in a panel moderated by Brooklyn Story Lab called "Re:Model: What Does the Future Hold?," noting how her nonprofit is addressing that gap with its AI for Impact initiative, aimed at connecting corporate AI expertise with nonprofits to build capacity and give employees firsthand experience with AI’s potential for social change. Other panelists warned against AI "slop" ("NEVER use Sora!," counseled AdvocacyAI founder Tom Spencer) and the potential negative impact AI can have on climate (such as Sage Lenier, founder and director of nonprofit Futureline, who was just back from COP30 in Brazil), but also built amazing tools (such as Will Schrepferman's DonorAtlas, an essential fundraising platform that connects the dots on assets, affiliations, and giving patterns).

The day also featured outstanding speakers on two other panels (moderated by Hudson Ferris CEO Edward Leibman), and facilitators who led attendees through hypothetical scenarios in workshops that covering legal, finance, fundraising, and comms challenges. Stay tuned for more Re:Conferences at Civic Hall in 2026.