Changing Markets at COP30

As COP30 kicks off, we at the Changing Markets Foundation are calling for bold, urgent action on one of the most overlooked drivers of the climate crisis: agricultural methane, and for greater scrutiny of greenwashing narratives that distract from real solutions.

We’ll be on the ground, hosting and contributing to key events to cut through the noise and demand accountability. These include a joint session with Mighty Earth to unpack how the meat industry is shaping global climate policy. Together, the panel, including Brazilian researchers and Indigenous activists, will examine how, while greenwashing its image, the sector continues to be responsible for deforestation, significant emissions, land grabbing, and labour abuses.

We also have an official side event, Cut the Gas, which will bring together leading voices from policy, science, and civil society to explore how we can turn political commitments into measurable results on methane. Our focus will be on highlighting practical pathways to meet the Global Methane Pledge to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030, before it’s too late. And we’re taking part in discussions on the ever-pressing issue of the industry’s push to use the controversial metric GWP* to reframe how agricultural methane is measured.

This is just some of what we’re up to. See our advisory to find out more:

See what we’re up to at COP30

New Methane Action Tracker

On Monday, day one of COP30, we unveiled our new Methane Action Tracker, the first interactive tool to monitor and compare agricultural methane emissions across both companies and countries. Using maps, scorecards and rankings, the tracker brings to life data on the agricultural sector’s role in driving climate change, revealing which nations and corporations are taking credible steps to cut emissions, and which are lagging.

The tracker is a one-stop shop for policies and actions from the world’s largest food corporations, retailers and major livestock-producing countries. The results are clear and deeply disappointing:

• Country tracker: A global snapshot of 16 major meat- and dairy-producing and consuming countries plus the EU. While 82% are signatories to the Global Methane Pledge, only six countries and the EU have reported small reductions, and none are on track to meet 2030 targets.
• Dairy and coffee company scorecard: 23 major brands (including Nestlé, Arla, Danone, Starbucks and Dunkin’) assessed on reporting, targets and action. Danone leads with 62.5%, while 11 companies, including McCafé, Costa and Dairy Farmers of America, scored below 25%.
• Supermarket retailer ranking: 20 global food retailers (including Carrefour, Lidl, Tesco and Ahold Delhaize). Tesco is the only company scoring above 50%, while 12, including Walmart, Leclerc and Mercadona, scored under 25%.

As our CEO, Nusa, put it:

“Our message is simple: methane matters. It’s both a super-heating gas harming our planet and our greatest opportunity to slow the climate crisis if we act fast. Agriculture is the largest source of human-made methane emissions. But as our tracker shows, the world’s biggest food companies and major meat- and dairy-producing countries are dragging their feet.

We’re launching this tracker to tell governments in Belém: no more time to waste. We need to see urgent action on methane, with mandatory targets now.”

Check out the Methane Action Tracker

New report: The Meat Agenda

Agricultural Exceptionalism and Greenwash in Brazil

In the week before COP30 began, we released our latest investigation, The Meat Agenda: Agricultural Exceptionalism and Greenwash in Brazil. The report reveals how industry manipulation is putting Brazil’s climate leadership at risk.

The Meat Agenda exposes the scale of corporate capture, bringing together for the first time a calendar of meat industry–influenced events shaping agriculture’s role at COP30. It highlights Brazil’s agricultural methane blind spot, with no measures in its NDC to cut livestock emissions — a stark example of agricultural exceptionalism that carries through to the policies the country does outline in its NDC, from weak enforcement of the Forest Code to an Emissions Trading System that excludes agriculture altogether.

While President Lula’s government has made progress in reducing deforestation and tackling hunger, these gains sit alongside a political landscape dominated by industry-backed forces that obstruct climate action. With more cows than people, livestock farming accounts for over 75% of Brazil’s methane emissions, yet agriculture is absent from national reduction plans.

The investigation also reveals how giants like JBS, the world’s largest meat company, are portraying themselves as climate champions while lobbying behind the scenes to avoid regulation. From promoting agribusiness as an “environmental powerhouse” to sponsoring journalist workshops and influencer campaigns, the sector has orchestrated a sophisticated effort to deflect scrutiny and weaken policy.

The Meat Agenda has already gained media attention in Brazil and internationally. We’ll be using it throughout COP30 and beyond to call out greenwashing and push for genuine accountability in global food and climate policy.

Read the report

Briefing paper: The New Faces of GWP*

Our latest briefing paper, The New Faces of GWP*, revisits the debate around this controversial metric and how it’s being used to distort progress on methane. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has explicitly rejected GWP*, and now we see more and more scientists worldwide doing the same.

In 2023, our report Seeing Stars exposed how GWP* can allow companies and countries to claim they are “climate neutral” or even “cooling the planet” while continuing to emit huge amounts of methane. This new briefing updates that research with fresh findings from freedom of information requests across Ireland, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Europe and Northern Ireland, looking at the state-of-play in the lead up to COP30.

It unpacks the new terminology emerging around the metric — from “no additional warming” to “temperature neutrality” — being used to obscure the reality behind the use of the metric. The briefing paper also examines how countries’ use of GWP* translates into actual on-the-ground emissions.

Read the briefing

In the media

• Le Monde: At COP30 in Belem, the fight against hunger clashes with an agenda heavily favouring agribusiness (French)
• The Grocer: Brazil denounced for “greenwashing” ahead of COP30
• Bloomberg (The Business of Food): Can Eating More Beans Help Save the Planet?
• Devex Dish: Could COP30 be a watershed moment for food systems?
• The Intercept Brazil: Agribusiness waged a war-like campaign to manipulate public opinion on the eve of COP30 (Portuguese)
• Revista Forum: Agribusiness attempts to manipulate climate debate and influence COP30 decisions, report indicates (Portuguese)

What we’re reading (& joining)

• The New Republic: The Meat Advertising Case That Should Be Talked About at COP30 (includes a link to our report, The Meat Agenda)
• DeSmog: Look Out for These 8 Big Ag Greenwashing Terms at COP30
• Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Michael Mann to Bill Gates: You can’t reboot the planet if you crash it
• Carbon Brief: The COP30 Insider Pass