By 2024, national climate targets put the world on track for 2.7C of warming, which among other impacts, would expose five times more people to unprecedented heat compared to 1.5C.⁵ By signing the Paris Agreement, countries agreed to set new and more ambitious climate plans every five years, but 95% missed the deadline earlier this year. By October, 64 out of 197 countries had submitted new plans (Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs), but these only cut carbon by 10% by 2035, about a sixth of what is needed to meet the 1.5C goal.⁶

• Countries setting 2035 emissions reductions targets that align with 1.5C of warming, cover all sectors of the economy and all greenhouse gases (including methane)  
• NDCs that reflect key goals of COP28’s ‘Global Stocktake’, committing to a just, equitable transition away from fossil fuels, tripling renewables and ending deforestation by 2030
• Should NDCs continue to fall short of what is needed, a convincing solution to hold countries to account or plug the gap

As expected, COP30 delivered only incremental progress on NDCs. While the total number of NDCs increased to 122 out of 197 by the end of the conference, their collective ambition still puts us on track for 2.3-2.5C of warming if fully implemented.⁷

There were notable highlights. South Korea committed to stop building new coal for the first time, and Mexico introduced its first absolute cap on emissions. But there were also some glaring omissions: India, the world's third largest emitter, didn’t submit an updated NDC at all.

With only four years left in the carbon budget for 1.5C, it’s clear that something needs to give. In response, a potential roadmap for transitioning away from fossil fuels quickly became the talk of the COP. The roadmap received backing from over 80 countries, but was ultimately blocked by major oil-producing nations led by Saudi Arabia and Russia (with support from China and India). In the end, it was not only the roadmap that failed to make it into the ‘Global Mutirão’ decision (the formal outcome of the negotiations).⁸ The document failed to mention fossil fuels at all, the main cause of climate change, causing many to lose faith in the COP process.

Instead of a roadmap, or a plan to reform the NDC process itself, the final agreement kicked off two new initiatives: a Global Implementation Accelerator and the Belém Mission to 1.5. Both aim to increase ambition and action on NDCs, but currently lack enough detail to reignite confidence in the multilateral negotiations.

Meanwhile, Brazil plans to take the fossil fuel transition roadmap idea forward outside of the official UN process. This process will be voluntary, but if enough countries get behind it, the roadmap could be a powerful tool for change, and not being connected to the formal negotiations could even help speed up delivery. Colombia (the fifth-largest coal producer) is already demonstrating its commitment by offering to co-host an inaugural event on transitioning away from fossil fuels with the Netherlands in April 2026, which will inform the roadmap.⁹

Developing countries need at least $1.3 trillion per year by 2035 (from external sources) to mitigate and adapt to climate change. At COP29, developed countries agreed to ‘take the lead’ in raising $300bn, and a roadmap was launched to figure out how to find the remaining $1 trillion. Since then, the global economic situation has become even more difficult; the US’ U-turn on climate left an $18bn hole in the climate finance pot, and other big players (the UK, Germany and France included) announced cuts to foreign aid budgets. What’s more, much of the climate finance that developing countries do receive comes in the form of loans with high interest rates, risking further debt burdens.

• Within the ‘Baku to Belém Roadmap to $1.3tn’:
  • A breakdown of finance targets for mitigation, adaptation and covering loss and damage caused by climate change, with interim milestones for 2035
  • Practical options to scale climate finance, including a range of innovative sources such as carbon taxes for high-emitting industries (polluter pays levies) and removing fossil fuel subsidies
  • Solutions to make funding easy to access and affordable, particularly for vulnerable communities, by reducing bureaucratic barriers and streamlining application processes
  • Solutions to address the debt problem, such as expanding concessional finance (including guarantees and debt swaps), reforming Multilateral Development Banks and using development finance to attract private investment.
• Key recommendations from the roadmap being officially adopted or endorsed by negotiators, along with clear timelines and accountability mechanisms for putting them into practice
• Smaller coalitions of actors moving ahead with implementation regardless of what comes out of the formal negotiations

Familiar divides between developing and developed countries prevented any big strides forward for climate finance in the formal negotiations (adaptation finance aside – see below).

The Baku-to-Belém Roadmap contained a range of potential solutions, from taxing luxury fashion and military goods to raise funds, to a ‘one-stop-shop’ for guidance on climate-resilient debt clauses and debt-for-climate swaps, coordinated by MDBs, the IMF and the UN. However, the roadmap received very little attention in the formal talks, and the final text merely ‘takes note’ of it, leaving it unclear how its recommendations will be taken forward.

Even the $300bn goal developed countries had previously promised to take the lead in raising proved divisive at COP30. Developing countries sought more clarity on exactly how much developed countries would contribute, as the wording of the goal allows the $300bn to come from both public and private sources. They wanted to discuss Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement, which states that developed countries ‘shall provide’ climate finance, but developed countries largely resisted the idea of discussing this at all. A compromise was reached in the form of a two-year work programme focusing on Article 9 of the Paris Agreement more broadly (covering all forms of climate finance), but it seems likely that any discussions will rehash old debates.

Fortunately, outside of the formal negotiations, there were promising signs at COP30 that finance is flowing, including a $9 billion support package for farmers to adopt regenerative agrifood systems; $148bn annual investment from major utilities for grid and storage expansion; and $300m in philanthropic funding to tackle the health impacts of climate change.¹⁰ 

The world’s forests hold nearly twice the amount of carbon emitted from fossil fuels since 1850¹¹. The more we lose them, the more carbon stays in the atmosphere and the harder it gets to reach Net Zero by 2050. Yet efforts to effectively halt deforestation remain well off track. Deforestation and wildfires are degrading forests at alarming rates – an area the size of 22 football fields was lost every minute in 2024 – and only 4% of climate finance goes towards protecting them.^12,13

• The decision to host COP30 in the Amazon paying off, bringing in more money, attention and action for forest protection
• More contributions to the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), Brazil’s new investment fund which promises steady, performance-based rewards to tropical forest nations keeping deforestation rates below 0.5%
• Strict investment criteria and safeguards for the fund (beyond the initial commitment not to fund activities relating to fossil fuels, peat and deforestation)

The TFFF attracted a decent amount of money: $5.5 billion in initial pledges from countries including Norway, Indonesia and Brazil, and a further $1.1bn from Germany.^14,15 Some of this money is conditional: Norway will only hand over the cash if another $7.3bn is committed by the end of 2026, and if its share stays under 20% of the total. Others which had been expected to contribute, notably the UK which had funded the initiative’s development, failed to do so.  

The fund also attracted a fair amount of criticism. Unlike traditional conservation funds that rely on donations or grants, TFFF works by channelling returns back to investors. After 5.5% interest is paid to investors, the fund expects to pay tropical forest nations $4 for every hectare of protected forest annually. Some called out this incentive for being too low (especially compared to the strong economic incentive to cut down forests). Others criticised the idea of putting a price on forests in the first place, including Indigenous Peoples caring for forests.¹⁶ The Brazilian government did seek input from Indigenous Peoples and local communities when designing the fund, but making sure to engage these groups in a meaningful way will be crucial going forward, especially following complaints that COP30 prioritised symbolic presence of Indigenous Peoples over genuine participation.¹⁷

As well as the TFFF, the idea of a roadmap for halting and reversing deforestation gained momentum in Belém, thanks to a rallying cry from the Brazilian president in the days running up to COP30. More than 130 countries had already agreed to end deforestation by 2030 at COP26, and a roadmap could help drive some progress on the ground. In the end, despite gaining the support of 93 countries, the roadmap didn’t survive the multilateral process and was not formally adopted.  

Brazil plans to launch one anyway and will convene a coalition of the willing to develop the roadmap before presenting it at COP31 next year. Notably, however, the majority of the 93 nations that backed the roadmap are forest nations – others too will need to get behind the initiative, recognising that the loss of the Amazon Rainforest is a critical climate tipping point that would have repercussions for us all.¹⁸ 

In the first half of 2025 alone, natural disasters claimed almost 8,000 lives and caused $162bn worth of damages.^19,20 Extreme weather events and food shortages are becoming more frequent and deadly, but only 28% of international climate finance goes towards efforts to adapt to the impacts of climate change. Unlike mitigation, which is measured in emissions reductions, adaptation is also harder to quantify, which makes target setting and progress tracking difficult. As a result, there has been minimal progress to establish a Global Goal on Adaptation, as countries agreed to do under the Paris Agreement.

• Agreement on a list of 100 specific ‘indicators’ or metrics for tracking progress on adaptation, under the broad categories of water, food, health, finance, technology and capacity building
• More money for adaptation on the table, with individual countries making commitments to boost the Adaptation Fund
• Ideally, a new adaptation finance goal, to replace the existing goal (to double 2019 levels by 2025) which expires this year

Adaptation has risen up the agenda at recent COPs and secured a modest victory this year at COP30. The call to triple adaptation finance did make it into the final agreement at Belém, but it is not as ambitious as many hoped. Least Developed Countries (LDCs) were pushing for a target of $120bn by 2030 (triple the existing goal of $40bn by 2025). The final agreement pushes the target date out to 2035, and doesn’t specify what the baseline year is. This is against a context in which UNEP confirmed that adaptation finance actually dropped by $2bn between 2022 and 2023. If this trajectory continues, even the previous goal to double adaptation finance to $40bn by 2025 would be missed. There were some efforts to plug the gap – individual countries came forward with their own pledges which topped up the Adaptation Fund by $135m, but this is still a long way off the fund’s $300m/year goal.

COP30 also managed to strike a compromise on the indicators for adaptation. A list of 59 indicators was adopted, and a 2-year work programme (the Belém-Addis vision) launched to help further refine and operationalise them. Negotiators were in a difficult bind: delaying the adoption of the indicators for two years could stall adaptation efforts, but rushing through unclear and unusable indicators wouldn’t help either. Many of the indicators will require money and technical support to be actionable, making ongoing efforts to scale adaptation finance, capacity building and technology transfer all the more important.

For the first time ever, trade featured on the formal COP agenda. In the final agreement, countries agreed to hold three years of annual dialogues to discuss how trade policies can support or hinder climate action. This came after China, India and others claimed that unilateral trade measures meant to drive climate action – such as the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism and tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles – can penalise developing countries and restrict international trade. Given how divisive the topic of trade was at COP30, finding a consensus will be challenging, but in principle, bringing climate and trade together is a positive and necessary step in the transition to a decarbonised economy. 

The negotiations also delivered progress on ensuring a just transition. COP30 produced a new institutional mechanism – informally dubbed the Belém action mechanism – to ensure that the move to a green economy is fair and inclusive for everyone. Under the new mechanism, countries agreed to share best practices, pool resources, and coordinate technical assistance and international cooperation on just transitions, bringing together existing, often fragmented, initiatives. This outcome is cause for celebration, particularly as the final text acknowledged the need to consider everyone impacted by the transition (including Indigenous Peoples, local communities, people of African descent, women, children and disabled people), not only workers in carbon-intensive industries.²¹

Countries also adopted a 9-year gender action plan. This sets out specific actions for gender-responsive climate action, which means removing barriers to women participating in climate leadership, as well as ensuring that climate policy, finance and other initiatives benefit gender minorities. The plan isn’t binding and doesn’t come with any guaranteed finance, so its impact will largely come down to political will, but could be a useful resource for countries planning gender-inclusive climate action.