Four tests for COP30

In the ten years since the Paris Agreement was signed, real progress has been made in addressing the climate crisis. Global carbon emissions are growing five times slower than they were a decade ago, dropping from 1.7% to 0.32% per year,¹ projected temperature rises have fallen from 4C to 2.7C², and clean energy deployment has hugely exceeded expectations - in 2024 alone, the world installed 553 GW of new solar capacity, overshooting 2015 forecasts by more than 1500%.³

05 November 2025

Chloe St George

Senior Analyst, Net Zero Intelligence Unit, the Carbon Trust

Simon Retallack

Insights Director, the Carbon Trust

But it’s not enough. Current national policies mean the 1.5C target, the collective goal at the heart of the Paris Agreement, remains out of reach.

Many hoped COP30 would be a landmark summit and with Brazil hosting, an opportunity to accelerate progress towards the 1.5C goal. But as of 30 September 2025, countries covering over two-thirds of global emissions have yet to submit more ambitious climate plans, the US has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement, and trust between nations is at a low ebb after years of broken commitments4. To make matters worse, well-documented logistical challenges in Belém, the small Amazonian city hosting COP30, have left many delegates scrambling to find a place to stay.

The Brazilian Presidency wants this COP to be about implementation, not just dialogue. While major breakthroughs are unlikely, four tests will determine whether Belém delivers meaningful progress, or just more hot air. Here’s what to look out for:

1. Will COP30 shrink the emissions gap?

By 2024, NDCs put us on track for 2.7C warming by 2100:

Sources: Emissions Gap Report 2024 | UNEP - UN Environment Programme; Chapter 3 — Global Warming of 1.5C

Current national climate targets put the world on track for 2.7C warming. This would expose five times more people to unprecedented heat compared to a 1.5C scenario and push one-third of humanity outside historically feasible temperature boundaries.⁵

The challenge for COP30 is whether it can push countries to deliver more ambitious targets that get us closer to 1.5C, thereby avoiding the dramatic increase in impacts greater warming would cause.⁶ By signing the Paris Agreement in 2015, countries agreed to set new climate plans every five years, each more ambitious than the last. The third round of pledges (Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs) is due this year. The stakes are high – this may be the last chance to keep the 1.5C goal within reach.

NDCs should set out 2035 emissions reduction targets that:

Align with 1.5C of warming
Cover all sectors of the economy and all greenhouse gases (including methane)
Reflect key goals of COP28’s ‘Global Stocktake’, committing to a just, equitable transition away from fossil fuels, tripling renewables and ending deforestation by 2030.⁷

The current state of play on NDCs is not encouraging. 95% of countries missed the original deadline for NDCs and only 64 out of 197 have now submitted updated plans. Many of these new NDCs also fall short on ambition. Collectively, they only cut carbon by 10% by 2035 - about a sixth of what is needed for 1.5C - and fewer than half commit to phasing out fossil fuels.⁸ Furthermore, many developing countries’ NDCs rely on finance from developed countries, which further underlines the failure to deliver a climate finance target that met developing countries’ needs at COP29.⁹

There is still time to turn this around. More countries are expected to submit revised NDCs in the run up to and at the COP itself. The question will be whether they are ambitious enough to align with 1.5C. If they aren’t, negotiators will face tough choices: hope that countries overdeliver on their promises, urge them to come back next year with more ambitious plans, or potentially rethink the COP process.

2. Will COP30 plug the finance gap?

Source: Raising ambition and accelerating delivery of climate finance - Grantham Research Institute on climate change and the environment

Finance remains COP’s perennial stumbling block. Developing countries need at least $1.3 trillion per year by 2035 from external sources to mitigate and adapt to climate change. COP29 saw developed countries agreeing to ‘take the lead’ in raising $300bn, with a vague call for ‘all parties’ (including the private sector) to find the rest.¹⁰

The context is not promising. The global economic situation is difficult, the US’ U-turn on climate has left an $18bn hole in the climate finance pot, and other big players, including the UK, Germany and France, have announced cuts to their foreign aid budgets.

The ‘Baku to Belém Roadmap to $1.3tn,’ launching ahead of COP30, should outline options for plugging the gap. The roadmap needs to address:

A breakdown of finance targets for mitigation, adaptation and covering loss and damage caused by climate change, with interim milestones to 2035¹¹
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
Addressing the debt problem. Most climate finance currently comes as loads with high interest rates, risking further debt burdens for developing countries. Solutions include expanding concessional finance – including guarantees and debt swaps - reforming Multilateral Development Banks and using development finance to attract private investment.

Even if these elements are included, the Roadmap is not currently binding or part of official negotiations.

A test for COP30 is whether negotiators endorse its recommendations and agree on timelines and accountability mechanisms. Even without consensus in the negotiating room, it will be important to watch if smaller coalitions of actors move ahead with implementation anyway. First-movers prove that progress is possible and can generate global momentum.¹²

3. Will COP30 slow deforestation?

The deforestation challenge

Source: Systems Change Lab, State of Climate Action 2025: SoCA Report

The world’s forests hold nearly twice the amount of carbon emitted from fossil fuels since 1850¹³. 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.^14,15

Hosting COP30 in Belém – the gateway to the Amazon Rainforest – has put forests in the spotlight. Not always for the right reasons, with the cutting back of protected rainforest to build a new road for the conference made headlines earlier in the year.

The Brazilian Presidency is hoping to change the narrative and the reality on the ground on forests, by launching its Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF) on the sidelines of COP30. The TFFF aims to triple international forest finance, incentivise forest protection and channel money towards local communities. It works by paying steady, performance-based rewards for countries that avoid deforestation.

Unlike traditional conservation funds that rely on donations or grants, TFFF aims to channel returns back to investors. Money will be invested in a diverse portfolio of low-carbon activities and any interest above the first 5.5% (which goes to investors) will go to tropical forest nations keeping deforestation under 0.5% (monitored using satellite data). Crucially, 20% of these payments will go to Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, who protect forests on the ground.¹⁶

Brazil has pledged the first $1bn ahead of COP30. The test for COP is whether its hosts will persuade other countries to contribute a further $25bn, along with $100bn from the private sector. Beyond cash commitments, another test is how strict the investment criteria is. So far, not funding activities relating to fossil fuels, peat and, of course, deforestation have been agreed, but the full list is still being refined. If implemented with the appropriate safeguards, this initiative could be a game changer in the fight to preserve forests.

4. Will COP30 deliver on adaptation?

Sources: Climate action key findings | UN; Climate events have cost $162b in 2025. Insurance covered most | World Economic Forum

In the first half of 2025 alone, natural disasters claimed almost 8,000 lives and caused $162bn worth of damages.^17,18 As extreme weather events and food shortages have become more frequent and deadly, adapting to climate change has moved up the agenda at COPs.

Under the Paris Agreement, countries agreed to establish a Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA). However, unlike mitigation – measured in emissions reductions – adaptation is harder to quantify, which makes target setting and progress tracking difficult.

Recent COPs established broad areas for measuring progress, including water, food, health, finance, technology and capacity building. This year, negotiators must agree on a list of 100 specific ‘indicators’ or metrics to track. Things are moving in the right direction: 9,000 possible indicators were whittled down to 490 for the Bonn Climate Talks in June, and to 100 by September.^19,20 One question COP30 needs to resolve is whether the list should include ‘means of implementation’ (i.e. financial support from developed countries).

Separately, there is the matter of adaptation finance. The existing goal – to double 2019 levels of adaptation finance by 2025 – expires this year. Many are pushing for a new goal at COP30, including the group of Least Developed Countries calling for adaptation finance to be tripled between 2022 and 2030 (from $32.4bn to $97.2bn). The test for COP30 is whether it delivers an actual number or just a plan to agree a new goal. Individual countries making adaptation finance commitments would give a much-needed boost to the Adaptation Fund, but this remains to be seen.

Will COP30 rise to the challenge?

The next few weeks will tell whether COP30 will deliver the progress needed across each of these four areas. While there is a reasonable chance more countries will submit updated NDCs and make pledges to the Brazilian hosts’ new forestry facility, it is unlikely to significantly shift the dial on 1.5C, especially as the prospects of a breakthrough on climate finance look very slim.

If that proves the case, it will largely be because the geopolitics of climate action have rarely looked so difficult. The shadow cast over COP30 by the hostility to this agenda by the new US administration is a long one and delegates are anxiously waiting to see if it doesn’t just withdraw but actively obstructs the negotiations. If that happens, the relevance of the multilateral approach to solving climate change through the COP process could be called into question.

How China and Europe respond will be critical. As two of the world’s largest economies, both remain convinced by the necessity and benefits of decarbonisation, but how far they are willing to go to lead coalitions of other willing countries, within and outside the negotiations, remains to be seen.

Look back after COP30 concludes for our analysis of what happened and what it means for the future of climate action.

1 Paris Agreement at ten – ‘brakes slammed on’ emissions growth, finds analysis | Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit

2 Report of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement | UNFCCC

3 10 Years Post-Paris: A decade that defied predictions | Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit

4 Developing countries accuse rich of broken climate promises at UN | Reuters

5 Quantifying the human cost of global warming | Nature Sustainability

6 IPCC Sixth Assessment Report | IPCC

7 Outcome of the first global stocktake | UNFCCC

8 Nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement. Synthesis report by the secretariat | United Nations Climate Change

9 COP29: Key outcomes agreed at the UN climate talks in Baku | Carbon Brief

10 COP29 UN Climate Conference Agrees to Triple Finance to Developing Countries, Protecting Lives and Livelihoods | UNFCCC

11 COP30: A visual guide | Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit