Countries agreed a compromise deal, increasing finance targets to cope with the effects of global warming, but falling short of expectations.
In a dramatic final plenary, countries at the COP30 climate conference in Belém, Brazil, compromised.
Their agreement set a new goal to triple finance for adapting to the effects of the climate crisis, and created a mechanism for a just transition toward clean energy, but avoided references to critical minerals or to roadmaps away from fossil fuels and deforestation.
The climate summit, the first to be held in the Amazon biome, took place 10 years after the adoption of the Paris Agreement. With that treaty countries had agreed to prevent global average temperature from rising more than 2C above pre-industrial levels, and ideally to keep this rise below 1.5C.
At the start of COP30, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called for countries to agree on a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels. Two years ago, at COP28, countries had included the first reference to that transition in a COP final agreement, but didn’t agree on how to make it happen. The expectation was for this to be agreed at COP30.
A group of over 80 countries supported Lula’s call in Belém, but this wasn’t enough for the roadmap to make it into the final text. Instead, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago announced at the final plenary that he will create the roadmap during the rest of his presidency, which lasts until COP31 next November.
“Some of you had great ambition on some of the issues, asking us to do more to fight climate change. I’ll try not to disappoint you during my presidency,” he said.
As it became apparent fossil fuels would not appear in the COP30 decision, Colombia and the Netherlands announced that next April they would host the First International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels. This conference, to be held in Santa Maria, Colombia, will be separate from the UN climate process but is designed to complement efforts to achieve the Paris Agreement goals.
Progress was made on adaptation to climate change, with COP30 adopting the first global set of indicators to measure progress on the issue.
The 59 indicators were whittled down from a shortlist of 100 that experts had put forward over the last two years. They will help show where and how adaptation actions are being implemented, and if they are sufficient. Observers told Dialogue Earth the list was agreed behind closed doors and that some key indicators had been eliminated. One that had been dropped measured how well governments integrate adaptation into their public policies. The strength of others had been weakened, they added.
Countries also won’t have funding to actually use the indicators to measure progress, something questioned by observers and negotiators. Colombia’s lead negotiator, Daniela Durán, said at the closing plenary that the “outcome on adaptation falls short” and that the list of indicators “is not based on an inclusive decision, with insufficient time to review it.”
As well as the indicators, countries agreed to triple support from developed to developing nations for adaptation – from USD 40 billion to USD 120 billion per year. Developing countries had asked for the new target to be pegged to 2030, as included in previous drafts, but in the end the deadline was set for 2035.
Climate finance roadmap
Last year, at COP29 in Azerbaijan, countries had agreed to triple climate finance from USD 100 billion to USD 300 billion per year by 2035, with developed countries “taking the lead” on delivering those resources.
At the same conference, countries also agreed to develop a roadmap on how to reach USD 1.3 trillion per year by 2035. The funds for this more aspirational target would come from “all sources”, meaning not just developed governments but also private sources, multilateral development banks and other avenues.
That roadmap was presented in Belém. The measures it suggested include international taxes on carbon emissions and on air and maritime transport, reforms to the global financial architecture, and using debt swaps for climate action.
The final COP30 text “decides to urgently advance actions” to scale up finance to reach the USD 1.3 trillion target. It also “emphasises the urgent need” to reach the floor target of least USD 300 billion per year for developing countries by 2035.
The text also created a two-year work program on climate finance and agreed to host a high-level ministerial roundtable. Carola Mejia, climate justice coordinator at LATINDADD, a Latin American civil society network, said these decisions “only add to a bureaucratic process that, in 30 years, has failed to solve an urgent crisis that is claiming lives, growing more severe every day, and for which time is running out.”
High expectations, low delivery on forests
The Brazilian presidency had billed the Tropical Forests Forever Facility as one of the COP’s flagship initiatives. But it did not receive the support hoped for, with only around USD 5.6 billion raised of an initially targeted USD 10 billion.
Unlike traditional conservation funds, which rely on temporary or project-based grants, the facility is designed to be a permanent, self-financing investment fund, reimbursing investors and rewarding countries for conserving their forests.
Brazil and Indonesia committed USD 1 billion each, Germany USD 1.15 billion and Norway USD 3 billion. However, a number of major developed countries fell short of substantial commitments. France pledged USD 500 million, while the UK pledged none.
Earlier reports had indicated China would likely make a financial commitment but in the end the country offered support rather than money.
“China may have a number of questions about the facility’s design and functioning, particularly whether it will actually deliver the promised investment return,” says Li Shuo, director of China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute.
More fundamentally, however, China most likely feels that developed countries should have taken a stronger lead in committing financially.
Earlier in the conference, President Lula had called for a roadmap to halt deforestation to be included in the COP30 text. But the final text “emphasises” the importance of halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation by 2030, without referencing any roadmap.
Critical minerals omitted in the final days
One of the disappointments of the COP was a failure to include references to critical minerals, such as lithium, cobalt and copper, in the Just Transition Work Programme negotiating track.
This was despite the vocal support of negotiating blocs such as the African Group of Negotiators, Alliance of Small Island States and Environmental Integrity Group, as well as Global South countries including South Africa, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Uruguay, and a concerted push from civil society organisations.
As of 18 November, the draft text of the programme included two points on critical minerals. One stressed the “social and environmental risks associated with scaling up supply chains”, such as from mining. The other stressed the need for “responsible” mining and processing of minerals. But the final version, published on 21 November, removed both of these references.
“Minerals are the backbone of the shift away from fossil fuels – leaving their governance out of just-transition planning will undermine efforts to accelerate renewable energies by 2030 – a key target the COP has already set,” said Antonio Hill, advisor to the Natural Resource Governance Institute, a nonprofit headquartered in the US.
Principal opposition to the inclusion of critical minerals in the text came from China, whose mining and metals companies dominate global critical-minerals supply chains. The Chinese delegation argued that mention should not be included due to a lack of alignment on the definition of critical minerals, observers told Dialogue Earth.
A source close to the Chinese delegation stated that China was unprepared to discuss the issue which it hadn’t expected would come up so strongly in the UN climate negotiation context. Further, it considered the proposed language damaging to Chinese business interests and beneficial to the EU.
Unilateral trade measures
The COP30 final text said parties “should cooperate” to promote a “supportive and open” economic system. The measures taken to address climate change “should not constitute a means of arbitrary or justifiable discrimination or a disguised restriction” on trade, it said. The text also called for hosting two dialogues in 2027 and 2028 to discuss trade barriers and increase international cooperation, with the participation of the World Trade Organisation and the UN Conference on Trade and Development.
At a China Pavilion side event on “Corporate Collaboration and Just Transition”, Wang Mou from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said that unilateral measures, such as the European Union’s carbon levy, called the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), are concerning.
“Financial flows are supposed to move from developed countries to developing ones. However, unilateral measures like CBAM, may reverse this trend by causing money to flow from developing countries toward developed countries,” he said.
Other developing countries as well as China voiced opposition to such trade measures at this year’s COP, including Pakistan, Vietnam and Türkiye.
On 7 November, the COP presidency launched the Integrated Forum on Climate Change and Trade, to deal with issues of climate and trade, which currently have no obvious home in the UN system. The new initiative will be independent from, but linked into the processes of, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the World Trade Organisation. The head of the Chinese delegation, Li Gao, welcomed the forum.
A just transition mechanism
During the first week of negotiations, the Group of 77 and China called for the establishment of a new Just Transition Mechanism, which would include finance, technology support and capacity building.
The proposal was welcomed by the Independent Alliance of Latin America and the Caribbean, the African Group, the Least Developed Countries, the Like-Minded Developing Countries, the Association of Small Island States, and the Arab Group. However, it faced pushback mainly from developed economies who argued that a new mechanism would duplicate existing Paris Agreement institutions and add bureaucratic complexity.
The final COP30 text created such a mechanism to “enhance international cooperation, technical assistance, capacity-building and knowledge sharing, and enable equitable, inclusive just transitions”. Countries will now have to work out the details of the mechanism by COP31.
Teresa Anderson, the global lead on climate justice at ActionAid International, said this is a major legacy to the world: “It’s a huge win for the workers, women and civil society groups who came pleading for a framework to ensure climate action also protects jobs and makes lives better.”
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