Introduction
The 30th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) concluded in Belém, Brazil – the first COP held at the edge of the Amazon, placing the world’s largest tropical rainforest and its indigenous guardians at the centre of the climate conversation. Dubbed the ‘Implementation and Justice COP’ by the Brazilian presidency, COP30 was expected to move from the ambitious pledges of previous years to tangible, equitable outcomes. As delegates met from 10 to 21 November 2025, many hoped for a turning point; a moment when the political inertia, financial shortfalls and structural inequalities hindering global climate progress might finally be overcome. What emerged instead was a mixed record: significant progress was made on adaptation, loss and damage, and – to some extent – the technology mechanism, yet this was set against the continued absence of a clear fossil-fuel phase-out plan and limited attention to deeper questions around technology access, intellectual property (IP), and equity.
The ‘Belém (Mutirão) Package’ sets out COP30’s consolidated outcome across the core pillars of the UN climate regime. It comprises 29 decisions covering mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology, capacity-building, just transition, gender and trade. As with most COP decisions, the package is not legally binding but rests on political commitments intended to guide Parties’ future action. Its adoption followed intensive negotiations shaped by pressure to narrow the emissions gap, expand support for developing countries, and respond to growing calls for a more equitable multilateral climate architecture. The Package marks progress on climate adaptation, yet ultimately delivers a politically constrained response to the urgent demands of mitigation.
Background
The 2015 Paris Agreement set the path for global cooperation on mitigation, adaptation, finance and technology transfer, yet putting these ambitions into practice has proven difficult. At COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, Parties advanced the climate finance architecture by agreeing on a framework for a New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), which raised the ambition beyond the earlier $100 billion pledge to $300 billion, but left key elements unresolved. The NCQG was widely criticised for lacking rules on allocation, prioritisation of countries most in need, and clarity on the balance between grants, concessional loans and private finance. This left COP30 with the difficult task of operationalising this new framework while addressing the gaps in adaptation funding and loss and damage.
Furthermore, the absence of the United States cast a long shadow over the proceedings, weakening the sense of collective engagement by removing a key player that is both financially capable and a major historical emitter, from high-stakes negotiations. Meanwhile, despite finalising most of the rulebook for Article 6 Paris Agreement – on carbon market provisions – at COP29, challenges in operationalising internationally transferred mitigation outcomes (ITMOs) continued. COP30 thus opened with the central question of whether Parties could move decisively from institutional design to implementation, and whether they would be willing to confront fossil-fuel dependence head-on.
Adaptation framework
The centrepiece of COP30 was the strengthened adaptation framework. For years, climate finance has prioritised mitigation, leaving adaptation (the important task of building climate resilience) underfunded. The Belém Package attempts to redress this imbalance by integrating the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) into national planning and reporting, making it a measurable component of the Paris Agreement. Although further refinement of the GGA indicators will continue through the two-year ‘Belém-Addis Vision’ process, uncertainty remains as to whether states will embrace indicators that may later change. Nevertheless, for many vulnerable countries, this represents an overdue recognition that measures such as coastal protection and resilient agriculture are as critical as scaling renewable energy.
Notable advantages of the adaptation framework include a commitment to double global adaptation finance by 2025 and triple it by 2035. This means that of the projected $300 billion in climate finance that should flow to developing countries by 2035, around $120 billion should go toward adapting and building resilience to climate change impacts. Still, the overall package does not mandate a new round of strengthened Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which are the climate targets each country sets under the Paris Agreement to reduce emissions and guide national action; nor does it embed concrete sectoral emission reduction targets into the legal text. The Package can therefore be described as politically pragmatic but climatically insufficient: it expands the institutional apparatus for coping with climate impacts, without closing the emissions gap that drives those impacts in the first place.
Loss and damage
Loss and damage refer to the negative effects of climate change that occur despite mitigation and adaptation efforts, such as damage to infrastructure, reduced crop yields, and loss of culture. COP30’s principal outcome in this area was the completion of the third review of the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM), which reinforced WIM’s focus on non-economic loss and created a permanent Consultative Group of Experts. The review sought to improve assessment methodologies and expand technical assistance, particularly through introducing regular State of Loss and Damage (Gap) Reports and strengthening the Expert Group on Action and Support to help developing countries in accessing technical assistance and finance. It also improved coordination between the WIM, the Santiago Network and the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD).
Operationalising the FRLD has been slow since its establishment at COP27 and launch at COP28. This year’s COP issued FRLD’s first call for funding and provided more coherent guidance to the Fund’s Board, linking its work to the NCQG and underscoring the urgency of mobilising public finance. Yet the underlying funding gap persists: despite initial pledges of around $788.8 million, the Fund currently holds significantly less, while annual needs may exceed $724.43 billion. High-income countries have historically opposed the Fund and been slow to donate to it, fearing it could become a vehicle for reparations or other financial demands from the Global South.
Technology transfer and IP
A notable yet less publicised development of COP30 was the operationalisation of the Belém Technology Implementation Programme (TIP), a new mechanism under the Paris regime designed to link technology development and transfer with finance, capacity-building and cooperation. The TIP prioritises requests from least-developed countries (LDCs) and climate-vulnerable states, emphasises context-appropriate technologies aligned with national plans, and focuses on building institutional capacity to avoid one-off interventions. However, the TIP’s success depends heavily on the availability of financial resources. At the same time, Parties agreed to review and strengthen the mandate of the Climate Technology Centre and Network (CTCN), a move welcomed by many in the G77 as making the institution better equipped to address developing countries’ technology needs. Together, these developments offer a real potential for scaling renewable energy, adaptation technologies and resilient infrastructure, while prioritising climate-vulnerable countries.
The COP30 decisions and documents avoided explicit references to IP issues, despite long-standing concerns that IP protection can function as a barrier to technology transfer and access in the Global South. In recent years, scholarship on the role of IP rights in shaping access to climate technologies has expanded, with particular attention on patents due to their influence on commercialisation and pricing. While patents are necessary to incentivise innovation, they can also make key technologies unaffordable for developing countries. The absence of explicit references to IP flexibilities or climate-technology pools leaves a significant structural barrier intact, raising questions about how green innovation policy can support equitable climate action. This omission highlights a persistent reluctance by developed countries to address IP reconsiderations, such as revisiting patent restrictions, licensing terms, and other mechanisms that could facilitate wider technology access, even while they endorse expanded technology cooperation in principle.
Carbon markets
Carbon markets stayed alive, but the consensus remains fragile. With much of the Article 6 rulebook finalised in Baku, discussions in Belém focused on implementation. Under the new decisions, older credits from the now-retired Clean Development Mechanism received a six-month window to transition into the Article 6(4) mechanism of the Paris Agreement. This could risk flooding the market with up to around 760 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent credits, which raised strong concerns from civil society groups and several negotiators arguing that it could undermine environmental integrity across the market. Although Parties upheld minimum standards on baselines, leakage and permanence, broader reforms on accountability and transparency did not materialise. Still, COP30 did break years of deadlock on key elements of Article 6. The agreements introduced stronger accounting rules to prevent double counting and formally established the Article 6(4) Supervisory Body, creating a more coherent international market framework. The framework is now clearer, but its environmental value will depend heavily on national implementation.
Fossil-fuel phase-out
Perhaps the biggest disappointment was the failure to secure a formal fossil-fuel phase-out roadmap. Despite support from over 80 countries, many of them from the Global South, the final text again avoided firm, time-bound language on phasing out fossil fuels. Instead, COP President, André Corrêa do Lago, announced that Brazil would lead informal, non-binding roadmaps, that would fall outside the negotiated text, and would therefore lack global endorsement. For climate-vulnerable states and many others, this represented a profound failure of political courage. Belém’s approach to mitigation targets falls short of the clear, uncompromising signal needed to align the world with the 1.5°C goal, a binding obligation under international climate law.
Outside the negotiation halls, Belém’s streets were alive with activism. Massive protests, led by coalitions of Brazilian Indigenous groups, youth networks, and international NGOs, demanded ‘justice now!’ and a global ‘fossil fuel phase-out’. According to media reports, protesters blocked venue entrances, called for land rights, and articulated a sharp critique of how climate negotiations often marginalise those most vulnerable. Yet public pressure could not override entrenched fossil-fuel geopolitics. Furthermore, for the first time in a COP decision, negotiators acknowledged the likelihood of overshooting 1.5°C and the need to minimise both its scale and duration. Although many countries now have 2030, 2035 and net-zero emissions targets, COP30 gave little attention to updating long-term emissions strategies that could complement near-term emissions targets.
The road ahead
2025 has been a progressive year for climate law, sharpening the links between climate obligations, human rights and financial regulation. In July, the International Court of Justice issued its Advisory Opinion on Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change, confirming that states have a legal duty under international law to protect the climate system, including by measures to prevent harmful emissions, cooperate internationally, and ensure intergenerational equity. COP30 helped shift the conversation away from mitigation towards the equally pressing issues of adaptation, climate finance, and compensation for loss and damage, yet a stronger emphasis on adaptation should not come at the expense of ambitious mitigation efforts, nor should it legitimise a politically convenient approach that weakens long-term mitigation commitments. Both strands of action must proceed in tandem if climate governance is to remain effective and equitable. COP30 also expanded the integration of gender, Indigenous and Afro-descendant rights into climate governance. Notably, the new Gender and Climate Action Plan includes activities to increase the influence of women in combating climate change. As negotiations move towards COP31, the key question will be whether the institutions reinforced in Belém can be matched by political will to close the mitigation gap and remove concrete barriers to climate-relevant technologies for the Global South.