Each year brings high expectations from the UN’s climate summit—and rightly so. Each year the crisis deepens. This year the urgency has peaked, according to reports released ahead of the gathering of leaders, diplomats and negotiators in Belém, a Brazilian city on the edge of the Amazon, for the 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The World Meteorological Organization said 2025 is on track to be the second- or third-warmest year on record, extending an alarming run of exceptional temperatures. The UN Environment Programme’s “Emissions Gap Report” warned that the world is heading for 2.8°C of warming and that global temperatures are likely to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels within the next decade. Overshooting that threshold will unleash spiralling, unchecked climate impacts. COP30 acknowledged that more climate action is needed—then failed to provide it.
On November 22, the Brazilian presidency gaveled through the final Belém Political Package. Its key outcomes included a new mechanism for international co-operation on a just transition, vague language on tripling adaptation finance by 2035, and a work programme (under Article 9 of the Paris Agreement) to scrutinise finance provided by developed countries to help developing ones mitigate and adapt to climate change. Notably absent was any reference to transitioning away from fossil fuels. Brazil has instead shunted the issue into a roadmap, to be discussed later. Ending deforestation is another roadmap launched at COP30. Although the just-transition mechanism is a win for developing countries and civil-society groups that championed it, the outcome on adaptation finance is far hazier.
The collective strength of the G77 (a coalition of 134 developing countries) and China was on display. Yet the disruptive tactics of some developed countries—including attempts to scapegoat large developing economies as “blockers” of climate ambition and to divide and rule developing blocs—exposed a crisis of legitimacy in the COP process. It is increasingly unclear whom it serves, or whether it remains fit for purpose. Claims that developing countries are blocking ambition ring hollow when China is rolling out the world’s largest clean-technology programme and India is rapidly adding renewable capacity.
The highly polarised atmosphere does little to foster the consensus and co-operation desperately needed in a fast-warming world. Rather than focusing on enabling the implementation of existing national climate pledges through long-overdue financial pledges, the Global North continued to posture as a climate leader even as many of its own nationally determined contributions remain inadequate. Small wonder that, although on its first day the Brazilian presidency managed something many recent summits failed to do—avoid the customary “agenda fight” and start on a seemingly co-operative note—the same could not be said of the ending two weeks later. However, in a diplomatic move, the presidency bundled together several key demands of developing countries that could not make it onto the main agenda items for negotiation and released the Global Mutirão decision (mutirão being Portuguese for “collective effort”). These include four contentious issues—provision of climate finance by developed countries, responding to 1.5°C ambition and implementation gap, transparency arrangements under the Paris Agreement and addressing concerns over climate-related unilateral trade measures.
The outcome was aptly summed up by UN secretary-general, António Guterres: “I cannot pretend that COP30 has delivered everything that is needed. The gap between where we are and what science demands remains dangerously wide.”
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This article was originally published in the December 1-15, 2025 print edition of Down To Earth