COP30 in Belém unfolded against a turbulent geopolitical backdrop and at a moment when global climate signals have never been clearer: warming is accelerating, impacts are intensifying, and the window to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius is closing fast. While negotiators assembled a sprawling ‘COP30 package’, the final outcome fell well short of the urgency reflected in science. Still, the conference delivered pockets of progress, clashes over process, and — crucially — signals of where the multilateral system may need to evolve to remain credible in an era of overshoot.
From the outset, COP30 marked by opacity, struggled with questions of procedure and transparency. Week one began smoothly, with the COP presidency proposing a ‘Mutirão’ process to advance pending items. Yet week two quickly turned contentious as key negotiations shifted into closed-door ‘shuttle diplomacy’, leaving Parties without access to evolving text and sidelining champions of ambition. This generated frustration, culminating in several delegations raising procedural concerns during the final plenary. The episode underscored a fundamental lesson: climate multilateralism depends on trust, and trust requires open, participatory processes.
The Mutirão decision aims to “set the Paris Agreement policy cycle fully in motion”, launching a Global Implementation Accelerator designed to help countries move from pledges to practice. Science is unequivocal that rapid emissions cuts — at least 60 per cent below 2019 levels by 2030 — are required to retain even a 50pc chance of limiting warming to 1.5°C. Achieving these demands domestic action anchored in long-term strategies, regulation, and investment, particularly from G20 economies. With the next Global Stocktake set to begin in 2026 and new roadmaps announced for transitioning away from fossil fuels and halting deforestation, COP30 created frameworks for future acceleration, even if it did not meaningfully advance ambition now.
The new buzzword defining COP30 was ‘implementation’. One of COP30’s rare multilateral bright spots was the Just Transition Work Programme, showing a modest win. It delivered strong rights-based language and created a pathway towards a future Just Transition Mechanism. Missing, however, were concrete references to fossil fuels or coordinated national transition planning — an omission that reflects ongoing political resistance from several Parties.
Billed as the ‘Adaptation COP’, expectations were high but outcomes limited. While the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience was completed and a set of Global Goal on Adaptation indicators was adopted, many Parties found the results underwhelming and the process opaque. Adaptation finance emerged as a partial win: the call to at least triple adaptation finance by 2035 creates a trajectory for growth, though ambiguity around baseline years leaves room for interpretation. Major work remains to ensure indicators become robust, measurable, and legitimate.
COP30 unfolded under an emerging paradigm: the world is now near certain to surpass 1.5°C in the early 2030s.
COP30 saw movement on the Warsaw International Mechanism review and guidance to the new Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage. Yet final texts avoided acknowledging the profound need to scale up Loss and Damage finance — effectively relegating a political issue to the technical realm. For vulnerable countries already facing escalating climate impacts, this represents one of the most glaring gaps in the COP30 package.
Momentum for transitioning away from fossil fuels grew rapidly at COP30, with nearly 90 countries supporting a roadmap and Colombia announcing a dedicated global conference for 2026. Yet final negotiated text diluted energy language, reducing references to last year’s UAE consensus and excluding any timelines or operational commitments
Finance remained embedded across discussions but ultimately disappointed many vulnerable countries. The absence of clarity on Article 9.1 and ambiguous adaptation finance framing weakened confidence. On the other hand, the first-ever inclusion of ‘trade’ in UNFCCC text marks a turning point: climate-related tariffs, competitiveness concerns, and supply chain transitions are now central to political discourse. A series of dialogues and consultations through 2029 will shape how climate and trade regimes begin to intersect.
COP30 unfolded under an emerging paradigm: the world is now near certain to surpass 1.5°C in the early 2030s. This reality will profoundly reshape multilateral climate governance. The Paris Agreement’s architecture — rooted in voluntary Nationally Determined Contributions — must evolve to remain effective in an era of accelerating impacts, rising adaptation debt, and growing geopolitical fragmentation.
Three shifts are likely and necessary:
From pledges to performance: A decade after Paris, the multilateral system must move beyond cycles of voluntary commitments towards credible mechanisms that ensure delivery. This does not require punitive enforcement, but it does require stronger transparency, clearer benchmarking, and internationally coordinated implementation frameworks — much like the emerging Global Implementation Accelerator. Future agreements will likely need explicit timelines for fossil fuel phase-out, deforestation halts, and adaptation milestones.
From climate finance to a new global finance compact: Overshoot will magnify the cost of adaptation and loss and damage. The next decade demands a systemic overhaul of global finance: reformed MDBs, new concessional windows, debt relief mechanisms, and finance flows aligned with Article 2.1(c). Without predictable public finance and major private sector mobilisation, both adaptation and just transitions will be out of reach.
From sectoral silos to integrated resilience governance: As 1.5°C is breached, climate will no longer be a discrete environmental challenge — it will be a systemic risk affecting health, food security, migration, trade, and geopolitics. Multilateral governance must integrate climate with biodiversity, trade, humanitarian systems, and financial regulation. Future COPs will need stronger links across treaties, clearer cross-sectoral mandates, and more space for subnational and non-state actors who often deliver faster than national governments.
Ten years after Paris, the promise of a safe future remains within reach only if the system evolves. COP30 revealed both the fragility and necessity of multilateralism. The next phase must turn cooperative ambition into coordinated action — because implementation is no longer a slogan. It is the last pathway left.
The writer is chief executive of the Civil Society Coalition for Climate Change.
Published in Dawn, December 6th, 2025
