The summit closed with its main political outcome, called the Global Mutirão, named after an Indigenous language in Brazil, which translates as “collective efforts.” While the decision calls for tripling adaptation finance and accelerating emissions reductions, developed countries remain unwilling to provide the resources needed to implement these commitments. It failed to reflect roadmaps on fossil fuel phaseout or reversing deforestation that a broad alliance of governments demanded. The outcome also leaned heavily on false ‘solutions.’ These gaps were made even more glaring by the overwhelming presence of corporate lobbyists and severe restrictions on peoples’ participation and organising at COP30.
The outcomes of the recent summit point to a difficult period ahead. Amid escalating global crises, the climate policy regime itself is faced with a crisis of legitimacy. After 30 COPs and ten years since the Paris Agreement was adopted, it has drifted even further from the realities it claims to confront.
The contentious road to a Just Transition Mechanism
Just Transition emerged as one of Belém’s defining negotiation tracks because many expected COP30 to clarify how countries intend to pursue their transitions as they update their climate plans (called Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs) through 2035. While the negotiations led to some concessions for developing countries, they also left many critical questions unanswered.
Negotiations in the Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP) opened with sharp divergences over the purpose of a new just transition mechanism proposed by civil society through the G77+China. Developing countries saw the mechanism as a practical tool to close implementation gaps, providing technical support, capacity building, and predictable finance. But developed countries, including the UK, EU members, Japan, Norway, Canada, and Australia, opposed creating a new institutional arrangement and instead favoured an action plan limited to knowledge exchange and participation. Civil society stressed that such an action plan would have little value if it merely mapped existing initiatives without offering a channel for countries to access finance for their transition pathways.
There were also disagreements on connecting the 1.5C warming limit with a just transition and mentions of a “transition away from fossil fuels.” Many developing countries have long argued that references to shifting away from fossil fuels should be grounded in equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDR-RC), meaning developed countries should lead in phasing out fossil fuels and provide developing countries the resources to do the same.
Another site of contention was around critical transition minerals. Several countries supported language acknowledging the risks of extraction and processing, warning that rising demand driven by transition pathways in developed countries risks reproducing extractive patterns in developing countries. Their concerns emerged amid intensifying geopolitical competition, as developed countries increasingly seek to restructure mineral supply chains to protect their interests in the energy transition. China opposed the reference, signalling a divide within G77+China on this matter.
Despite these fractures, parties ultimately settled on a compromise to develop the just transition mechanism. Civil society pressure was central to securing this outcome, yet the final text is markedly diluted after much resistance from developed countries. It also excludes any reference to critical minerals, transitioning away from fossil fuels, or trade measures, even though these were priority issues for many developing country blocs.
The next task falls on the Subsidiary Bodies (SBs) which must draft the mechanism’s operational decision for adoption next year. However, it is important to temper optimism. The key test will be whether the mechanism is designed to compel developed countries to deliver the resources developing countries need for their transition and development plans.
Weaponising trade in the name of climate
Climate-related unilateral trade measures (UTMs) have become a recurring point of tension in climate negotiations. These are policies usually imposed by developed countries that apply charges or requirements on imports in ways that disadvantage countries with different climate rules. Developing countries have long attempted to raise concerns about these measures under the UNFCCC, but their efforts are often blocked by developed countries.
At COP30, however, UTMs were elevated through dedicated consultations. The Like Minded Developing Countries (LMDC), the African Group and the Arab Group, warned that these measures would raise incomes for developed countries while producing significant losses for developing economies. The EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), an example of a UTM, acts as an import tariff on goods entering the EU from countries that do not meet EU-approved carbon pricing standards. Such measures effectively shift responsibility to cut emissions by imposing compliance burdens on developing countries without developed countries providing the finance or technology required to meet them. In the JTWP, developing countries argued that UTMs undermine the idea of a just transition because they add to their economic burdens and violate their right to development.
Developed countries rejected these concerns. The EU maintained that CBAM complies with the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) rules and falls outside the UNFCCC’s mandate. The UK echoed this view and portrayed UTMs as necessary instruments to address carbon leakage, or when a country’s climate policy increases emissions in other countries, such as a scenario where industries relocate production to countries with weaker climate policies. These countries also resisted expanding the mandate of the JTWP to cover trade.
The issue on UTMs was also present in discussions on response measures, which refer to the impacts that climate policies can create across borders. In the technology implementation programme, early drafts identified barriers to technology development and transfer, including trade barriers and restrictive intellectual property regimes. Developed countries again pushed to delete any reference to trade barriers and UTMs, likely because bringing these issues to the UNFCCC could reinforce developing countries’ demands for finance and technology transfers.
Ultimately, UTMs failed to make it to the JTWP and technology implementation decisions. However, the Global Mutirão referenced UTMs, a first for a COP decision. It also established three dialogues on trade to be held at the Bonn sessions from 2026 to 2028 with participation from organisations such as the WTO, UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and the International Trade Centre. Annual global dialogues on response measures will also be held from 2026 to 2029 to address cross-border impacts, though references to UTMs were dropped.
While modest, these decisions carve out limited spaces for developing countries to contest the use of UTMs on a multilateral platform, one that nonetheless warrants caution given the WTO’s possible role and its long history of imposing neoliberal trade rules that have entrenched structural inequalities between developed and developing countries.
Locked into lies
False ‘solutions’ have seeped so deeply into UNFCCC processes that they routinely appear across negotiations. The so-called “COP of Truth” ironically made this contradiction clearer than ever, as governments doubled down on market-based mechanisms while sidelining more transformative approaches to addressing the climate crisis.
In Belém, negotiators reopened issues on carbon markets. These markets are used to let countries buy and sell carbon credits to supposedly meet their climate targets. At COP30, country reports under Article 6.2 of the PA, which governs country-to-country trading of credits, were up for review. The first batch of reports have all flagged inconsistencies. However, the decision text only encourages countries to correct them and asks reviewers to document issues more clearly. It did not set new rules to prevent countries from inflating their reported reductions or relying on accounting tricks.
Scientists and civil society have long warned that market-based mechanisms allow polluters to meet their targets on paper without truly reducing emissions. But these concerns were also removed from negotiation texts under Article 6.4, which created an international carbon market. This matters because credits generated from related projects, especially those tied to forests and land, rely on temporary forms of “protection” that corporations can later undo. These arrangements are often used to justify land grabs, displace communities, and impose restrictions on Indigenous Peoples and forest dwellers. When the same forests are eventually cleared for logging, mining, agribusiness, or infrastructure, the carbon is released back into the atmosphere, despite those areas having already generated credits that corporations used to offset their emissions. The Supervisory Body leading the mechanism introduced a new standard at COP30 to supposedly address this “non-permanence” risk but market supporters worried it would make credits less profitable.
Climate justice activists remain firmly opposed to these measures, organising protests and public events throughout COP30 to expose market-based ‘solutions’ as distractions from transformative climate action. At a press conference, Caroline Muturi of IBON Africa explained that “these so-called solutions have already caused widespread human rights violations across Africa and still fail to address the climate crisis.” She stressed that “communities hold the Real Solutions that they have practised for generations in harmony with nature” and called for these to be supported and strengthened at all levels. However, their approaches rarely receive attention and support from governments.
Indeed, while market mechanisms are placed front and centre in discursive policy debates, non-market approaches are cast aside. At COP30, Parties only made modest progress on non-market approaches (NMAs) under Article 6.8. The decision on the mitigation work programme encourages governments to record their identified projects on the NMA Platform. Although the platform was created to coordinate NMAs, it remains mostly underused since its launch, with no clear pathway for mobilising resources.
In other parts of the conference, finance has become a space where false ‘solutions’ have taken hold. An example is Brazil’s proposed Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF). It was promoted as a tool that could mobilise billions for forest protection. However, analyses found that the facility is largely loan-based. This means it would add to the debt burdens of developing countries rather than provide the grant-based support they have long called for. Moreover, forest countries would only receive limited and conditional support, and communities that actually protect forests, such as Indigenous Peoples, would receive an even smaller share.
These developments lay bare how extensively false ‘solutions’ have spread across the UNFCCC. Ensuring that these approaches do not define the future of climate action will require sustained mobilising from movements and civil society. Greater attention and support for rights-based, community-led, and gender-just approaches remain essential if the negotiations are to avoid locking in mechanisms that reinforce the power of corporations, finance capital, and developed states, while delaying transformation.
Indicators without means of implementation
Adaptation emerged as one of Belém’s headline deliverables. Parties were expected to finalise a set of indicators that would operationalise the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA). These indicators will function similarly to the 1.5C temperature threshold for mitigation. But with developed countries reneging on their responsibility, the process remains far from ensuring that climate-vulnerable countries can implement the progress that these indicators were meant to track.
Negotiators arrived in Belém tasked with distilling a list of more than 10,000 proposed indicators down to 100. The technical stream had already narrowed these to a manageable set. But familiar divides resurfaced, with finance becoming the thread pulling the negotiations on GGA apart. Developing countries insisted that indicators must be tied to means of implementation (MoI), which pertain to finance, technology transfer, and capacity-building. For them, measuring progress in adaptation without measuring whether finance was actually delivered would render the GGA meaningless. Developed countries pushed back by narrowing MoI to “enablers” rather than obligations and sought disclosure on how much developing countries invest domestically in adaptation.
Parties eventually adopted 59 indicators, called the Belém Adaptation Indicators, and established a two-year work programme to guide their operationalisation. Yet nearly all indicators were weak in ensuring responsibility, with the decision text emphasising their voluntary nature, meaning there is no obligation for developed countries to provide finance and no guarantee of their implementation. The decision also created a two-year Belém-Addis Vision (BAV) process to refine the indicators.
Likewise, the doubling of adaptation finance promised for 2025 is yet to materialise, and the Belém package offers no new assurances that this gap will be closed. The UNEP already warned that developed countries are bound to miss the Glasgow commitment to double adaptation finance by 2025. In response, developing countries pressed for a new goal to triple adaptation finance by 2030. But developed countries blocked this, warning that any explicit reference would be treated as an attempt to reopen the broader climate finance goal (or NCQG) set last year. The result was a diluted compromise in the Mutirão outcome, removing the baseline year needed to measure progress, and pushing the deadline five years later.
In parallel negotiations, talks on the Baku Adaptation Roadmap (BAR) concluded with guidance for its work on supporting the implementation of the new indicators. Meanwhile, in discussions on “transformational adaptation,” Parties did not seem to have come to a common definition of the concept. The UNFCCC initially describes it as “measures that go beyond small adjustments and instead change the core features of natural and human systems.” Negotiations on National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) were similarly contentious, as developed countries resisted language affirming their responsibility to finance its formulation and implementation. But a decision was finally adopted after three years of deadlock on NAPs, merely noting gaps in the delivery of finance.
Overall, Belém did little to advance adaptation in any meaningful way. Unless developed countries own up to their responsibilities and close the widening finance gap, the GGA will amount to nothing. Without the means to implement, climate-vulnerable countries will be left to confront worsening weather events with limited resources.
Still lost and damaged
Loss and damage is one of the material expressions of climate injustice. Yet at COP30, questions around how much finance will be delivered, how it will be governed, and whether structural gaps will be addressed remain deliberately unanswered. The talks did little to provide frontline communities reassurance that the countries with the greatest historic responsibility will act at the scale required to address intensifying climate-related losses and damages.
At COP30, loss and damage negotiations produced mostly procedural outcomes that had dragged on for a year. Parties closed the text on the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage’s (FRLD) annual report and completed the third review of the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM). Yet none of these outcomes addressed the absence of scaled and predictable finance to deal with climate impacts already occurring.
The FRLD opened its first call for funding requests under the Barbados implementation modalities. Developed countries pledged USD 790 million as of COP30 but only deposited half of this amount. This pales in comparison to the modest estimate of USD 400 billion that countries need annually for loss and damage. It is important to note that during COP30 itself, many developing countries were reeling from extreme events, including cyclones that hit the Philippines and Jamaica, leading to unprecedented loss of lives and billions of dollars in damages.
In this context, many developing countries pushed for a strong language that would urge developed countries to contribute higher amounts. But this effort did not succeed. The outcome contained references to the NCQG but stopped short of anything that would pressure developed countries to acknowledge their responsibility and increase contributions.
The other major area of negotiation at COP30 concerned the WIM and the Santiago Network, which are meant to strengthen coordination and technical assistance. In the WIM review, the Independent Alliance of Latin America and the Caribbean (AILAC) and Vanuatu sought to reference the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) advisory opinion, which states that countries can be held legally accountable for emissions and that affected communities may be entitled to reparations. Developed countries blocked any reference to the process, aware that it could reinforce arguments for historical responsibility. After more than a year of discussions, the review was completed but emptied of the strongest proposals advanced by climate-vulnerable countries.
Passing the bill on climate finance
Climate finance negotiations opened with unresolved tensions carried over from previous negotiations, especially from the disastrous “Finance COP” in Baku last year. Developing countries reiterated that achieving their new climate targets requires developed countries delivering on long overdue financial obligations. However, developed countries continue to renege on their responsibilities.
A central flashpoint was Article 9.1 of the PA, which makes clear that developed countries must provide financial resources to developing countries. Many developing countries warned that without a structured process, developed countries would continue to shift responsibility to private investors, multilateral banks and higher-income developing economies. As expected, developed countries insisted that discussions should cover all of Article 9, rehashing their call to “expand the donor base,” pertaining to wealthier developing countries and reforming the global financial architecture, in order to diminish their obligations. The eventual compromise included in the Global Mutirão was a two-year work programme covering Article 9 in full, just with explicit reference to Article 9.1.
Finance discussions were also influenced by the NCQG set last year. The target includes a core goal of USD 300 billion dollars a year, combined with a broader target to reach USD 1.3 trillion dollars annually by 2035. Many developing countries rejected the package at the time because it relies heavily on private finance rather than public contributions. These concerns resurfaced in Belém. Several countries expressed concern that this structure could allow developed countries to meet the target without raising public finance in any meaningful way.
The Baku to Belém Roadmap (B2BR), which outlines how the USD 1.3 trillion dollar figure might be reached, added to these concerns. An analysis showed that most of the amount would likely come from private sector investments. Because of this, many developing countries focused on securing clearer commitments for the USD 300 billion dollar public finance goal. The final text in the Mutirão “takes note” of the roadmap but also decides to advance actions to scale up finance to USD 1.3 trillion dollars. While this signals political intent, it does little to address the lack of public finance that developing countries have raised alarm over.
Another track dealt with biennial communications, which pertain to projected amounts of public finance to be provided by developed countries. Developing countries called for contributions to exceed the USD 300 billion goal and urged reforms to developed countries’ budgetary systems to make such commitments possible. None of these proposals made it into the text.
Without scaled-up commitments on public finance from developed countries, developing countries will be forced to stretch scarce budgets or postpone important climate measures altogether. As climate impacts intensify, their financing needs are expected to escalate further.
Sowing delay at COP30
As one of the world’s most powerful agribusiness economies, Brazil tried to position agriculture as one of COP30’s six action agenda pillars. This led many to assume that the summit would generate momentum on long-stalled workstreams on agriculture, particularly on transforming food systems and ensuring public finance for adaptation measures in the sector. Instead, negotiations were mired in familiar divides and attempts to further integrate corporate-driven approaches into the process, with some decisions deferred again to future sessions.
Formal negotiations took place under the Sharm el Sheikh Joint Work on Agriculture (SJWA), which is set to conclude next year at COP31. This process is responsible for technical discussions that consolidate agriculture-related activities across the UNFCCC. Countries spent much of their time responding to the outcome of a workshop on “systemic and holistic” approaches to climate action and to discussions from the Standing Committee on Finance’s forum on food and agriculture. Several developing country blocs pressed to capture the key messages from these workshops in a formal decision.
For G77+China, they set their eyes on having language on “ending hunger” and for a significant increase in grant-based public finance for adaptation in agriculture. Similarly, Argentina, the African Group and the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) pushed for clearer recognition that the agenda cannot move forward without scaling up public finance, particularly from developed countries under their Article 9.1 obligations in the PA. However, developed countries blocked any explicit linkages to finance.
On the other hand, developed countries introduced language on food systems that included references to the entire value chain, precision agriculture and carbon credit “rewards” for farmers. This was seen by many civil society groups as a bid to dilute the texts and steer the conversation away from financing.
The draft that landed on the first week pulled together a mix of ideas. It contained 23 sets of brackets that indicated no consensus. The draft included AI farming and a reference to the WTO as a potential actor in directing agricultural trade towards climate goals. Although the text tried to accommodate a wide range of proposals, civil society groups underscored that many of these would pull focus away from meaningful solutions like collective land ownership, community management of resources, and agroecology. They warned that the text instead leans towards corporate-driven approaches that would accelerate land-grabbing from farmers and Indigenous communities and deepen patterns of landlessness already shaping rural economies in the developing world.
Despite the SJWA nearing its conclusion, COP30 ended without substantive guidance for countries and left the SJWA to continue without a clear path for its final year. Instead, Parties agreed to postpone all decisions to June next year. Compounding this, none of the Mutirão texts included references to food systems or agriculture.
The lack of actionable outcomes from COP30 demonstrates just how little regard governments hold for the very peoples who feed the world. Smallholder farmers, Indigenous Peoples, and rural communities are left to face intensifying climate impacts with no meaningful support. In their place, big agribusinesses have increasingly captured the process, using it to further entrench corporate control over land and food systems.
Priced out, boxed out, and shut out
Peoples’ participation, especially from the developing world, has long been central to bringing the lived experiences of frontline communities into the climate negotiations. But over the years, space for independent civil society organising and mobilising within the UN climate talks has steadily declined. COP30 followed this undemocratic trend, and in many ways, systemic exclusion became even more pronounced.
Civil society faced a number of barriers to participation at COP30, beginning with limited badge allocations, restrictive visa regimes, and exorbitant travel and accommodation costs that made attendance especially difficult for peoples from the developing world. Those who did manage to participate were repeatedly pushed out of negotiation rooms as key negotiations happened behind closed doors. Meanwhile, civil society actions were tightly controlled, with banners and posters requiring pre-approval from the UNFCCC secretariat and, in some cases, abruptly cancelled.
This year, mass mobilisations were permitted outside the COP venue for the first time since 2021. Thousands marched through the streets of Belém to conclude alternative civil society processes that took place throughout the week. One action led by Indigenous Peoples reached the main entrance where security personnel violently dispersed the protesters. Days later, the perimeter was heavily surrounded by military units, creating a far more repressive environment for public demonstrations.
All of this unfolded amid a growing presence of corporate lobbyists. A new report from the Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO) coalition identified more than 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists in Belém, along with 300 lobbyists from major agribusiness firms. These groups outnumbered the official delegates of many climate-vulnerable countries and enjoyed greater access, often through Party badges.
The shrinking civic space and expanding corporate influence at COPs reveal just how much these talks are tilting towards the interests of corporate actors. Reclaiming space for peoples’ meaningful participation remains an imperative in defending fundamental rights and ensuring that climate policy and governance reflect the needs and demands of frontline communities.
The COP’s crisis of legitimacy
COP30 reaffirmed a troubling trajectory for international climate cooperation. The so-called “COP of Truth” failed to confront the truth that the world cannot afford business as usual amid escalating climate impacts and overlapping global crises. This has raised urgent questions about the conference’s ability and willingness to challenge the very forces driving the crisis it claims to address.
Around the world, governments are pouring unprecedented resources into militarising communities and provoking wars to access new resource frontiers to plunder. This is exemplified by the ongoing assault on Palestine by Israel and the United States (US). Many civil society groups highlighted that militarism and occupation themselves fuel emissions, destroy ecosystems and communities, and divert public money away from the very transitions countries need to undertake. Yet these issues remain largely absent from official discussions.
Such hypocrisy has become a defining feature of the process. The same actors that have long extracted wealth from the global South claim to be arbiters of climate action, yet block any outcome that might hold them accountable. They profess commitment to the Convention’s principles while they expand fossil fuel production and extraction across the South. The result is an increasingly hollow process that legitimises the injustices faced by frontline communities and reinforces the very systems that underpin the climate crisis.
It is also worth noting that this was the first COP since the US withdrew from both the PA and the Convention, further casting doubts as to the capacity of the process to hold to account such an abdication of responsibility by the world’s biggest polluter.
Taken together, these developments have all chipped away at the credibility of a process that increasingly struggles to engage with the world as it is, let alone chart the structural changes demanded by a rapidly worsening crisis. What lies ahead must be a reckoning that shifts power away from the very governments and corporations that drain what little relevance multilateralism still holds, and towards the historically harmed peoples who carry the struggle for climate and social justice.
