Despite taking place just days after a major UN biodiversity summit, the COP29 climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan produced few new commitments on food, forests, land and nature.
Countries did finalise the text on the remaining sections setting out the rules for international carbon markets under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.
They also considered a text “reaffirming” the “importance of conserving, protecting and restoring nature”.
However, countries failed to adopt this document during COP29’s chaotic final plenary session.
During the summit, three countries came forward with their new UN climate plans, which included limited information on how these nations plan to harness nature to meet their emissions targets.
Elsewhere, a flurry of new declarations and initiatives – including on climate action for farmers, water and reducing methane emissions from organic waste – made up the presidency’s “action agenda”.
Some observers lamented the apparent lack of progress on food and nature topics, with one telling Carbon Brief that the two featured “pretty weakly” in the final outcomes.
Others were more sanguine, with another observer saying that “momentum was neither gained nor lost, just maintained” and giving it, “overall, a passing grade”.
Below, Carbon Brief explains how food, forests, land and nature featured inside and outside the negotiations at COP29.
- Article 6
- Sharm el-Sheikh joint work on agriculture and food security
- Global Goal on Adaptation
- UAE Dialogue and the global stocktake
- Response measures
- Nature
- Food and nature in new NDCs
- Methane
- Food systems and water
- Deforestation
- Indigenous representation
- Greenwashing and ‘big ag’ influence
- Ecosystem restoration
Article 6
At COP29, countries reached a final agreement on the rules for carbon trading under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.
The deal struck in Baku on Sunday brings a decade of negotiations to a close, but there are some key tools for “nature-based” removals and rights safeguards still to be developed.
Rules governing country-to-country carbon trading under Article 6.2, as well as a new international carbon market under Article 6.4 called the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM), are now more or less complete.
The COP29 presidency hailed the agreement as a “breakthrough” that “achieves full operationalisation of Article 6”, a COP “win” that it pushed from day one of the two-week talks.
The outcome was “warmly welcome[d]” by the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA). In an emailed statement, IETA said:
“We now call on all governments to make use of Article 6 and to implement policies that spur international market-based cooperation. By mobilising private investment where emission reductions and removals are more cost-effective, Article 6 has the potential to enhance climate ambition, transfer technology and deliver finance flows where most needed.”
Activist groups that are part of the Climate Land Ambition and Rights Alliance (CLARA), however, slammed what they said was a decision to “outsource” responsibilities to ensure human rights and environmental integrity to “a handful of people” comprising the supervisory body (SBM) for Article 6.4, which is tasked with drawing up guidance and approving methodologies.
In a statement responding to the overall outcome on Article 6, CLARA coordinator Kelly Stone from ActionAid USA said:
“Nothing in the rules developed here will prevent carbon markets from repeating their history of harming communities and failing to deliver meaningful climate action.
“It is not a coincidence that carbon markets were delivered at what was supposed to be the climate finance COP. When you talk to developed countries about climate finance, they throw up their hands and point to carbon markets and anything other than what’s needed and owed: public finance.”
Talks on Article 6 – which are highly technical – have repeatedly fallen short, with countries failing to reach any agreement at all during COP25 in Madrid and COP28 in Dubai.
In Baku, carbon markets were given high priority, with the presidency pushing through a day-one deal endorsing Article 6.4 documents on methodologies and removals. These documents had been “adopted” by the SBM rather than being negotiated line by line by countries.
The SBM had also drawn up a mandatory “sustainable development tool” with environmental and human-rights safeguards.
The guidelines on methodologies set out requirements for the downward adjustment of the “baselines” against which carbon credits can be issued – a process intended to align baselines with the Paris Agreement’s long-term goals. They also set out “additionality” checks to avoid projects “locking-in” high emissions.
Nevertheless, the manner in which these documents had been “adopted” by the SBM before the presidency pushed through formal endorsement on day one in Baku caused disquiet among some parties.
At the plenary on the first day of the summit, Tuvalu voiced its objection to this process, saying:
“We also recognise your interest in signalling progress. We have accepted this decision with some reluctance. Unfortunately, the manner in which we have adopted this decision at the start of the [COP] does not respect [a] party-driven process. We are very uncomfortable with this trend.”
Another COP29 decision, adopted at the closing plenary, “encourages” the supervisory body to “expedite” its work on baselines, additionality and the risk of removals being reversed. This is a particular concern for “nature-based solutions”, such as reforestation, given that increasingly frequent wildfires around the world could reverse these emission gains.
This decision also allows afforestation and reforestation projects created under the older “clean development mechanism” (CDM) to enter the new carbon market, subject to meeting rules on removals.
Effectively, afforestation and reforestation plantations from a pre-Paris era will be among the first projects allowed on the new market, without extra checks for additionality, or whether they actually achieved emissions reductions between 2021 to 2025.
While these projects form only a small percentage of CDM projects, experts told Carbon Brief that bringing them into Article 6.4 could “pave the way” for monoculture tree plantations to be considered removals.
At the same time, COP29 also reached a decision on country-to-country carbon trading under Article 6.2.
The lack of official rules to this point has not deterred countries from striking their own deals. Many of these have been flagged by observers for their “glaring lack of transparency”.
The COP29 decision, however, “requests” more upfront disclosure from countries reporting on their activities, a key ask of countries and observers who fear this mechanism could become a secretive “wild west”, where trading can take place with limited transparency.
At the same time, the decision has lax consequences for “persistent” and “significant” inconsistencies in Article 6.2 projects, although countries will need to disclose these inconsistencies to the public.
Isa Mulder from Carbon Market Watch told Carbon Brief:
“The option was on the table for much stronger language [that] made it through several iterations. So I think it was not impossible to get some teeth in there: just very difficult and it clearly didn’t succeed.”
Responding to the negotiations, UN special rapporteurs on human rights and climate change, as well as foreign debt, drew attention to transparency and rights concerns that linger in Article 6 carbon markets. In a statement on 19 November, they said:
“It is imperative to keep in mind that the public has a right to access information on carbon markets with regard to credible and verifiable evidence of emission reductions; expected impacts on land, waters, nature and human rights; as well as who is benefitting economically from carbon markets; and whether credits are being used to offset preventable emissions.
“This is even more important in a global context of widespread misinformation and disinformation on climate change and its impacts on human rights.”
Countries, however, were much more positive about the outcome. Blocs including the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), the Environmental Integrity Group, the African Group and Australia welcomed the decision on carbon markets in the closing COP plenary.
During his final intervention, the EU’s commissioner for climate action Wopke Hoekstra said:
“We did deliver on Article 6 and this is a leap forward. We have witnessed a historic conclusion of the rule book for carbon markets. We now have standards that have a UN seal of approval on it, and this will drive investment, raise ambition and bring transparency and higher standards. This COP delivered on climate finance, it also delivered on trust…trusted rules on carbon markets.”
Finally, the talks in Baku agreed a deal on Article 6.8, spanning cooperation that does not involve markets.
Sharm el-Sheikh joint work on agriculture and food security
Despite having held more importance at previous COPs and featuring in the global stocktake last year, actual outcomes on agriculture were constructive but relatively muted in Baku.
There is only one formal negotiation track for agriculture and food systems at the UNFCCC, known as the Sharm el-Sheikh Joint Work on the Implementation of Climate Action on Agriculture and Food Security (SJWA).
At COP29, the debates on the SJWA were largely around the functions and structure of the Sharm el-Sheikh online portal, where countries and observers can submit information on how climate action can support agriculture and food security.
On the very first day of negotiations, Egypt sought to clarify “how small farmers can make submissions” and called for the website to be more accessible.
Later, the G77 group, led by the Dominican Republic and Kenya, proposed “enhancing” the portal to make it more usable, searchable by region and theme and to allow projects, initiatives and policies to seek collaboration and finance, such as from the Adaptation Fund.
Carbon Brief understands that, while this was initially resisted by Australia, Canada and the US, countries eventually agreed to consider a submission template developed by the G77, led by the Dominican Republic and Kenya and, later, Australia.
On 15 November, a clean four-page text with no brackets was approved at the mid-week plenary of the subsidiary bodies, wrapping up the negotiating track.
It includes a draft template for submissions and “request[s]” the UNFCCC secretariat to make the portal more accessible and functional, while developing further elements, such as how projects can link to financial or practical support.
ActionAid’s global climate justice lead, Teresa Anderson, told Carbon Brief:
“In all, agriculture served a meagre salad this year. There was a low-key online portal discussion fight and an attempt to get the indicators on agriculture under adaptation to make sense.”
Global Goal on Adaptation
At COP28, countries agreed to ambitious but largely qualitative adaptation targets for food, water and ecosystems as part of the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA).
The global goal on adaptation “urges” parties to increase their ambition on a series of targets. Source: UNFCCC (2023)
Indicators to translate these targets into achievable, but “globally comparable” actions and measure progress are still being developed by technical experts under the two-year UAE-Belem Work Programme.
Indicators “relevant to specific ecosystems” – such as marine, mountain and inland water ecosystems – were added to that list at COP29.
Crucially, experts will also have to draw up indicators for “enabling factors” that track – but are not limited to – “means of implementation (MOI)”, or how these adaptation actions are being financed, as well as progress towards “transformational” adaptation.
MOI indicators – widely understood to mean finance – were at the heart of the adaptation fight between developed and developing countries at COP29.
Observers told Carbon Brief that the EU, in particular, did not want MOI included, “as it was trying to balance expectations with regards to finance across the GGA and other tracks”.
The inclusion of “transformational adaptation”, such as “shifting entire farming systems to regenerative agricultural practices”, was also a subject of resistance from the like-minded developing (LMDCs) and least-developed countries (LDCs), as well as the African group and Arab group.
In a nine-hour meeting convened by the presidency to iron out differences, called the “Qurultay”, countries including Australia and the US opposed the establishment of MOI indicators for adaptation and emphasised the importance of “transformational” adaptation.
Meanwhile, developing countries – such as Pakistan and Zambia – pushed to include “means of implementation”. (See: Global Goal on Adaptation in Carbon Brief’s main COP29 summary.)
A “compromise” GGA text that went through nine iterations was published on 22 November, the scheduled last day of COP29, to the disappointment of many developing countries.
It encases MOI within “enabling factors”, which experts say could include other factors, such as transparency, governance or corruption.
This text was finally adopted, without intervention, in the closing plenary as the Baku Adaptation Roadmap.
Technical experts must now submit a consolidated list of all adaptation indicators to the subsidiary bodies four weeks before they meet in June next year. Parties will then have to pare that list down to “a manageable set of no more than 100 indicators” before they are adopted in COP30 in Brazil.
UAE Dialogue and the global stocktake
The UAE dialogue was established to follow up on the outcomes of the global stocktake (GST), a five-yearly “temperature check” for the Paris Agreement.
While some countries argued that the dialogue’s scope should be restricted to finance in order to support ambitious NDCs, many wanted it to cover “all outcomes” of the GST – particularly elements on mitigation.
(See where countries stood on the key issues in Carbon Brief’s interactive table of who wanted what from COP29.)
Much of the focus was on the fate of last year’s deal on transitioning away from fossil fuels, in the dialogue’s draft. However, discussions also included paragraph 33 of the global stocktake, which deals with biodiversity, terrestrial and ocean “sinks”.
For the first time, it had linked a zero-deforestation by 2030 target – a voluntary, non-negotiated pledge signed by 145 countries at COP26 – to the achievement of the Paris Agreement.
This paragraph was included in earlier iterations of text, but as an option and in brackets.
At a special single-sitting meeting called the “Qurultay”, Germany’s climate envoy, Jennifer Morgan, remarked that there was “no guarantee of a space to discuss the collective progress” on fossil fuel and forestry provisions in the stocktake. She added:
“This cannot, and must not be, our response to the suffering of millions of people around the world.”
In a press conference on 21 November, Bolivia’s lead negotiator, Diego Pacheco, clarified the stance of the Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDCs), describing the inclusion of the targets as “a continued attempt by developed countries – which started in Glasgow – to “say 1.5C is within reach and transfer all responsibility” to developing countries. Pacheco added:
“At Baku, they are moving to having top-down targets for developing countries. If I don’t have the finance, how can I accept specific and intrusive targets?
“If we achieve sectoral targets [such as zero-deforestation by 2030], Bolivia will reach net-zero 20 years before developed countries. And that is really the best example of climate injustice. Is there any logic? This is real madness. They will say at the end ‘you have the Article 6 carbon markets’ [to deliver their financial obligations].”
(Bolivia is not among the 145 countries that signed the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use at COP26.)
A bracket-free draft decision for the UAE dialogue, published just before the closing plenary, “reaffirms the importance of conserving, protecting and restoring nature and ecosystems…in line with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework”, the landmark nature deal agreed in 2022.
However, the COP29 presidency failed to find consensus to approve this text, meaning a decision on this has now been shunted to COP30 next year.
Response measures
At UN climate talks, “response measures” are a forum for discussing the effects of carbon-cutting policies on countries themselves. They are particularly relevant to nations where controls on emissions or deforestation pose a risk to their people and economy.
At COP29 in Baku, countries agreed on establishing a four-year work plan to discuss response measures for 2026-30.
Importantly, the work plan includes an item on the “cross-border impacts” of “measures taken to combat” climate change.
This means that trade-related climate measures – such as the EU’s deforestation regulation – now have a formal space to be discussed and their impacts assessed in UN climate talks.
Nature
COP29 started just over a week after the COP16 biodiversity summit wrapped up in Cali, Colombia.
Despite that, COP29 saw few new country initiatives on tackling nature loss or references to the need to tackle biodiversity loss and climate change together.
Ahead of the Baku summit, Azerbaijan, Colombia and Saudi Arabia – the presidencies of the climate COP29, biodiversity COP16 and desertification COP16, respectively – launched a “Rio trio” initiative at the UN general assembly meeting in New York in September.
The initiative is aimed at “enhancing synergies” between the three Rio conventions: the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC); the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD); and the Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
The presidency partially dedicated its last “thematic” day to nature on 21 November. This included a “high level” event on the Rio trio initiative.
However, the day coincided with the start of the endgame in the negotiations, meaning many of the event’s speakers failed to show up, including COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev, biodiversity COP16 president Susana Muhamad and desertification COP16 president Abdulrahman Abdulmohsen Alfadley.
At a side event attended by Carbon Brief, several speakers noted the lack of new initiatives on biodiversity at COP29 and urged delegates to look forward to COP30 next year, which is being held in the rainforest city of Belém, Brazil.
Speaking at the side event, Hugo Mendes, a representative from the Brazilian environment ministry working on synergies between climate and nature, said that his government was working closely with the COP16 biodiversity presidency to make sure nature “will be at the heart” of COP30.
He added that Brazil was working hard in negotiating rooms at COP29 to ensure tacking biodiversity loss was included in UAE dialogue, a text outlining how to take forward the outcomes of last year’s “global stocktake”.
A bracket-free draft decision for the UAE dialogue “reaffirms the importance of conserving, protecting and restoring nature and ecosystems…in line with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework”, the landmark nature deal agreed in 2022.
However, as described above, the COP29 presidency failed to find consensus to approve this text, meaning a decision on this has now been shunted to COP30 next year. (See: UAE Dialogue and the global stocktake.)
Food and nature in new NDCs
Countries have until February 2025 to submit new national climate pledges, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs).
NDCs are updated every five years under the Paris Agreement, with countries outlining how they intend to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as part of global efforts to limit warming.
Brazil, the UAE and UK were the early-bird countries who submitted their plans at COP29.
The UK’s full NDC has not yet been published, so it remains to be seen what that plan will outline for nature. But the country has pledged to cut emissions by 81% by 2035, compared to 1990 levels.
Below are some of the highlights from Brazil and the UAE’s climate plans relating to food, land and nature.
Brazil
Under its new climate pledge, Brazil plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 59-67% by 2035, compared to 2005 levels.
While setting a “band” of targets is not unheard of in NDCs, there is typically a much smaller disparity between the two targets.
These dual targets are “confirmation that [Brazil] could do much more” when it comes to its ambition, according to Claudio Angelo from Brazilian climate NGO group Observatório do Clima.
Deforestation was a major topic in the NDC for the world’s most biodiverse country, which is home to almost 60% of the Amazon Rainforest.
It outlined efforts to “achieve zero deforestation, by eliminating illegal deforestation” and making up for the emissions from the remaining “legal suppression of native vegetation”.
Observatório do Clima warned that this “still allows high levels of deforestation by 2035”. The pledge does not explicitly commit to reaching zero deforestation by 2030 – something the country’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has promised in the past.
But the Brazilian government has “done a very good job” to reduce deforestation levels in recent years, Dr Ane Alencar, the director of science at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, told Carbon Brief.
On agriculture, an important sector for Brazil’s economy and a significant source of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, Brazil is planning to encourage and incentivise more “sustainable” agriculture as part of its emissions-cutting efforts.
(Read Carbon Brief’s article on five key takeaways from Brazil’s NDC for more details, including on renewable energy, carbon markets and sustainable development.)
UAE
The UAE’s new climate pledge outlined plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 47% by 2035, compared to 2019 levels.
The plan received criticism from policy experts and NGOs for “failing to include any measures to restrain the production of oil and gas”, said the Cable, a Nigerian news outlet, with one expert describing it as a “greenwashing exercise”.
The country committed to cutting emissions from agriculture by 39% by 2035, compared to levels in 2019. This reduction will largely come from reduced energy emissions in the sector, the NDC said, noting that “emissions from the rising numbers of livestock [will] remai[n]”. The plan added:
“The implementation of advanced technologies, best practices and supportive policies are crucial in managing emissions from agriculture and ensuring the long-term sustainability of the UAE’s agricultural sector.”
Nature-based solutions, which are methods of using nature to mitigate and adapt to climate change, are one of the main ways in which the UAE said it plans to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. It will also rely on “engineering-based solutions”, the NDC added, such as carbon capture and storage.
It intends to plant an additional 160m mangroves by 2030, the NDC noted.
The pledge also referenced the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the nature deal signed off by almost every country in the world in 2022.
Methane
Methane featured in several events and pledges at COP29.
Agriculture is a major source of the potent, but short-lived, greenhouse gas – accounting for around 40% of human-caused methane emissions.
Speaking at a methane event in Baku, COP29 president Mukhtar Bubayev said that “action on non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions is critical” to limit global warming. He noted that methane from organic waste, such as wasted food, is a “growing problem that demands urgent action”.
More than 30 countries signed up to the Reducing Methane from Organic Waste Declaration, a new pledge focused on setting sectoral targets in future NDCs to cut methane emissions from waste.
Brazil, the US, UK and the other signatories are responsible for almost half of global methane emissions from organic waste, according to the COP29 presidency.
The move will boost ambition “in the prevention, separate collection and improved management of organic waste…helping us keep food out of landfills”, Martina Otto, the head of the UN’s Climate and Clean Air Coalition, said in a statement.
The initiative is intended to support the Global Methane Pledge, which aims to slash overall methane emissions by 30% by 2030.
This pledge, first launched at COP26 in 2021, now has the backing of 159 countries. But experts are sceptical that its ambition will be met, as methane emissions are still rising.
Azerbaijan joined the pledge earlier this year, which COP29 president Babayev said “further strengthens” the country’s “reputation as a reliable green-energy partner to the world”. Tajikistan, Guatemala and Madagascar also joined this year.
On 12 November, the US, China and Azerbaijan held a summit on methane and other non-CO2 greenhouse gases in Baku.
Additional funding was also put towards methane reduction at COP29.
Governments and philanthropic organisations pledged almost $500m in new global grant funds for methane abatement, meaning more than $2bn has been raised for this issue in recent years, a Global Methane Pledge statement said.
The statement added that a funding initiative focused on enteric fermentation, launched at COP28 in Dubai, has so far raised more than $60m for research into “cost-effective breakthrough technologies to reduce livestock emissions”. These include ongoing projects into feed additives aimed at reducing methane from cattle.
The International Fund for Agricultural Development launched a guidebook intended to help developing countries weave ways of reducing methane from agriculture in their national climate plans. It particularly focused on emissions from livestock, rice production and organic waste.
Meanwhile, a new report launched during COP29 by the Changing Markets Foundation, a campaign group, identified “methane greenwashing tactics” in the climate commitments and initiatives from 22 “big meat and dairy” companies. (See: Greenwashing and ‘big ag’ influence.)
Food systems and water
During a high-level event in the first week of the summit, ministers and heads of state took stock of their progress towards the Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Food and Agriculture, announced at COP28 last year.
Participants at the event discussed integrating food systems into both NDCs and national adaptation plans, as well as increasing finance flows for food-systems transformation.
(A report from Climate Focus, released during COP29, found that only 14% of international public climate finance for agriculture was directed at small-scale farmers.)
Accompanying the Emirates Declaration at COP28 was the Alliance of Champions for Food Systems Transformation (ACF), which was also updated at this year’s summit.
The ACF is a group of five countries that have committed to taking stronger action and setting an example for food-systems transformation. The countries that initially made up the ACF are Brazil, Cambodia, Norway, Sierra Leone and Rwanda.
One of the key asks of the ACF countries is to integrate food systems into their updated NDCs, due in February 2025. (See: Nature in new NDCs.)
The ACF released a “progress snapshot” detailing actions that each country has taken – as well as priorities for future work – towards transforming food systems within their borders.
Tanzania and Vietnam both expressed their intent to, or interest in, joining the ACF during the summit.
Food systems were also both directly and indirectly included across several of the COP29 presidency’s action agenda items.
The Baku Harmoniya Climate Initiative for Farmers, hosted at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, was officially launched on Tuesday 19 November, after having been announced earlier this year.
The Harmoniya initiative is focused on combining and streamlining the flows of information around climate action for farmers.
Its other stated objectives are increasing public and private investment in food systems by making it more attractive to investors and empowering farmers – especially women and youth – to adapt to climate change.
However, the Harmoniya initiative was not accompanied by any new pledges or commitments.
Clement Metivier, senior advisor for international advocacy at WWF-UK, said that the initiative “helps in maintaining much-needed momentum around food-systems transformation in the international climate process”. He told Carbon Brief:
“But to really make a difference on the ground, new initiatives and coalitions must mobilize finance for healthy, equitable and resilient food systems, and push governments to better integrate food in their national climate plans.”
Food systems or food-related items were also mentioned in the Multisectoral Actions Pathways Declaration for Resilient and Healthy Cities, the Declaration on Enhanced Action in Tourism and the Declaration on Reducing Methane from Organic Waste. (See: Methane.)
The COP presidency also launched the Baku Declaration on Water for Climate Action, which was endorsed by nearly 50 countries, and the Baku Dialogue on Water for Climate Action. Going forward, the Dialogue will ensure formal discussions on water are on the agenda at subsequent COPs.
On the overall presence of food systems at COP29, Oliver Camp, environment and food systems advocacy advisor at the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, told Carbon Brief:
“Momentum was neither gained nor lost, just maintained – which, after the euphoria of Dubai and with the anticipation for Belem, may be all we needed…Overall, a passing grade: few exciting new launches and commitments, but we keep moving forward.”
Deforestation
Tropical deforestation, which accounts for around 20% of human-caused CO2 emissions, was scarcely mentioned at COP29.
The COP29 presidency’s action agenda did not mention deforestation or land-use change, meaning there were no new country pacts spearheaded by Azerbaijan.
The presidency did partially dedicate its last “thematic” day to nature on 21 November.
On this day, there was a “high-level” event on forests, which saw COP30 host Brazil’s environment minister, Marina Silva, emphasise the role of trees in tackling both environmental and social challenges.
However, the day coincided with the start of the endgame in the negotiations, meaning many of the event’s speakers failed to show up, including COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev and UK energy secretary Ed Miliband.
During the first week of the summit, UK foreign secretary David Lammy appeared at an event to announce new programmes under the Indigenous peoples and local communities’ forest tenure pledge, which was first launched at COP26 in Glasgow.
He told delegates that the UK will spearhead a 10-year, £50m programme “to reduce illegal logging and benefit forest people”, as well as a £94m programme “to strengthen forest communities’ voices in governance processes, particularly for the Amazon”. He also announced a “project to train local scientists in the Congo Basin”.
Separately at the summit, the UK announced a £239m package “to support forest-rich countries in protecting nature and tackling deforestation”.
Carbon Brief understands that all of these new programmes will be financed from existing money and do not represent new spending. The UK is currently far behind on meeting a promise to spend £1.5bn on protecting forests globally as part of its climate finance commitments between 2021 and 2026, Carbon Brief analysis shows.
Elsewhere at the summit, a new report launched by a coalition of environmental NGOs found that less than half of nations with more than 100,000 hectares of forest include a specific target to reduce emissions from deforestation in their UN climate pledges.
Indigenous representation
Indigenous peoples and local communities had less “momentum” at COP29 compared to the biodiversity COP, held just a few weeks earlier in Cali, Colombia, Clement Metivier, senior advisor for international advocacy at WWF-UK, told Carbon Brief.
Fany Kuiru Castro, leader of the Uitoto people in the Colombian Amazon and general coordinator of the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organisations of the Amazon Basin (COICA), noted in a video interview with the environmental non-profit organisation Sachamama that, in Baku, “there [was] not much presence of Indigenous peoples from Latin America, especially from Amazon countries”.
Despite the limited representation of Indigenous participation at this climate summit, the main body representing them within the UNFCCC negotiations, the International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC), was very clear in its position, highlighting that countries have failed to phase out fossil fuels and implement a just energy transition.
Among the IIPFCC’s chief demands was the creation of financial mechanisms for Indigenous peoples worldwide, including targeted funding under the new collective quantified goal on climate finance (NCQG) to support their conservation and restoration actions.
In fact, the main demand of Indigenous peoples at this COP was direct access to climate finance, Kuiru told Sachamama.
Following the COP’s conclusion, the IIFPCC condemned that the new collective funding goal did not explicitly mention human rights and Indigenous peoples’ rights, according to a statement released at the close of the negotiations.
Metivier told Carbon Brief that this was “an opportunity that has been missed” since “[those] communities are doing critical work to tackle climate change and protect ecosystems”.
The IIFPCC also opposed carbon markets and the provision of loan finance, which increases the debt burden on developing countries. (See: Article 6.)
Elsewhere, COP29 adopted the Baku work plan to “bring the voice of Indigenous peoples and local communities to climate action”. This plan will seek to promote knowledge sharing, mainstream these knowledge systems into climate policies and actions, plus boost capacity building among Indigenous peoples and local communities.
The work plan will be implemented from 2025 to 2027 by the Facilitative Working Group (FWG) of the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform (LCIPP), which was established at COP24 in Katowice, Poland.
During the second week of COP29, the Global Forest Coalition, along with more than 30 civil society organisations, released the Baku Forest Declaration. This declaration seeks to push for the protection of forests and Indigenous rights in the negotiations, as well as the recognition of traditional knowledge in forest conservation.
The declaration says that forests should not be viewed solely as carbon sinks and recommends moving away from market mechanisms and carbon trading. Instead, the signatories call for climate policies to focus on community-based solutions, human rights and gender equality.
Greenwashing and ‘big ag’ influence
Concerns about greenwashing and lobbying are often raised at UN climate summits. COP29, held in the “petrostate” of Azerbaijan, was no different.
Before the summit took place, COP29 chief executive Elnur Soltanov was secretly recorded “discussing ‘investment opportunities’ in the state oil and gas company with a man posing as a potential investor”, BBC News reported, based on an investigation by Global Witness.
A separate Global Witness investigation found that more than 1,700 fossil-fuel lobbyists registered to attend COP29, lower than the record at COP28 but still larger than most party delegations. (See the Azerbaijani leadership section of Carbon Brief’s main COP29 summary for more.)
On the agriculture side, hundreds of “lobbyists for industrial farming” attended COP29, according to analysis from DeSmog and the Guardian. More than 200 delegates from agriculture companies and trade groups registered for the talks.
Nearly 40% of these travelled with delegations of countries, “giving them privileged access to diplomatic negotiations”, the Guardian noted.
DeSmog said that 52 delegates from the meat and dairy sector attended the talks, with 20 travelling alongside Brazil’s government. The delegates came from major organisations including JBS, the world’s largest meat processor, and Nestle, the largest food company in the world, the outlet found.
However, the number of “big meat and dairy” delegates at COP29 did not reach the record-high levels identified by DeSmog and the Guardian at last year’s summit.
Ahead of the Baku talks, Greenpeace Aotearoa (New Zealand) called for world leaders to “hold agri-business to account for its climate pollution”. Spokesperson Amanda Larsson said in a statement:
“The livestock industry is a major driver of climate pollution, but has largely flown under the radar at previous UN climate conferences.”
Elsewhere, almost 500 “carbon capture advocates” registered to attend COP29, according to analysis from non-profit organisation the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL).
These include lobbyists from companies and groups advocating for carbon capture and storage, a method of removing CO2 from the atmosphere using technology. Almost half of the attendees were on national delegation badges, CIEL found, and the COP29 presidency invited 55 as guests.
The overall numbers are a slight increase compared to last year’s summit.
Ecosystem restoration
Overall, nature – and ecosystems and restoration, in particular – featured “pretty weakly” in the final COP29 texts, Metivier, from WWF-UK, told Carbon Brief.
According to a recent report published by WWF and other conservation organisations, 52% of forest countries have a quantified restoration target in their NDCs and 28% have a quantified deforestation target. (See: Nature in new NDCs.)
For William Baldwin-Cantello, director for nature-based solutions at WWF-UK, these differences could be explained by the greater ease of setting a restoration target in terms of hectares. However, he added:
“What’s more important than restoring ecosystems is preventing their loss.”
He noted that there was “no significant improvement in NDCs at COP with respect to existing restoration”, but said he hopes that this will change before the February 2025 deadline for the delivery of new NDCs and in the run-up to COP30 in Brazil.
The Climate Finance Group for Latin America and the Caribbean (GFLAC) noted in a statement that the text of the new collective quantifiable climate finance goal (NCQG) does not include a specific adaptation finance target. (See: Carbon Brief’s main summary of COP29 for more on the NCQG.)
In the closing days of COP29, the NGO Nature4Climate urged that the collective finance goal include funding specifically for the restoration and sustainable use of nature.
Baldwin-Cantello said that the absence of funding for adaptation and restoration could be due to donor governments’ fear of double counting biodiversity funding under the CBD and climate finance under the UNFCCC.
Some countries did announce new investments for restoring forests and ecosystems during COP29. El Salvador, for example, said it will invest $350m in the conservation and restoration of its largest river and watershed, while Canada announced that it will join the Freshwater Challenge to restore its freshwater ecosystems.
The post COP29: Key outcomes for food, forests, land and nature at the UN climate talks in Baku appeared first on Carbon Brief.
COP29: Key outcomes for food, forests, land and nature at the UN climate talks in Baku
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 14 November 2025: COP30 DeBriefed: Finance and 1.5C loom large at talks; China’s emissions dip; Negotiations explained
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Finance and 1.5C dominate talks
AGENDA ADOPTED: Negotiations at the COP30 UN climate talks began in the Brazilian city of Belém this week, attended in person by Carbon Brief’s Daisy Dunne, Josh Gabbatiss and Anika Patel. The Brazilian hosts scored an unexpected early win by dodging an “agenda fight” over proposals to add various contentious issues to the official docket. Despite the neat footwork, four issues kept off the agreed agenda – climate finance; emissions reporting; trade measures; ambition and 1.5C – still loom large, having merely been diverted into “presidency consultations”.
PRESIDENCY PROMISES: By Wednesday, the presidency was promising “good news” at a plenary later that day, which had been due to offer an update on progress with the four extra items. Instead, it ended abruptly, with COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago promising to say more at another plenary scheduled for tomorrow. It remains unclear how the presidency intends to deal with these thorny issues, leaving the COP rumour-mill in full swing.
MINISTERIAL MAGIC: Aside from the extra issues, the official agenda at COP30 already has more than 100 items to contend with, including how to track progress on adaptation and how to ensure a “just transition” as emissions-cutting measures are implemented. (You can follow them all via the Carbon Brief text tracker.) While draft texts have started to emerge, many items remain stalled, with persistent divisions along familiar lines (see below). Negotiators will be hoping that ministers arriving over the weekend are primed to unlock progress. Brazil has appointed pairs of these politicians to push for deals in key areas.
Around the world
- Ethiopia has said it will host COP32 after beating out a bid from Nigeria, Reuters reported. Turkey and Australia are still in deadlock over who should host COP31, with a decision due by the end of these talks, BBC News reported.
- China will not contribute to Brazil’s Tropical Forest Forever Facility, Bloomberg reported, while Devex said two multilateral development banks are considering paying in. More than $5.5bn has been pledged so far, which BusinessGreen noted is “well short” of a $25bn target. The fund was labelled a “false solution” by some Indigenous and civil society groups.
- After Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called for a “roadmap” away from fossil fuels ahead of COP’s opening, rumours are swirling over how this might take shape. A new declaration spearheaded by Colombia and a roadmap with backing from a number of countries, including Denmark, the UK, France, Kenya and Germany, are being floated as possible options.
- China is currently among the countries pushing for “provision of finance from rich countries and unilateral trade measures” to be included on the agenda, reported Climate Home News. Chinese delegation head Li Gao told Agence France-Presse it is “crucial” for developed countries to fulfil their $300bn commitment.
- Dozens of Indigenous protesters forced their way into COP’s blue zone on Tuesday night, expressing anger at a lack of access to the negotiations, Reuters said. On Friday, a peaceful protest blocked the entrance to the blue zone, causing lengthy queues as delegates were forced to use a side door.
344%
The rise in the global use of solar from 2024 to 2035 under “stated policies”, according to Carbon Brief’s analysis of the latest World Energy Outlook from the International Energy Agency.
Latest climate research
- The 2025 Global Carbon Budget, covered in detail by Carbon Brief, finds that CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and cement will rise 1.1% in 2025 | Earth System Science Data
- In its November 2025 update, Climate Action Tracker says that its projections of global warming by 2100 have “barely moved” in four years | Climate Action Tracker
- The AI server industry in the US is unlikely to meet its 2030 net-zero goals “without substantial reliance on highly uncertain” carbon offsets | Nature Sustainability
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
China’s carbon dioxide emissions have “now been flat or falling for 18 months” since March 2024, analysis for Carbon Brief has found, due, in particular, to the transport, cement and steel sectors. The analysis has been covered widely in publications including China’s Global Times, the New York Times, Financial Times, Reuters, Bloomberg and on the frontpage of the Guardian.
Spotlight
What to expect from COP30 talks
This week, Carbon Brief’s expert team walk through what is happening with the biggest issues being negotiated at COP30.
‘Cover text’
Can you judge a COP by its cover text? At COP, the presidency has the option to pull together a new negotiated “cover text”, an overarching political overview of decisions agreed at the summit, along with other issues not on the agenda that it wants to draw attention to.
COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago might have dismissed a catch-all “cover decision” as a “last-minute solution” ahead of COP and dodged the question since, but other parties have been less shy in hinting that a cover text is, indeed, coming.
Cover decisions are often the product of fraught negotiations, high stakes, too little time and too many parties to accommodate.
This year, there is added pressure to address what is happening in the wider world outside the “negotiations” and to politically signal that the UN climate process is alive and making progress, despite the withdrawal of the US.
What elements could go into it? As a member of the “BASIC” group of nations comprising Brazil, South Africa, India and China, trade measures could find a place. But ideas pushed by Brazilian president Lula for new “roadmaps” away from fossil fuels and deforestation might find a place. Finance, however, could be much trickier to fit in.
Adaptation
One of the key expected outcomes of COP30 is agreement on a list of 100 indicators that can be used to measure progress under the “global goal on adaptation” (GGA). After two years of work by experts, negotiations got underway with a suggested list that had been whittled down from nearly 10,000 possible indicators.
Despite the focus on the GGA by the COP30 presidency and others, division has quickly emerged around the timeline for the adoption of the indicators. The African Group has notably requested a two-year work programme to further refine the list, while other parties are pushing for the indicators to be adopted in Belém as planned.
On Wednesday, an informal note was published that compiled elements for a draft decision. Significantly, for the first time under the GGA, this included a call for developed countries to “at least triple their collective provision” of adaptation finance by 2030, with a target to reach $120bn. This echoed a suggested target originally set out by the negotiating group of least developed countries (LDCs), supported by the African Group, Arab Group and the Association of Latin America and the Caribbean (AILAC) countries.
Just transition and mitigation work programmes
Over the past year, civil society groups have been calling for the establishment of a mechanism to enact the agreed UNFCCC principles of a “just transition”. This gained momentum on Wednesday within negotiations of the just transition work programme (JTWP), when the G77 and China called for the development of the “Belem Action Mechanism” (BAM).
Chile, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), India and other developing countries supported the mechanism. However, Norway, the UK, Australia and Japan pushed back. Other long-standing points of contention have also raised their heads, including around unilateral trade measures and references to fossil fuels and aligning to global temperature goals.
Within the mitigation work programme (MWP) talks, negotiators are looking to build on two dialogues held this year. The main themes at COP30 are the links between the MWP and the global stocktake (see below) and the future of the programme itself.
Old divisions have emerged in negotiations, focused predominantly on the mandate of the MWP and the potential development of a digital platform as part of its continuation.
UAE dialogue
The landmark outcome of the first “global stocktake”, agreed at COP28 in Dubai, called on all countries to contribute to a “transition away from fossil fuels”. It also mandated a “UAE dialogue” on “implementing the global stocktake outcomes”.
Two years later, countries remain deadlocked over what this dialogue should discuss. Many want it to cover all parts of the stocktake, including the energy transition, while others want an exclusive focus on climate finance. They also disagree on whether the dialogue should have substantive outcomes, including a formal process to keep discussing the issues raised.
Having failed to reach agreement at COP29 last year, the latest draft text shows parties are just as far apart in Belém, nearly halfway into the summit.
Finance
Climate finance for developing countries does not occupy a high-profile position in the formal COP30 negotiations. Yet, as demonstrated by its role in adaptation talks and the agenda dispute, finance still has the potential to derail proceedings.
Ahead of the conference, the COP30 and COP29 presidencies released their “Baku to Belém roadmap”, exploring how finance could be ramped up to $1.3tn by 2035.
An influential group of experts also released new analysis showing a “feasible path” to this goal, leaning on private finance. They said this work would provide a “valuable signal” to those in the finance sector.
However, with no position in the Belém negotiations, it was unclear how – or whether – the roadmap would be taken forward by governments beyond COP30.
Instead, finance negotiators have been occupied with technical matters, but these still show signs of division. For example, some developing-party groups have pushed back against an EU priority goal to extend a “dialogue” about “making finance flows consistent” with climate objectives.
Watch, read, listen
UNDER THREAT: The Bureau of Investigative Journalism told the story of Kim Rebholz – an environmentalist who was threatened for his work curbing illegal logging in Democratic Republic of Congo’s mangrove parks.
SPOTLIGHT ON STARMER: YouTuber Simon Clark has published a video of himself interviewing prime minister Keir Starmer about the UK’s actions on climate and nature, at COP30 and domestically.
INSIDE COP:Outrage and Optimism is running a “special edition” podcast series in partnership with the COP30 presidency, bringing “exclusive, behind-the-scenes access” to the conference.
Coming up
- 14-21 November: UN Climate Change conference (COP30) heads into its crucial second week in Belém
- 15 November: Informal stocktaking plenary of COP30 talks by the Brazilian presidency
- 17 November: Launch of the Global Methane Status Report
Pick of the jobs
- International Energy Agency, intern, China programme | Stipend: €1,000/month. Location: Paris
- Channel 4, sustainability production executive | Salary: £48,125. Location: Bristol, Glasgow or Leeds, UK
- World Bank, environmental specialist | Salary: “GF” grade. Location: Yaounde, Cameroon
- Greenpeace, climate and energy campaigner | Salary: Unknown. Location: Bangkok, Thailand
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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The post DeBriefed 14 November 2025: COP30 DeBriefed: Finance and 1.5C loom large at talks; China’s emissions dip; Negotiations explained appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Developed countries have poured billions of dollars into railways across Asia, solar projects in Africa and thousands of other climate-related initiatives overseas, according to a joint investigation by Carbon Brief and the Guardian.
A group of nations, including much of Europe, the US and Japan, is obliged under the Paris Agreement to provide international “climate finance” to developing countries.
This financial support can come in forms such as grants and loans from various sources, including aid budgets, multilateral development banks (MDBs) and private investments.
The flagship climate-finance target for more than a decade was to hit “$100bn a year” by 2020, which developed countries met – albeit two years late – in 2022.
Carbon Brief and the Guardian have analysed data across more than 20,000 global climate projects funded using public money from developed nations, including official 2021 and 2022 figures, which have only just been published.
The data provides a detailed insight into how the $100bn goal was reached, including funding for everything from sustainable farming in Niger to electricity projects in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
With developed countries now pledging to ramp up climate finance further, the analysis also shows how donors often rely on loans and private finance to meet their obligations.
- The $100bn target was reached in 2022, boosted by private finance and the US
- Relatively wealthy countries – including China and the UAE – were major recipients
- A tenth of all direct climate finance went to Japan-backed rail projects
- There was funding for more than 500 clean-power projects in African countries
- Some ‘least developed’ countries relied heavily on loans
- US shares in development banks significantly inflated its total contribution
- Adaptation finance still lags, but climate-vulnerable countries received more
- Methodology
The $100bn target was reached in 2022, boosted by private finance and the US
A small handful of countries have consistently been the top climate-finance donors. This remained the case in 2021 and 2022, with just four countries – Japan, Germany, France and the US – responsible for half of all climate finance, the analysis shows.
Not only was 2022 the first year in which the $100bn goal was achieved, it also saw the largest ever single-year increase in climate finance – a rise of $26.3bn, or 29%, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
(It is worth noting that while OECD figures are often referenced as the most “official” climate-finance totals, they are contested.)
Half of this increase came from a $12.6bn rise in support from MDBs – financial institutions that are owned and funded by member states. The rest can be attributed to two main factors.
First, while several donors ramped up spending, the US drove by far the biggest increase in “bilateral” finance, provided directly by the country itself.
After years of stalling during the first Donald Trump presidency, when Joe Biden took office in 2021, the nation’s bilateral climate aid more than tripled between that year and the next.
Meanwhile, after years of “stagnating” at around $15bn, the amount of private investments “mobilised” in developing countries by developed-country spending surged to around $22bn in 2022, according to OECD estimates.
As the chart below shows, the combination of increased US contributions and higher private investments pushed climate finance up by nearly $14bn in 2022, helping it to reach $115.9bn in total.
Both of these trends are still pertinent in 2025, following a new pledge made at COP29 by developed countries to ramp up climate finance to “at least” $300bn a year by 2035.
After years of increasing rapidly under Biden, US bilateral climate finance for developing countries has been effectively eliminated during Trump’s second presidential term. Other major donors, including Germany, France and the UK, have also cut their aid budgets.
This means there will be more pressure on other sources of climate finance in the coming years. In particular, developed countries hope that private finance can help to raise finance into the trillions of dollars required to achieve developing countries’ climate goals.
Some higher-income countries – including China and the UAE – were major recipients
The greatest beneficiaries of international climate finance tend to be large, middle-income countries, such as Egypt, the Philippines and Brazil, according to the analysis.
(The World Bank classifies countries as being low-, lower-middle, upper-middle or high-income, according to their gross national income per person.)
Lower-middle income India received $14.1bn in 2021 and 2022 – nearly all as loans – making it by far the largest recipient, as the chart below shows.
Most of India’s top projects were metro and rail lines in cities, such as Delhi and Mumbai, which accounted for 46% of its total climate finance in those years, Carbon Brief analysis shows. (See: A tenth of all direct climate finance went to Japan-backed rail projects.)
As the world’s second-largest economy and a major funder of energy projects overseas, China – classified as upper-middle income by the World Bank – has faced mounting pressure to start officially providing climate finance. At the same time, the nation received more than $3bn of climate finance over this period, as it is still classed as a developing country under the UN climate system.
High-income Gulf petrostates are also among the countries receiving funds. For example, the UAE received Japanese finance of $1.3bn for an electricity transmission project and a waste-to-energy project.
To some extent, such large shares simply reflect the size of many middle-income countries. India received 9% of all bilateral and multilateral climate finance, but it is home to 18% of the global population.
The focus on these nations also reflects the kind of big-budget infrastructure that is being funded.
“Middle-income economies tend to have the financial and institutional capacity to design, appraise and deliver large-scale projects,” Sarah Colenbrander, climate programme director at global affairs thinktank ODI, tells Carbon Brief.
Donors might focus on relatively higher-income or powerful nations out of self-interest, for example, to align with geopolitical, trade or commercial interests. But, as Colenbrander tells Carbon Brief, there are also plenty of “high-minded” reasons to do so, not least the opportunity to help curb their relatively high emissions.
A tenth of all direct climate finance went to Japan-backed rail projects
Japan is the largest climate-finance donor, accounting for a fifth of all bilateral and multilateral finance in 2021 and 2022, the analysis shows.
Of the 20 largest bilateral projects, 13 were Japanese. These include $7.6bn of loans for eight rail and metro systems in major cities across India, Bangladesh and the Philippines.
In fact, Japan’s funding for rail projects was so substantial that it made up 11% of all bilateral finance. This amounts to 4% of climate finance from all sources.
While these rail projects are likely to provide benefits to developing countries, they also highlight some of the issues identified by aid experts with Japan’s climate-finance practices.
As was the case for more than 80% of Japan’s climate finance, all of these projects were funded with loans, which must be paid back. Nearly a fifth of Japan’s total loans were described as “non-concessional”, meaning they were offered on terms equivalent to those offered on the open market, rather than at more favourable rates.
Many Japan-backed projects also stipulate that Japanese companies and workers must be hired to work on them, reflecting the government’s policies to “proactively support” and “facilitate” the overseas expansion of Japanese business using aid.
Documents show that rail projects in India and the Philippines were granted on this basis.
This practice can be beneficial, especially in sectors such as rail infrastructure, where Japanese companies have considerable expertise. Yet, analysts have questioned Japan’s approach, which they argue can disproportionately benefit the donor itself.
“Counting these loans as climate finance presents a moral hazard…And such loans tied to Japanese businesses make it worse,” Yuri Onodera, a climate specialist at Friends of the Earth Japan, tells Carbon Brief.
There was funding for more than 500 clean-power projects in African countries
Around 730 million people still lack access to electricity, with roughly 80% of those people living in sub-Saharan Africa.
As part of their climate-finance pledges, donor countries often support renewable projects, transmission lines and other initiatives that can provide clean power to those in need.
Carbon Brief and the Guardian have identified funding for more than 500 clean-power and transmission projects in African countries that lack universal electricity access. In total, these funds amounted to $7.6bn over the two years 2021-22.
Among them was support for Chad’s first-ever solar project, a new hydropower plant in Mozambique and the expansion of electricity grids in Nigeria.
The distribution of funds across the continent – excluding multi-country programmes – can be seen in the map below.
A lack of clear rules about what can be classified as “climate finance” in the UN climate process means donors sometimes include support for fossil fuels – particularly gas power – in their totals.
For example, Japan counted an $18m loan to a Japanese liquified natural gas (LNG) company in Senegal and roughly $1m for gas projects in Tanzania.
However, such funding accounted for a tiny fraction of sub-Saharan Africa’s climate finance overall, amounting to less than 1% of all power-sector funding across the region, based on the projects identified in this analysis.
Some ‘least developed’ countries relied heavily on loans
One of the most persistent criticisms levelled at climate finance by developing-country governments and civil society groups is that so much of it is provided in the form of loans.
While loans are commonly used to fund major projects, they are sometimes offered on unfavourable terms and add to the burden of countries that are already struggling with debt.
The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) has shown that the 44 “least developed countries” (LDCs) spend twice as much servicing debts as they receive in climate finance.
Developed nations pledged $33.4bn in 2021 and 2022 to the 44 LDCs to help them finance climate projects. In total, $17.2bn – more than half of the funding – was provided as loans, primarily from Japan, France and development banks.
The chart below shows how, for a number of LDCs, loans continue to be the main way in which they receive international climate funds.
For example, Angola received $216.7m in loans from France – primarily to support its water infrastructure – and $571.6m in loans from various multilateral institutions, together amounting to nearly all the nation’s climate finance over this period.
Oxfam, which describes developed countries as “unjustly indebting poor countries” via loans, estimates that the “true value” of climate finance in 2022 was $28-35bn, roughly a quarter of the OECD’s estimate. This is largely due to Oxfam discounting much of the value of loans.
However, Jan Kowalzig, a senior policy adviser at Oxfam Germany, tells Carbon Brief that, “generally, LDCs receive loans at better conditions” than they would have been able to secure on the open market, sometimes referred to as “concessional” loans.
US shares in development banks significantly raised its total contribution
The US has been one of the world’s top climate-finance providers, accounting for around 15% of all bilateral and multilateral contributions in 2021 and 2022.
Despite this, US contributions have consistently been viewed as relatively low when considering the nation’s wealth and historical role in driving climate change.
Moreover, much of the climate finance that can be attributed to the US comes from its MDB shareholdings, rather than direct contributions from its aid budget.
These banks are owned by member countries and the US is a dominant shareholder in many of them.
The analysis reveals that around three-quarters of US climate finance provided in 2021-22 came via multilateral sources, particularly the World Bank. (For information on how this analysis attributes multilateral funding to donors, see Methodology.)
Among other major donors – specifically Japan, France and Germany – only a third of their finance was channelled through multilateral institutions. As the chart below shows, multilateral contributions lifted the US from being the fifth-largest donor to the third-largest.
While the Trump administration has cut virtually all overseas climate funding and broadly rejected multilateral institutions, the US has not yet abandoned its influential stake in MDBs.
Prior to COP29 in 2024, only MDB funds that could be attributed to developed country inputs were counted towards the $100bn goal, as part of those nations’ Paris Agreement duties.
However, countries have now agreed that “all climate-related outflows” from MDBs – no matter which donor country they are attributed to – will count towards the new $300bn goal.
This means that, as long as MDBs continue extensively funding climate projects, there will still be a large slice of climate finance that can be attributed to the US, even as it exits the Paris Agreement.
Adaptation finance still lags, but climate-vulnerable countries received more
Under the Paris Agreement, developed countries committed to achieving “a balance between adaptation and mitigation” in their climate finance.
The idea is that, while it is important to focus on mitigation – or cutting emissions – by supporting projects such as clean energy, there is also a need to help developing countries prepare for the threat of climate change.
Generally, adaptation projects are less likely to provide a return on investment and are, therefore, more reliant on grant-based finance.
In practice, a “balance” between adaptation and mitigation has never been reached. Over the period of this analysis, 58% of climate finance was for mitigation, 33% was for adaptation and the remainder was for projects that contributed to both goals.
This reflects a preference for mitigation-based financing via loans among some major donors, particularly Japan and France. Both countries provided just a third of their finance for adaptation projects in 2021 and 2022.
However, among some of the most climate-vulnerable countries – including land-locked parts of Africa and small islands – most funding was for adaptation, as the chart below shows.
Among the projects receiving climate-adaptation funds were those supporting sustainable agriculture in Niger, improving disaster resilience in Micronesia and helping those in Somalia who have been internally displaced by “climate change and food crises”.
Methodology
The joint Guardian and Carbon Brief analysis of climate finance includes the bilateral and multilateral public finance that developed countries pledged for climate projects in developing countries. It covers the years 2021 and 2022.
(These “developed” countries are the 23 “Annex II” nations, plus the EU, that are obliged to provide climate finance under the Paris Agreement.)
The analysis excludes other types of funding that contribute to the $100bn climate-finance target for climate projects, such as export credits and private finance “mobilised” by public investments. Where these have been referenced, the figures are OECD estimates. They are excluded from the analysis because export credits are a small fraction of the total, while private finance mobilised cannot be attributed to specific donor countries.
Data for bilateral funding comes from the biennial transparency reports (BTRs) each country submits to the UNFCCC. The lag in official reporting means the most recent figures – published around the end of 2024 and start of 2025 – only go up to 2022.
Many of the bilateral projects recorded by countries do not specify single recipients, but instead mention several countries. These projects have not been included when calculating the amount of finance individual developing countries received, but they are included in the total figures.
The multilateral funding, including projects funded by MDBs and multilateral climate funds, comes from the OECD. Many countries – including developing countries – pay into these institutions, which then use their money to fund climate projects and, in the case of MDBs, raise additional finance from capital markets.
This analysis calculated the shares of the “outflows” from multilateral institutions that can be attributed to developed countries. It adapts the approach used by the OECD to calculate these attributable shares for developed countries as a whole group.
As the OECD does not publish individual donor country shares that make up the total developed-country contribution, this analysis calculated each country’s attributable shares based on shareholdings in MDBs and cumulative contributions to multilateral funds. This was based on a methodology used by analysts at the World Resources Institute and ODI. There were some multilateral funds that could not be assigned using this methodology, which are therefore not captured in each country’s multilateral contribution.
The post Analysis: Seven charts showing how the $100bn climate-finance goal was met appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Seven charts showing how the $100bn climate-finance goal was met
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s China Briefing.
China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
Gearing up
PRE-COP COMMITMENTS: China has “become the defender of international cooperation on climate change”, said state-sponsored newspaper Global Times the day before COP30 opened. China’s commitment to “dual carbon” goals will be the “driving force” of building a “beautiful China”, said an article by the Communist party-affiliated newspaper People’s Daily under the byline of Wang Huning, chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
WORLD’S EXPECTATIONS: China’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, Geng Shuang, said the country is “globally recognised as the [one] with the strongest determination, the most vigorous actions” on tackling climate issues, reported news agency Xinhua. John Kerry, former US climate envoy, told the Shanghai-based Paper: “The global climate agenda has undergone a fundamental shift, and calls are being made for China to continue playing a leading role in the event of a possible absence of the US.”
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FINANCE PLEA: Meanwhile, Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva “urged” China’s vice premier Ding Xuexiang at a pre-COP30 meeting to “join financing initiatives for climate transition and resilience” and “help fund green technology and investment projects”, said the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP).
‘OUTPERFORM[ING]’ TARGETS: Most experts in a new survey expect China to “outperform” its 2035 emissions-reduction target, reported Bloomberg. About 71% of the surveyed experts believe China’s carbon-emission peak will “happen between 2026 and 2030, with most expecting it in 2028” – ahead of the official timeline of 2030, said Agence France-Presse.
Early moves
‘PROMISES KEPT’: China “keeps its promises and delivers on its commitments” on climate change, Ding said on 6 November, in remarks at COP30’s leaders summit, according to a transcript published by Communist party-affiliated newspaper the People’s Daily. Ding suggested that, to “advance” climate action, the world must “stay on the right track”, balancing “environmental protection, economic development, job creation and poverty eradication”. In addition, Ding said countries must “remove trade barriers” if the world is to meet its targets, said BBC News.
BUILDING COALITIONS: Over the weekend ahead of COP, Brazil, China and the UK co-led a summit on methane, launching initiatives that could “accelerate global action on methane and other non-CO2 greenhouse gases”, said a press release published on the COP30 website. These included “mobilising” at least $150m to support seven developing countries’ efforts, it added. China and the EU also agreed to join a Brazilian-led carbon-market coalition, Bloomberg reported, which “aims to develop common standards for monitoring, reporting and verification”.
TFFF FOREGONE: There are “still no guarantees” that China will contribute to Brazil’s Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), CNN Brasil said, contrary to reporting by Reuters in July that China might invest in the fund. The outlet added that Brazil may be able to push for Chinese participation again at the G20 meeting in late November. SCMP said “Chinese negotiators told their Brazilian counterparts that Beijing supported the fund in principle”, but cited the common but differentiated responsibilities concept as a reason not to commit.
OPENING STATEMENTS: In the face of an “intensifying” climate crisis, China “will not stop supporting” international action, Huang said at the opening of the China pavilion at COP30, attended by Carbon Brief. A number of representatives of major international organisations – including the UNFCCC’s Simon Stiell, the UN climate advisor Selwin Hart, UNEP executive director Inger Andersen – as well as Chinese climate envoy Liu Zhenmin all spoke at the event. Hart captured the mood, saying: “We are certain to count on the leadership of China over the course of the next two weeks, and also over the next decade.”
Trade spats
AGENDA FIGHT: The agenda for COP30 was “adopted on Monday as originally drafted without any amendments”, despite a request by a country group that includes China that the lineup include “provision of finance from rich countries and unilateral trade measures” such as the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism, Climate Home News reported. The topics are instead being discussed in presidency-led consultations, alongside calls from small-island states to push for greater emissions-cutting ambition and from the EU on emissions reporting. Carbon Brief’s Simon Evans set out the issues on Bluesky.
RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW: The Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDCs) group – of which China is a part – together with the Arab Group stated that unilateral trade measures “penalise developing countries and impact their ability to take action to address climate change”, reported Earth Negotiation Bulletin. They pushed back against arguments by Japan, the EU and others that discussions of unilateral trade measures would be “more appropriate under the World Trade Organization”, it added.
PRESIDENCY PAUSE: A “stocktaking plenary” on Wednesday ended abruptly with COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago announcing a further plenary on Saturday. Do Lago said that – despite “more than eight hours” of discussions – further consultations were still needed. Rumours are flying around how Brazil will manage this, with many expecting a COP30 decision responding to these thorny issues. It may be called a “cover decision” or be part of a “mutirão package”, a reference to an Indigenous word for collective efforts.
Cough up the cash
INDIA FOR BASIC: Meanwhile, according to a government press release, India has submitted a statement on behalf of the BASIC group, an institution initiated by China, as well as LMDCs, reaffirming that the “architecture of the Paris Agreement must not be altered, and that [common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR)] remains the cornerstone of the global climate regime”. It added that “developed countries must…fulfil their obligations on finance, technology transfer and capacity-building to developing countries”, in particular by increasing adaptation finance flows by “nearly fifteen times” from current levels.
STATUS QUO: Chinese delegates have repeatedly emphasised China’s status as a developing country and the need for CBDR in early statements at COP. Writing in the Backchannel substack, Asia Society Policy Institute China climate hub and climate diplomacy director Kate Logan and E3G senior policy advisor Lily Hartzell wrote that China’s “high-level delegations have cautiously avoided any wording that might suggest a bid for formal climate leadership, particularly when it comes to climate finance”.
LEADING COMMENT: In his speech at the leaders’ summit, Ding stated that “developed countries should fulfill their obligations to take the lead in reducing emissions, honour their financial commitments and provide developing countries with more technical and capacity-building support”. This contrasts his address at COP29, where Ding highlighted China’s role in “provid[ing] and mobilis[ing]” climate finance – sparking much speculation that the country may soon change its approach to the topic.
COME BACK TO US: Li Gao, the head of China’s delegation at COP30, told Agence France-Presse that China “welcome[d]” the “Baku to Belém roadmap” towards the aspirational target of $1.3tn in climate finance by 2035 from all sources, but that it is “crucial” for the developed countries to fulfil their $300bn commitment made at COP29. Li added that “we hope that some day, and we also believe that some day in the future, the US will come back”, because “addressing climate change needs every country”.
Global south solidarity
KEY THEME: China is working towards “jointly creating a green future” for the global south, Huang said in a session on south-south development held on the first day of COP30, attended by Carbon Brief. He added: “We pay attention to the needs of developing countries.” President of the Belt and Road International Green Development Coalition (BRIGC) Zhao Yingmin said on a separate event at the China pavilion that “construction of the [Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)] is also an important driver for developing countries to advance their green transitions”. A number of initiatives were publicised during the first few days of COP, including an agreement between China, Malawi and Kenya on clean cooking and a project to collate “global case studies on green development” by BRIGC.
BUILDING CAPACITY: The BRIGC programme is “exactly the type of example we want [to see at] the COP – implementation, implementation, implementation”, said COP30 CEO Ana Toni, speaking at the launch event attended by Carbon Brief. Selwin Hart, special adviser to the secretary-general on climate action and just transition at the United Nations, emphasised at a China pavilion event that Brazil and China showed “leadership” in climate action, noting that “you [emerging economies] understand us better” than developed countries – referencing an understanding of the need for capacity building in global south countries.
‘FRANK REMARKS’: Meanwhile, an opinion article in the state-supporting Global Times, bylined simply as “Global Times”, quoted COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago saying “You can’t insist that China has to lower its emissions [and then] complain that China is putting cheap [electric vehicles] all over the world”. It added that these “frank remarks should serve as a wake-up call” against “politicising China’s green efforts”.
STRONG INTEREST: The two events on south-south cooperation, both attended by Carbon Brief, appeared to be the best-attended China pavilion events so far. One audience member, a Brazilian chemical engineer, told Carbon Brief that she was attending the session because she was interested in understanding China’s experience of navigating the energy transition as a developing country.
Views on the energy transition
‘CONCRETE PROGRESS’: “We have made concrete progress in energy transformation”, Li said at the China pavilion, adding it involved a “very hard effort”. Climate envoy Liu noted at the same event that “China, as a major country, reaffirms its confidence in achieving the [Paris Agreement] goals”. He said that China “sees the next 10 years as a critical period for delivering on the commitments made under the Paris Agreement”, adding: “We look forward to all countries delivering their contributions on this goal.”
FOSSIL PHASE-OUT?: In his opening speech at the leaders’ summit, Brazil’s Lula called on world leaders to draw roadmaps to “overcome dependence on fossil fuels”, adding that he was “convinced” that this could be done “despite [countries’] difficulties and contradictions”, Argus Media reported. In the opening session of the China pavilion, attended by Carbon Brief, UNEP’s Andersen said she “encourage[d] China to take even bolder action…[and] explore setting targets on coal”.
PRIORITIES FOR 2030: Lyu Wenbin, director general of China’s Energy Research Institute, stated that a key task in the next five years included “improving the quality of energy supply”, including “boosting non-fossil energy” while “shifting coal power to a supporting role” in the energy mix. He added that in the medium- to long-term, China will build an energy system that has “non-fossil energy as the main supply [of power] and fossil energy as a guarantee [of energy security]”.
FLAT OR FALLING: Meanwhile, analysis for Carbon Brief found that China’s carbon dioxide emissions were “unchanged from a year earlier in the third quarter of 2025, extending a flat or falling trend that started in March 2024”. The analysis has been covered widely in publications including China’s Global Times, the New York Times, Financial Times, Reuters, Bloomberg and on the frontpage of the Guardian.
Captured
Bai Quan, director of the Energy Research Institute of the Academy of Macroeconomic Research – a research institution managed by the National Development and Reform Commission – outlined how China’s energy landscape might evolve between 2024 and 2060, during the launch of the China Energy Transformation Outlook (CETO) 2025 at the China Pavilion, attended by Carbon Brief. Guest posts for Carbon Brief on previous CETO reports can be found here and here.
Watch, read, listen
EV MARKET: Research institute the Centre for Strategic and International Studies published a series of two videos talking about China’s EVs in the global market.
HEALTH AND CLIMATE CHANGE: The “Lancet Countdown” China report led by Tsinghua University found that “climate-related health risks in China reached record levels last year”, according to media outlet China.org.cn.
‘DOCUMENT 136’: China Power Enterprise Management analysed the impact of China’s “document 136” pricing reforms for new renewable energy projects.
CHINA-LAOS: A long article by Sky News talked about China’s “green technology exports” in developing countries, such as Laos.
789
The number of delegates China has sent to Belém, according to analysis by Carbon Brief. This includes more than 100 party delegates and almost 700 “overflow” delegates, including from local government, the private sector, non-government organisations and foreign consulting firms.
New science
Scientific Reports
“Environmental penalties indirectly influence climate-friendly technological innovation through their effects on the digital economy and financial technology”, according to a new study. The paper used data from Chinese cities to model this influence. The authors found that environmental penalties have a “U-shaped” effect, noting a “critical inflection point where environmental penalties shift from promoting to inhibiting these innovations”.
Scientific Reports
New research investigated the “carbon rebound effect”, defined in the paper as “the phenomenon in which, after energy efficiency improvements, carbon emissions rebound due to increased economic activity, thus undermining the reduction in emissions achieved through efficiency gains”. Using machine-learning methods, the authors assessed data from Chinese cities collected over 2010-21. According to the paper, the effect is stronger in the north of China than the south and in the east than the west.
China Briefing is compiled by Wanyuan Song and Anika Patel. It is edited by Wanyuan Song and Dr Simon Evans. Please send tips and feedback to china@carbonbrief.org
The post China Briefing 13 November 2025: COP30 special appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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