Marking the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement, COP30 is seen as a crucial test of the world’s resolve to tackle climate change. At a time of faltering multilateralism, worsening climate-related destruction and a lack of ambition in national pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the stakes for the UN climate summit in Belèm are higher than ever.
We take a look at the big questions facing this Amazon COP – from efforts to raise weak national climate targets and transition away from fossil fuels, to long-overdue action on adaptation and forest finance.
How will COP30 address the global ambition shortfall?
In the year leading up to COP30, the global climate community watched closely for countries’ new national targets, a key gauge of the world’s commitment to cutting greenhouse gas emissions. As the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) belatedly trickled in, a clear picture emerged: the plans fall far short of what is needed to avoid the worst climate impacts.
If those commitments are turned into action, global emissions are still only expected to fall about 10% below 2019 levels by 2035, a preliminary UN climate assessment found – far short of the roughly 60% cut IPCC scientists say is needed to limit global warming to 1.5C.
“Current commitments still point to climate breakdown,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres, indicating that a temporary overshoot of the more ambitious Paris temperature goal is now “inevitable”.
Heading into COP30, he called on world leaders to deliver “a bold and credible response plan” to close the gap. This leaves the Brazilian COP30 presidency with the unenviable task of trying to push countries to ramp up their ambition and go beyond the NDCs that they have just submitted.
How – or even whether – that will happen is still unclear.
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A round of informal consultations in September brought a clash of views into public view. Large emerging economies, including China, Saudi Arabia and India, pushed back on the need to discuss climate plans – arguing the topic is not on the summit’s agenda and will be taken up in the next Global Stocktake. But rich nations, least-developed countries (LDCs), small island states and Latin American nations want a COP30 decision that lays out a pathway for accelerating climate action in the years ahead.
If countries were to ultimately agree on a collective response, a negotiated cover decision could be a natural home for it. Brazil professed its strong opposition to that option for months, but it recently warmed up to the idea of producing an “omnibus” decision that could incorporate all the main outcomes of the summit, including those not covered by the formal agenda.
But some seasoned COP participants want Brazil to take a radically different approach. That could mean, for example, producing an “Implementation Plan“, that, instead of listing vague promises, provides detailed guidance on the way forward while trying to connect the negotiations to the real world.
What’s next for the fossil fuel transition?
At COP28 in Dubai, countries reached a landmark agreement to transition away from fossil fuels in their energy systems in a historic first for a UN climate summit. Yet, nearly two years later, those words have not been matched by meaningful action.
According to the latest Production Gap Report, governments are collectively planning even higher levels of fossil fuel production than they were at the time of the Dubai deal. By 2030, planned production is projected to exceed levels consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5C by more than 120%.
And in their latest national climate plans submitted this year, only about a third of countries express some form of support for the transition away from fossil fuels, an analysis by Carbon Brief found.
Leo Roberts, a programme lead on energy transitions at think-tank E3G, said there needs to be a high-level visible signal emerging from this COP, but that is unlikely to come from the formal negotiations. Oil-producing nations have blocked any progress on the fossil fuel transition at COP29 last year and at last June’s mid-year session in Bonn.
“What we need to see is some process that can act as a bridge between the real world and negotiations,” added Roberts, “a dialogue space that can ultimately produce some form of roadmap on the transition away from fossil fuels”.
This idea should count on political backing from Brazil, despite the country’s plans to expand oil and gas production. The need for a roadmap was first floated in the country’s NDC last year and Environment Minister Marina Silvia has been publicly championing it in the run-up to COP30.
Last week, she called on world leaders to send a clear message on the need for a “just, planned, gradual and long-term decommissioning of fossil fuels” as they take to the stage in Belém this week.
Several other nations should be getting behind this push. Ministers from 23 countries, including the UK, Germany, France and small-island nations, said “international cooperation and global tracking” are needed to make sure the transition happens fast enough in a joint statement published on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
The European Union wants the COP30 outcome to ask all nations, and particularly major emitters, “to operationalise their contribution” to the global call to transition away from fossil fuels. Colombia is set to host the first international conference on phasing out fossil fuels in April 2026, aiming to give countries a global platform for co-operating on the transition away from coal, oil and fossil gas.
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In the formal negotiations, Brazil has made advancing the just transition work programme one of its top priorities, after countries failed at COP29 to agree on a deal to support workers and communities affected by the shift to cleaner energy.
Civil society groups are pushing the idea of a new “Belém Action Mechanism” under the programme, an initiative aimed at unifying and strengthening global efforts to ensure that the shift away from fossil fuels is fair, inclusive, and equitable. The idea is to identify barriers, opportunities and international support by providing countries with global coordination.
Will adaptation take centre stage?
As the world fails to limit global warming to agreed levels, climate impacts are expected to grow even more intense and frequent. This grim outlook translates into an increasingly urgent need to strengthen countries’ ability to withstand worsening floods, deadlier heatwaves and more prolonged droughts.
But adaptation – often described as the “Cinderella” of climate action – remains largely overlooked and severely underfunded. Brazil has pledged to change that, putting adaptation at the centre of this year’s UN climate summit.
“Climate adaptation is no longer a choice that follows mitigation – it is the first half of our survival,” COP30 president André Aranha Corrêa do Lago said in a recent letter calling for “urgent and tangible” outcomes in Belém.
In the formal negotiations, the big-ticket item will be the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA). Governments should agree on a set of indicators that can be used to measure progress towards the GGA’s broad targets on areas including sanitation, food, health and infrastructure.
Technical experts have whittled down thousands of proposed indicators to a more manageable list of 100, which will serve as the basis of discussions in Belèm.
Natalie Unterstell, president of Brazil’s Instituto Talanoa, told a Climate Home briefing that would “really help us to start having a common language to measure progress on resilience” – comparing it to the Paris temperature goals.
Vulnerable countries also hope that clearer parameters will help unlock more funding for adaptation efforts.
Sounding the alarm over a “yawning gap” in adaptation finance, the UN Environment Programme estimates that developing countries will need to spend between $310 billion and $365 billion a year on resilience measures by 2035 — about 12 times current international public funding levels.
But the outlook for adaptation finance is growing increasingly bleak. The COP26 pledge by developed nations to double funding for developing countries by 2025 appears likely to have been missed, as governments cut overseas spending amid mounting geopolitical tensions and domestic fiscal pressures.
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While an official assessment will not be available until 2027, the LDCs are pushing for a new goal to be set at COP30 to boost adaptation finance to about $120 billion a year by 2030. Manjeet Dhakal, a Nepalese negotiator for the group, said that would be the “bare minimum, or otherwise it will be very difficult for us”.
Where those resources could come from remains to be seen. But Corrêa do Lago told Reuters he hoped to produce a “package of resources” for adaptation with rich countries, multilateral development banks and philanthropic organisations all contributing.
How will fractured geopolitics influence discussions?
Geopolitical tensions linked to wars and growing trade rivalries are inevitably casting a long shadow over the climate agenda and hampering multilateral cooperation.
The most disruptive force – US President Donald Trump’s administration – will not be present on the ground in Belèm, barring a last-minute U-turn. The White House told several media outlets that no high-level officials will be sent to the talks, which come a month before the US will officially leave the Paris Agreement.
Many diplomats are likely breathing a sigh of relief after seeing the US use what some observers described as “bully-boy tactics” to sink a landmark deal to cut emissions in the shipping sector last month.
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The Trump administration may not be in the room in Belém, but its shadow is likely to hang over the summit. Laurence Tubiana, a key architect of the Paris Agreement, warned that she has never seen such an aggressive stance against climate policy as that emanating from Washington. “We are really confronted with an ideological battle where climate change is in the package the US government wants to defeat,” she told reporters.
Tubiana added that other countries need to stand up and make COP “a turning point”.
The spotlight is expected to fall primarily on the EU, which will carry the torch for rich countries, and large emerging economies, including China, India and COP30 host Brazil.
For Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, this year’s summit could mark a “collective graduation ceremony” for Global South countries fast-tracked by the retreat of the US.
“When I look at that part of the world, I’m seeing stronger alignment among many countries between their economic growth and the decarbonisation agenda,” he said.
The EU has been walking a tightrope between trying to reaffirm its climate leadership and grappling with internal discord that has threatened to undermine its credibility.
Tubiana said Europe “must stop patronising” and recognise that “we are all interdependent”. “We cannot execute the green transition without cooperation and help from other countries,” she added. “That means we have to propose ways of working, investing and trading that are truly equitable.”
Echoing her words, Arunabha Ghosh, CEO of the Delhi-based Council on Energy, Environment and Water, said countries need to show a different level of solidarity across the [Global] North and the South.
“We are all under collective siege, and when you are under siege, the more you hunker down together, the better chances you have to survive the real and metaphorical hurricanes,” he told reporters.
Will an Amazon COP turn the tide on deforestation?
When Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva picked the Amazon city of Belèm as the venue for COP30, he wanted to make sure that, for the first time, forests would be literally at the heart of the talks as their crucial role in storing carbon and regulating the climate comes under growing threat.
Global deforestation has not slowed significantly in the four years since countries committed at COP26 to halt and reverse forest loss and degradation by 2030.
Last year, the world lost 8.1 million hectares of forest – an area the size of England – leaving the world 63% off track from meeting that pledge, according to the annual Forest Declaration Assessment. Fires and land clearing for agriculture and other commodities remain the leading causes of deforestation.
How could COP30 start turning this negative trend around? The most highly anticipated initiative falls outside of the negotiations, but is being billed as potentially one of Brazil’s biggest legacies as COP host: the launch of the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF).
World failing on goal to halt deforestation by 2030, raising stakes for Amazon COP
Acting as an investment fund, the mechanism would invest in financial markets and use some of the expected returns to reward forest-rich nations that manage to keep trees standing. It aims to receive an initial capital of $25 billion from governments, which would then be used to attract $100 billion from private investors.
“Think of a bank that runs normal market operations but that directs its profits not to shareholders but to forests,” said João Paulo de Resende, undersecretary for economic and fiscal affairs at Brazil’s Finance Ministry.
The TFFF’s main strategy is to get cheap money from investors and lend money to emerging economies at much higher interest rates. Emerging market bonds would account for as much as 80% of its investments. Exploiting this arbitrage opportunity should guarantee enough returns to pay back investors and channel cash into forest protection, according to its proponents.
But the mechanics of the fund have come in for criticism, with some analysts saying the fund rests on “a fragile illusion” of free revenues to be harvested from the bond market, where higher yields represent bigger real risks.
Potential donors have also been asking “very tough questions” about the fund’s configuration, one of its promoters told Climate Home’s webinar last month. The UK government was reportedly divided over whether to offer cash for the initiative with the Treasury questioning its costs, Politico reported.
So far, only Brazil and Indonesia have committed money to the TFFF, with each pledging $1 billion. But Lula, who has personally championed the initiative, will be hoping to announce more contributions at the flagship launch event on Thursday.
The post Five big questions hanging over COP30 appeared first on Climate Home News.
The Brazilian COP30 presidency has published a “Baku to Belém roadmap” on how climate finance could be scaled up to “at least $1.3tn” a year by 2035.
The idea for the roadmap was a late addition to the outcome of COP29 last year, following disappointment over the formal $300bn-per-year climate-finance goal agreed in Baku.
The new document, published ahead of the UN climate talks in Belém, Brazil, says it is not designed to create new financing schemes or mechanisms.
Instead, the roadmap says it provides a “coherent reference framework on existing initiatives, concepts and leverage points to facilitate all actors coming together to scale up climate finance in the short to medium term”.
It details suggested actions across grants, concessional finance, private finance, climate portfolios, capital flows and more, designed to drive up climate finance over the next decade.
Despite geopolitical uncertainty, there is hope that this roadmap can lay out a pathway to the “trillions” in climate finance that developing countries say they need to meet their climate targets.
Countries have divergent views on how to get there, but some notable trends have emerged from the roadmap, which was spearheaded by the Azerbaijani and Brazilian COP presidencies.
Below, Carbon Brief details what the Baku to Belém roadmap is, why it was launched and what the key points within it are.
- Why was the ‘Baku to Belém roadmap’ launched?
- What is the goal of the roadmap?
- What are different countries’ views on climate finance?
- What are the solutions that the roadmap has identified?
- What happens next?
Why was the ‘Baku to Belém roadmap’ launched?
A mounting body of evidence shows that developing countries will need trillions of dollars in the coming years if they are to achieve their climate goals.
While much of this finance will likely be sourced domestically within those countries, a large slice is expected to come from international actors.
This climate finance is part of the “grand bargain” at the heart of the Paris Agreement, whereby developing countries agree to set more ambitious climate plans if they receive financial support from developed countries.
Ahead of COP29, developing countries hoped that the post-2025 climate finance target – known as the new collective quantified goal (NCQG) – would reflect their full “needs and priorities”, as set out in the Paris Agreement.
They also pushed for developed-country parties such as the EU, the US and Japan to contribute a large portion of this finance, preferably on favourable terms such as grants.
They were left largely disappointed, with a final target that fell well short of what many developing countries had been proposing.
The central target agreed at COP29 was “at least” $300bn a year by 2035, with an expectation that developed countries would “take the lead” in providing these funds from “a wide variety of sources”, including private finance.
This goal – which was effectively the successor to the previous $100bn-per-year target – was far short of what developing countries had wanted. However, another key part of the text agreed in Baku alludes to their ambitions, with a loose request that “all actors” scale up finance to at least $1.3tn per year by 2035:
“[The COP] calls on all actors to work together to enable the scaling up of financing to developing country parties for climate action from all public and private sources to at least $1.3tn per year by 2035.”
In contrast to the $300bn target, this $1.3tn figure, which first appeared in a proposal by the African Group in 2021, reflects developing-country demands and needs. It also aligns with influential analysis of developing-country needs by the Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance (IHLEG).
Yet, this part of the text lacked binding language and detail on who precisely would be responsible for providing these funds. It has therefore been described by civil-society groups as more of an aspirational “call to action” than a target.
(“Calls on” is the weakest form of words in which UN legal texts can make a request.)
However, the COP29 text contained another relevant decision, added as negotiations drew to a close. It mentioned a “Baku to Belém roadmap to $1.3tn” – a report that could flesh out ways to scale up finance further and help developing countries achieve their climate targets.
The Azerbaijani COP29 presidency and the incoming Brazilian presidency were tasked with assembling this roadmap ahead of COP30 in 2025.
In the months that followed, the presidencies engaged with governments, civil-society groups, businesses and other relevant actors. They gathered information to build a “library of knowledge and best practices”, which could boost climate finance for developing countries.
What is the goal of the roadmap?
The roadmap comes at a difficult time for climate finance, with a particularly “bleak” outlook for public funding from developed countries. Major donors – particularly the US – have made large cuts to their aid budgets, threatening climate spending overseas.
At the same time, private investment has also faltered, with successive economic shocks raising the cost of capital for clean-energy projects in developing countries.
For years, finance experts and development leaders have talked of a “billions to trillions” agenda, suggesting that public money could help to “mobilise” trillions of dollars of private investments that could be used to build low-carbon infrastructure in the global south.
Yet, the “billions to trillions” concept has also faced growing scrutiny, with even the World Bank chief economist Indermit Gill branding it “a fantasy”. Critics have highlighted wider issues constraining developing countries, such as high levels of debt.
The NCQG text from COP29 set out the roadmap’s overarching goal of scaling up annual climate finance to $1.3tn, through means including “grants, concessional and non-debt-creating instruments, and measures to create fiscal space”.
On the current trajectory, financial sources potentially covered by the target could hit around $427bn for developing countries a year by 2035, less than a third of the goal, according to analysis by the thinktank NRDC.
Achieving $1.3tn of finance relies on what one report calls “yet-to-be-defined mechanisms”, which go beyond the ones covered by the $300bn target.
Countries and other relevant parties were asked by the presidencies for their views on “short-term” – actions by 2028 and “medium-to-long term” actions beyond 2028 that could ramp up finance further. They were asked about new sources of finance and thoughts on scaling up adaptation finance, in particular.
There have already been numerous ideas and programmes put forward for scaling up international climate finance. These include G20-led reforms of the multilateral development banks (MDBs), this year’s International Conference on Financing for Development, as well as UN sovereign debt restructuring efforts.
Accordingly, the Baku to Belém roadmap was also given a remit to “tak[e] into account relevant multilateral initiatives as appropriate”. Parties were also asked for suggestions of organisations and initiatives that should be involved.
Rebecca Thissen from Climate Action Network (CAN) International tells Carbon Brief:
“The roadmap could support the UNFCCC to be sending strong signals to the international community…But also using the convening power that the UNFCCC could have, so bringing those different actors to the table in a more structured and predictable way.”
What are different countries’ views on climate finance?
There were over 227 submissions into the Baku to Belém roadmap, including 38 from countries and party groupings. The remainder came mainly from NGOs, businesses, financial experts and researchers, as shown in the figure below.
The submissions partly reflect what the thinktank C2ES describes as the “pockmarked baggage of the climate finance negotiations”, with many parties demonstrating the same entrenched, often opposing views on climate finance that they have held for decades.
Carbon Brief has captured the submissions by countries and party groupings in the interactive table below, comparing their views on key issues.
There is broad agreement among countries that the roadmap should not reopen the NCQG discussions or involve a new, negotiated outcome at COP30.
However, some parties still call for more accountability in achieving the existing goals.
Latin American countries within the AILAC grouping call for the roadmap to “define concrete milestones for scaling up climate finance”. Egypt goes further, proposing that developed countries alone commit “at least $150bn annually in public concessional finance by 2028”, mainly as grants.
A key divergence in submissions is on which governments and institutions, precisely, should be responsible for scaling finance up to $1.3tn.
Several developing-country groups stress the importance of centring developed countries as the primary contributors, referencing Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement.
The Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDCs) group, which includes India, China and Saudi Arabia, states that “the roadmap must place Article 9.1 as its central pillar”. The G77 and China – a group representing all developing countries – stresses the “additional role developed countries will play in the context of Article 9.1, which is additional to the $300bn”.
Meanwhile, many developed countries focus on what Canada refers to as “a necessary broadening of climate finance” within the roadmap. In practice, this often amounts to a greater push for private finance, as well as “innovative” new sources such as global levies.
While developing countries do not often outright oppose such sources, some of them propose tighter limits. For example, China says “purely commercial investment flows should not be included” in the $1.3tn, which should only count funds “mobilised through public interventions”.
A related dispute centres on the roadmap’s scope, with the EU suggesting it should “extend beyond the UNFCCC framework”.
Parties such as India reject the idea of involving other multilateral fora, such as the G20. This would involve moving beyond the UN climate process, where developed countries have traditionally been the ones responsible for channelling climate finance.
The submissions also show notable differences among developing-country groupings. On the topic of defining what should be counted as “climate finance”, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) opposes the inclusion of funding for fossil-fuel projects, while the Arab Group says it does not support “any exclusionary criteria”.
There is coalescence between parties around other issues, albeit with various subtle differences.
Areas of broad agreement include the importance of more funding for climate adaptation, dealing with “barriers” to funding in developing countries and improving the transparency of climate-finance provision.
The roadmap details some of the potential sources of finance identified within the submissions.
This includes direct budget contributions, which the submissions suggest could generate an additional $197bn in financing; improved rechanneling and new issuances of special drawing rights ($100-500bn per year); carbon pricing ($20-4,900bn, dependent on rate and geographies); and fees on aviation or maritime transport($4-223bn).
Additionally, a range of taxes were identified as candidates for raising new climate finance. These include taxes on specific goods such as luxury fashion, technology and military goods ($34-112bn), financial transactions taxes ($105-327bn), minimum corporate taxes ($165-540bn) and wealth taxes ($200-1,364bn).
In a statement, Rebecca Newsom, global political expert at Greenpeace International, said:
“It’s notable that the roadmap recognises new taxes and levies as key to unlocking public climate finance. Given reported profits from just five international oil and gas giants over the last decade reached almost $800bn, taxing fossil fuel corporations is clearly a huge opportunity to overcome national fiscal constraints.
“The roadmap’s recognition that the UN tax convention provides an opportunity to raise new sources of concessional climate finance is also highly welcome, and is an opportunity governments must now seize.”
What are the solutions that the roadmap has identified?
The roadmap sets out “five action fronts” for reaching $1.3tn by 2035.
These are designed to “help deliver on the at-least-$1.3tn aspiration by strengthening supply, making demand more strategic, and accelerating access and transparency”.
The report titles these five action fronts as “replenishing, rebalancing, rechanneling, revamping and reshaping”.
Within each of these, the roadmap lays out key points to help “transform scientific warning into a global blueprint for cooperation and tangible results”.
The first, “replenishing”, refers to grants, concessional finance and low-cost capital, including multilateral climate funds and MDBs.
It notes that there is a “growing role” for MDBs in advancing climate action, as well as a need for developed countries to achieve “manyfold increases in the delivery of grants and concessional climate finance, including through bilateral and multilateral channels”.
Access to grants and concessional finance is a key enabling factor for an “efficient” flow of public funding, the roadmap notes.
The roadmap calls for coordination in the international finance system, bilateral finance that is concessional and low-cost, multilateral climate funds, innovative sources of concessional finance with simplified access pathways and more.
This coordination could be key, with Sarah Colenbrander, director of ODI’s climate and sustainability programme, telling Carbon Brief:
“The bigger risk is probably that some countries will allocate their climate finance differently, so that they can report more money going out the door without a commensurate increase in fiscal effort. For example, they might shift from grants to concessional loans, and from concessional loans to market-rate loans. If the money will be repaid, there is less lift for taxpayers at home.
“Alternatively, countries might focus on using public finance to mobilise private finance that can also count towards the $300bn goal. Private finance has a very important role to play in both mitigation and adaptation, but it is very unlikely to meet the needs of the most vulnerable communities, given their high adaptation investment needs and very limited ability to pay.”
In particular, the roadmap suggests MDBs “intensify their engagement on climate finance through a strategic approach that recognises and amplifies their catalytic role in providing and mobilising capital”.
Second, “rebalancing” refers to fiscal space and debt sustainability. The roadmap calls on creditor countries, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and MDBs to work together to “alleviate onerous debt burdens faced by developing countries”.
The roadmap notes that external debt servicing costs of developing countries have more than doubled since 2014, to $1.7tn per year in 2023.
Developing countries’ net interest payments on public debt reached $921bn in 2024, a 10% increase compared to 2023, it adds.
The roadmap notes the need to “remove barriers and address disenablers faced by developing countries in financing climate action”. It adds that developing countries face at least two- to four-times the borrowing costs of developed countries.
It points to a number of “promising” solutions already being implemented, such as climate-resilient debt clauses and “debt-for-climate swaps” and debt restructuring.
In particular, MDBs, the IMF, UN agencies and regional UN economic commissions could work together to create a “one-stop shop” for assistance in these areas, the roadmap says.
Third, “rechannelling” refers to “transformative” private finance and affordable cost of capital.
It notes that mobilisation of private finance has been “stubborn to scale”: The level of private finance leveraged by official development interventions has grown by 7% per year from 2016 to 2019 and then 16% per year from 2020 to 2023, to reach $46bn.
The roadmap says that “blended finance” can play a role in scaling up climate finance and that private finance for the implementation of “nationally determined contributions” to cutting global emissions (NDCs) and national adaptation plans (NAPs) has “significant potential for growth”.
“Innovative instruments” are listed as a key approach to improving private finance, including “catalytic equity”, guarantees, foreign exchange risk management, securitisation platforms and more.
To support this, the roadmap calls for target-setting and data transparency, along with increasing, coordinating and harmonising guarantee offerings and channelling concessional finance into long-term foreign exchange hedging facilities, along with other actions.
Relying heavily on private finance could pose a risk, Jan Kowalzig, senior policy adviser for climate at Oxfam Germany, tells Carbon Brief, adding:
“The much larger problem, however, is the plan to massively rely on private finance in the future. While private finance has a key role to play to transform economies, [it] cannot replace much-needed public finance, especially for adaptation and for responding to loss and damage.
“Interventions in these sectors often do not generate return to satisfy investors’ expectations. Forcing projects to become profitable can come at great social cost for frontline communities struggling to survive in the worsening climate crisis.”
The roadmap suggests financial institutions move towards “originate-to-distribute” and “originate-to-share” business models, support the development of climate-aligned domestic financial systems and expand investor bases and diverse sources of capital, amongst other proposals.
Fourth is “revamping”, referring to capacity and coordination for scaled climate portfolios. This “demands institutions to manage risks locally, develop project pipelines, ensure country ownership and track progress and impact”.
It notes that “whole-of-government” approaches to the transition can be strengthened, with NDCs and NAPs integrated throughout national investment strategies. Additionally, it points to country-led coordination or platforms as a route for improving investment.
The roadmap suggests readiness support and project preparation as routes to “revamp” climate finance, alongside support to scale, coordinate and tailor capacity building, the development of country platforms and the provision of “predictable and flexible support for investment frameworks”.
The final “R” is “reshaping”, focused on systems and structures for capital flows. It highlights a number of barriers that still remain for capital flows through developing countries, including outdated clauses in investment treaties.
It recommends prudential regulation, interoperability of taxonomies, climate disclosure frameworks and investment treaties, as key actions to support the reshaping of capital flows.
Additionally, the roadmap suggests that credit rating agencies further refine their methodologies, that jurisdictions adopt voluntary disclosure of climate-related financial risks of financial institutions and that climate stress-test requirements are gradually embedded in supervisory reviews and bank risk management.
Beyond the “five [finance] action fronts”, the roadmap sets out five thematic areas, noting that “where and how finance is directed” matters.
These are: adaptation and loss and damage; clean-energy access and transitions; nature and supporting its guardians; agriculture and food systems; and just transitions.
Within each, it sets out some of the key challenges and suggests routes for financial support.
What happens next?
The Baku to Belem roadmap is not a formal part of COP30 negotiations, but there will be a major launch event at the summit.
Beyond that, the final section of the roadmap sets out that this is the “beginning [of] the journey”. It and details suggested short-term contributions (2026-2028), to serve as “initial, practical steps to inform and guide the early implementation of the roadmap”.
This includes the Azerbaijani and Brazilian presidencies convening an expert group tasked with refining data and developing “concrete financing pathways” to get to $1.3bn in 2035. This will build on the action fronts set out in the roadmap, with the first such report due by October 2026.
Throughout 2026, the presidencies will convene dialogue sessions with parties and stakeholders to discuss how to progress the action fronts over the medium to long term.
The roadmap suggests that to improve predictability, developed countries “could consider” working together on a delivery plan to outline how they expect to achieve the at-least $300bn goal by 2030, as well as other elements of the NCQG.
Additional suggestions in the roadmap are listed in the table below.
(Notably, almost all of these suggestions are made using loose, voluntary language. For example, the roadmap says that developed countries “could” create a delivery plan for their NCQG pathways.)
| Who | What | When |
|---|---|---|
| COP29 and COP30 presidencies | Convene an expert group to develop “concrete financing pathways” | October 2026 |
| COP29 and COP30 presidencies | Convene dialogue sessions with parties and stakeholders | 2026 |
| Developed countries | Creating a delivery plan to set out intended contributions and pathways for NCQG targets | End of 2026 |
| Parties to the Paris Agreement | Request the Standing Committee on Finance to provide an aggregate view on pathways for NCQG | 2027 |
| Governments | Request UN entities to examine and review collaboration options | October 2026 |
| Multilateral climate funds | Report annually on the implementation of their “operational framework” on complementarity and coherence, to enhance cross-fund collaboration. | Annually |
| Multilateral climate funds | Develop monitoring and reporting frameworks and coordination plans, explaining their operations by region, topic and sector | October 2027 |
| Multilateral development banks | Collective report on achieving a new aspirational climate finance target for 2035 | October 2027 |
| Multilateral development banks | Adopt “explicit, ambitious and transparent targets for adaptation and private capital mobilisation” | October 2027 |
| International Monetary Fund | Conduct an assessment of the costs, benefits and feasibility of a new issuance of “special drawing rights” | October 2027 |
| UN regional economic commissions | Develop a study on the potential for expanding debt-for-climate, debt-for-nature and sustainability-linked finance | End of 2027 |
| UNSG-convened working group | Propose a consolidated set of voluntary principles on responsible sovereign borrowing and lending. | October 2026 |
| Crediting rating agencies | Develop a structured dialogue platform with ministries of finance to make progress on refinements to credit rating methodologies. | October 2027 |
| Philanthropies | Expand funding of knowledge hubs | October 2026 |
| UN treaty executive secretariats | Develop a joint report with proposals on economic instruments to support co-benefits and efficiencies | End of 2027 |
| Insurance Development Forum and the V20 | Establish a plan for achieving cheaper and more robust insurance and pre-arranged finance mechanisms for climate disasters | October 2026 |
| Financial Stability Board, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and the International Association of Insurance Supervisors | Conduct a joint assessment of whether and how barriers to investment in developing countries could be reduced | October 2027 |
| World’s 100 largest companies | Report annually on how they are contributing towards the implementation of NDCs and NAPs | Annually |
| World’s 100 largest institutional investors | Report annually on how they are contributing towards the implementation of NDCs and NAPs | Annually |
COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev and COP30 president André Aranha Corrêa do Lago conclude in the foreword of the report that while the $1.3bn “journey” is beginning amid “turbulent times”, they are confident that “technological and financial solutions exist”. They add:
“Communities and cities are acting. Families and workers are ready to roll up their sleeves and deliver more action. If resources are strategically redirected and deployed effectively – and if the international financial architecture is reset to fulfil its original purpose of ensuring decent prospects for life – the $1.3tn goal will be an achievable global investment in our present and our future. We are optimistic.”
The post COP30: What does the ‘Baku to Belém roadmap’ mean for climate finance? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
COP30: What does the ‘Baku to Belém roadmap’ mean for climate finance?
A keenly awaited plan to mobilise $1.3 trillion a year in climate finance for developing nations by 2035 could spark a “positive tipping point” that drives an exponential shift in global climate funding, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago said on Wednesday as the document was unveiled.
The 81-page “Baku to Belém Roadmap” offers a shopping list of potential measures that, if put into practice, could deliver on a promise made at last year’s UN COP29 summit to boost the provision of climate cash for poorer vulnerable nations from a range of public and private sources.
That deal came after developing countries in Azerbaijan were disappointed by wealthy governments offering an annual $300 billion by 2035 under a new UN climate finance goal, known as the NCQG.
Reaching the wider $1.3-trillion target, which includes the $300 billion, would require “significant effort” from traditional climate finance providers – including rich countries and development banks – as well as innovative sources, such as new taxes, the report says, adding that the goal is “achievable”.
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In a foreword to the roadmap, the two presidents of COP29 and COP30, which takes place in Brazil over the next two weeks, say the $1.3 trillion “must power the next leap in climate implementation”, to make the Paris Agreement work faster and mainstream it across economies, societies and international finance.
The roadmap presents ideas on five elements of the global financial architecture: public concessional finance, fiscal and debt-related measures, private capital, multilateral climate funds and supervisory bodies, like regulators and central banks. The COP presidents say in their foreword that the roadmap “transforms scientific warning into a global blueprint for cooperation and tangible results”.
Not on the COP30 agenda
Yet it remains unclear how – or even whether – its recommendations will be taken forward.
Corrêa do Lago told journalists “there is no plan” for the roadmap to be formally discussed at the COP30 summit or reflected in its final outcomes. “There is no priority absolutely in having it approved or acknowledged at COP,” he added.
The roadmap was never meant to be a negotiated outcome at the UN climate talks. But the two COP presidencies took on the task of crafting a plan to scale up climate finance, with many developing countries viewing the new NCQG target for government funding as insufficient to meet their needs.
The non-binding report issued just before COP30 in the Amazon city of Belém offers a list of practical short-term actions that could guide the roadmap’s early implementation.
For example, it says developed countries could work together on a plan by the end of 2026 that explains how they will reach their goal of providing at least $300 billion a year. Amid cuts in overseas aid spending and tightening government budgets, the report says this step could improve “predictability” of finance flows.
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Multilateral development banks – seen as central to the roadmap’s delivery – could outline how they would reach a new “aspirational” climate finance target for 2035, possibly by changing some of their lending rules and adding more capital.
The report also suggests that the world’s 100 largest companies and its 100 largest institutional investors could report each year on how they are contributing towards the implementation of countries’ national climate plans.
In a statement on the roadmap, UN climate chief Simon Stiell said that “by scaling climate finance to match the scope of the climate crisis, we can turn ambition into momentum, making climate action a driver of economic growth, stability and shared prosperity”.
“The task is ambitious, but achievable,” he added. “The tools exist – what’s been missing is coordination and shared commitment.”
Campaigners disappointed
While welcoming some of the roadmap’s recommendations, climate campaigners said it had failed to live up to its promise and did not confront tricky subjects such as continued government subsidies for fossil fuels. Many also criticised it for relying too heavily on finance coming from the private sector.
Rebecca Thissen, global advocacy lead at Climate Action Network International, said the roadmap “feels more like a sketch than a compass”, adding that while pointing in the right direction, “it fails to chart a clear route or provide the tools” to reach the $1.3-trillion target.
Harjeet Singh, founding director of India’s Satat Sampada Climate Foundation, said the roadmap “correctly identifies the symptoms of our broken financial system” yet “fundamentally fails to prescribe the cure” or present “the transformation we have been demanding”.
There were hopes among climate justice experts that the roadmap would show how to raise more money for helping climate-vulnerable countries adapt to more extreme weather and rising seas – an area of climate action that is severely underfunded, with little prospect of rich nations raising their contributions.
Debbie Hillier, global climate policy lead for Mercy Corps said that while the roadmap calls for greater attention to adaptation, “it places too much weight on the mobilisation of private finance” which can cover at most 15–20% of global adaptation needs, according to recent research from the Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance.
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Other suggestions in the roadmap focus on insurance against extreme weather events and earmarking spending in national budgets that can be released to help people prepare ahead of climate disasters.
Friederike Roder from the Solidarity Levies Task Force noted that the roadmap supports more debt-free financing, in particular for adaptation, which could be delivered at scale by solidarity levies, such as that supported by a new coalition of countries that aim to tax premium flyers.
Hillier said the report recognises the importance of public and grant-based resources to address adaptation and respond to climate-driven loss and damage, but does not follow the UN climate convention principle that countries that caused the climate crisis have a greater responsibility to meet the finance gap. “As such, it falls far short of what is needed,” she added.
The post Roadmap to $1.3 trillion seeks to tip climate finance scales but way forward unclear appeared first on Climate Home News.
Roadmap to $1.3 trillion seeks to tip climate finance scales but way forward unclear
After arduous late night talks on Wednesday, European Union countries finally agreed a 2040 goal to cut the bloc’s emissions by 90% from 1990 levels, including a contentious concession that would let them buy foreign carbon credits to cover 5%.
Under the deal, which must be approved by the European Parliament, the EU stands to buy 710 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) offsets worth about 50 billion euros ($57 billion) during the 2030s, according to an estimate by the Carbon Market Watch campaign group. That could give a huge boost to carbon credits from emissions-reduction projects, which are struggling with shrinking demand amid increased scrutiny of the sector.
Trishant Dev, carbon markets lead at the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a Delhi-based think-tank, told Climate Home News that 5% “may seem small compared to the EU’s overall emissions cuts, but in absolute terms it represents a vast volume of offsets, and therefore, massive investments in offset projects”.
On top of the 5% of the EU’s 1990-level net emissions, EU countries may be able to use offsets to cancel out another 5% of their national emissions, increasing the bloc’s wiggle room on meeting its headline climate goals and drawing criticism from some climate campaigners.
Countries split on counting carbon credits
The possibility of using carbon credits was supported by the European Commission and numerous member states including Sweden, Ireland, Poland and Austria.
Poland had pushed for 10% to be eligible for carbon credits, after one senior climate official hailed them in September as “a cost-efficient measure to cut emissions.”
The Netherlands’ representative, meanwhile, opposed using more than 3%, saying that “availability, price and quality remain uncertain”. International credits should just be a “safety net”, he said.
Slovakia’s environment minister also voiced concern about cost, saying the use of credits “may sound attractive but, with an estimated price…about €250 ($288) a tonne, this will not work for all of us”.
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Several other wealthy nations – such as Norway, Switzerland and Singapore – have already said they intend to use or may use some carbon credits to meet their 2035 climate targets.
But Japan is the only major emitter that has specified how much it wants to buy – 200 million metric tonnes of CO2e by 2040, which at Carbon Market Watch’s assumed price of $70 a ton, would cost $14 billion.
Many countries – particularly in the Global South – have indicated their interest in selling credits. Thailand, for example, has already sold credits to Switzerland in return for rolling out electric buses in Bangkok, although the integrity of that deal has been questioned.
Critics say EU should reduce emissions at home
While EU officials and carbon market supporters defended the bloc’s policy shift on offsets, climate campaigners were mostly critical.
They said credits are expensive and will not reduce emissions by as much as they are supposed to, accusing the EU of dodging its responsibility as a historically large polluter to reduce the bloc’s emissions domestically.
Fabiola de Simone, policy officer at Carbon Market Watch, told Climate Home News the EU’s climate target and the offsets were an “international embarrassment” for the EU which will mean “way more emissions than science says you should do”.
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“There is less of an incentive for member states to reach their national obligations after 2030 because they know that they could potentially rely on international credits up to 5%,” de Simone said.
Pedro Martins Barata, who works on carbon market integrity for the Environmental Defense Fund, called the flexibility in the EU’s target “disappointing”.
But, he said, the EU could use its clout as a dominant buyer to promote high standards for credits, such as environmental safeguards in offset methodologies.
“Planet doesn’t care where we cut emissions”
Carbon market advocates say it does not matter where in the world emissions reductions take place, that reducing emissions with offsets can be cheaper than cutting them directly and that developing countries can benefit from the money and other support they receive by selling credits.
“The planet doesn’t care where we reduce emissions,” EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra told a press conference on Wednesday, adding that the 5% quota for offsets was optional.
Ukrainian scientist Olga Gassan-Zade, a member of the supervisory body of the Paris Agreement’s new Article 6.4 carbon market, told Climate Home News that without demand for credits – like that coming from the EU – international carbon markets would fail.
That would be bad, she said, because “it is maybe hard to see from the Global North, but the developing world lives in a different dimension”. “International markets are not just about finance but are also about technology transfer, knowledge transfer, training of climate change professionals [and] equity,” she added.
From Delhi, CSE’s Dev said carbon markets have often enriched intermediaries rather than supporting genuine emissions cuts. “These funds must therefore cover the true cost of mitigation, ensuring that communities are not short-changed or made to subsidise Europe’s continued emissions,” he said.
The post EU’s new climate target lines up multibillion-dollar boost for carbon markets appeared first on Climate Home News.
EU’s new climate target lines up multibillion-dollar boost for carbon markets
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