Negotiators from around the world will soon descend on Brazil as it prepares to host the latest round of UN climate talks, on the banks of the Amazon river.
COP30 in Belém will see them discuss issues including the best ways to track progress on adaptation and how to pursue a global “just transition”.
Some of the event’s most important topics, such as countries’ new climate targets and raising international climate finance to $1.3tn, will officially take place outside the formal negotiations.
Nevertheless, these issues will likely drive much of the COP30 narrative.
In order to track parties’ positions on key negotiating points at the summit, Carbon Brief has analysed nearly 100 submissions to the UN and captured them in the interactive table below.
The first column in the table shows the countries and UN negotiating blocs, the second shows the topics up for debate and the third indicates specific issues within those topics.
The final column indicates the positions that the parties have expressed on each topic. These range from “priority” – meaning the party is likely to be pushing the issue – to “oppose”, meaning it is likely to push against it.
This is a “living document” that will be updated during the course of COP30.
Please get in touch if you would like to offer additions to the table by emailing policy@carbonbrief.org.
Explanations of the overarching issues and jargon-filled language that permeate the talks can be found below the interactive table.
Adaptation
At COP28 in 2023, governments adopted a “framework” for the “global goal on adaptation”, which was originally included in the Paris Agreement, but had seen little progress till then.
Over the following two years, negotiators and experts have been discussing a list of measurable “indicators” that can be used to track global progress on adaptation.
At COP30, a final list of 100 of these indicators is expected to be adopted, making it one of the key concrete outcomes expected at the summit in Belém.
From an initial list of more than 5,000 potential indicators, a group of experts worked to refine this down into a set of around 500 in June. This has been reduced further to 100 proposed final indicators, which will be negotiated at COP30.
These indicators must be both specific enough to allow for accurate measurement of progress and versatile enough to apply to the vast array of location-specific adaptation practices.
Beyond the list of indicators, divergences between parties remain around the topics of the “Baku Adaptation Roadmap”, the concept of “transformational adaptation” and adaptation finance. (See the Carbon Brief Q&A on the adaptation indicators for more details.)
Climate finance
As ever, discussions of “climate finance” – the financial resources channelled into climate action in developing countries – are likely to feature prominently at COP30.
Last year, countries had a deadline to decide on a new global climate-finance target known as the “new collective quantified goal on climate finance” (NCQG), meaning this issue took centre stage at the COP29 negotiations.
In Belém, formal climate-finance negotiations are less prominent. However, the launch of the “Baku to Belém roadmap to $1.3tn” ahead of the summit will provide an opportunity for parties to reflect on the topic and may influence wider negotiations.
The roadmap was mandated last year, due to a view among developing countries that the NCQG’s main target of “at least” $300bn a year by 2035 was insufficient.
Parties and negotiating blocs have made 36 submissions to the Baku to Belém consultation process, outlining what they want to see reflected in the final roadmap.
While the submissions refer to the Baku to Belém outcome specifically, they tend to reflect countries’ broader positions on the topic of climate finance.
Familiar issues, such as developing countries calling for more grant-based finance and developed countries stressing the importance of the private sector, feature prominently.
(For more analysis of countries’ positions on the roadmap, see Carbon Brief’s explainer on this topic.)
Just transition and global stocktake
Besides climate-adaptation indicators, the COP30 presidency has highlighted two other negotiating strands as priorities – the “just transition work programme” (JTWG) and the “dialogue” on implementing the outcome of the first “global stocktake”.
The former refers to discussions between parties about how best to support those affected by the transition to a low-carbon world.
As for the stocktake dialogue, this involves taking forward the outcomes from COP28, where countries were called on to contribute to various targets, including “tripling” global renewable energy capacity and “transitioning away” from fossil fuels.
There remain fundamental differences between parties about the scope of both of these discussions.
Broadly within the JTWP, developing countries want to see a holistic transition that takes into account not just fossil-fuel workers, but the wider communities and groups impacted by the low-carbon transition, along with financial support from developed countries needed to underpin this.
Developed countries generally want to keep the negotiations focused on labour and how to share knowledge from “best practice” examples of transition management.
Within the stocktake dialogue, some large developing countries – particularly the Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDCs) – want discussions to focus on climate finance.
Other developing countries and developed countries have pushed for a focus on climate ambition, including transitioning away from fossil fuels.
By the start of COP, nations are expected to have submitted their new climate plans under the Paris Agreement, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs).
To date, only around one-third of countries have announced or submitted their 2035 climate pledges, covering roughly half of global emissions.
The ambition – or lack of it – contained in these plans will set the stage for talks in Belém.
COP reforms
A decade on from the Paris Agreement, many experts have voiced concerns about the way COPs work and called for various reforms. (See Carbon Brief’s “COP experts: How could the UN climate talks be reformed?”)
Some of these proposals – including major changes such as the introduction of majority voting – have come from outside the COP process.
However, the Brazilian COP30 presidency has brought some of these discussions into the formal negotiations under the heading of “arrangements for intergovernmental meetings” (AIM). Here, countries have the opportunity to discuss improvements in the way the COP operates.
Under AIM, some parties have suggested ideas for streamlining the COP process, such as reducing the number of items on the agenda, potentially through multi-year planning so that discussions at each summit are more focused, or through limiting the number of new issues that can be introduced.
Other ideas include, capping the number of participants allowed to attend each summit and giving a more formal status to the COP “action agenda”, where pledges from countries or other actors are often made, but not always tracked and followed up.
See Carbon Brief’s previous interactive tables showing “who wants what” at COP26, COP27, COP28 and COP29.
The post Interactive: Who wants what at the COP30 climate change summit appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Interactive: Who wants what at the COP30 climate change summit
Nick Dearden is the director of Global Justice Now.
The US push for nations to join a club that would coordinate the trade of critical minerals outside China signals a giant shift in Washington’s vision for how to govern the global economy But it will, unfortunately, also hinder the clean energy transition.
Critical minerals such as lithium, nickel, copper and rare earths are needed to manufacture clean energy technologies such as solar panels, wind turbines and batteries on which the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy depends.
But these minerals also have applications for a wide range of advanced technologies, not least military equipment and digital infrastructure. In recent years, AI deployment and the build out of data centres have become the primary political justification for mineral extraction.
No US official mentioned clean energy technologies as they promoted the new minerals club in Washington last month. Instead, the trading bloc aims to break China’s dominance over mineral supply chains and ensure US access to the resources it needs for digital and military sectors.
Analysis by Global Justice Now found that almost one in five of the 33 minerals that the UK identified as critical in 2024 are not needed to achieve the International Energy Agency’s decarbonisation pathways. A further 15 play only a very small role and only seven require significant production increases for the clean energy transition.
Prioritise minerals for the energy transition
The urgency of addressing climate change means we must prioritise the use of minerals to rapidly and equitably wean the global economy off coal, oil and gas while reducing resource overconsumption in the Global North. The US approach could make this prioritisation a lot harder.
For Washington, this isn’t about addressing climate change, but America’s ever deepening rivalry with China, a renewable energy superpower. In contrast, Donald Trump has called climate change “a hoax” and overseen unprecedented climate deregulation in favour of fossil fuels.
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The minerals trading bloc risks diverting mineral resources towards carbon-intensive military and technology build-up in the US, which is directly at odds with the need to use these resources to manufacture clean energy technologies.
What’s more, for the green transition to be just, fair and equitable, resource-rich governments must be able to refine and add value to their resources, creating jobs and economic development in the process. But Trump’s trading bloc is intended to tell “partner” countries what role they should play in the global mineral supply chains to best serve US interests.
Serving US interests rather than clean energy
Countries with the smallest and least developed economies stand to lose out.
More than a dozen countries have signed bilateral deals with the Trump administration. The terms of the deals appear to get better the richer a country is.
At the poorer end is the deal with DRC – an outright piece of imperialism with one-sided obligations that override the country’s mineral sovereignty by giving the US first dibs on a range of strategic mining sites and the energy needed to power these sites.
‘America needs you’: US seeks trade alliance to break China’s critical mineral dominance
In the middle, Malaysia committed to facilitate American involvement in its mineral sector and refrain from banning or imposing quotas on exports of raw minerals to the US. This risks restricting the development of Malaysia’s refining capacities, making value addition harder.
At the top end is the UK, which has signed a deal that includes a commitment to streamline mineral permitting, but appears more focused on facilitating financial services to members of the trading bloc.
Wherever countries sit in the pecking order, the agreements signed with the US limit governments’ strategic sovereignty over their resources and stifle their ability to create a more sustainable economy which meets people’s needs.
Tools for a way forward
There is some hope, however. Trump’s mineral trading bloc would operate with profoundly different rules than the neoliberal trade deals, which we have become used to.
Some of its components – like price floors and state ownership – have not been seen in trade deals for a long time. In the right hands, these tools could help governments plan, coordinate and prioritise a globally just green transition and break away from the ‘market knows best’ logic which has long locked poorer countries into low-value exports of raw materials.
If governments work together, outside the coercive US trade bloc, to adopt some of these tools and policies, they might be able to draw local benefits from their mineral wealth and build a genuinely fair and equitable trade in transition minerals.
The post The US’s critical minerals club threatens an equitable clean energy transition appeared first on Climate Home News.
The US’s critical minerals club threatens an equitable clean energy transition
Climate Change
Greenpeace urges governments to defend international law, as evidence suggests breaches by deep sea mining contractors
SYDNEY/FIJI, Monday 9 March 2026 — As the International Seabed Authority (ISA) opens its 31st Session today, Greenpeace International is calling on member states to take firm and swift action if breaches by subsidiaries and subcontractors of The Metals Company (TMC) are established. Evidence compiled and submitted to the ISA’s Secretary General suggests that violations of exploration contracts may have occurred.
Louisa Casson, Campaigner, Greenpeace International, said: “In July, governments at the ISA sent a clear message: rogue companies trying to sidestep international law will face consequences. Turning that promise into action at this meeting is far more important than rushing through a Mining Code designed to appease corporate interests rather than protect the common good. As delegations from around the world gather today, they must unite and confront the US and TMC’s neo-colonial resource grab and make clear that deep sea mining is a reckless gamble humanity cannot afford.”
The ISA launched an inquiry at its last Council meeting in July 2025, in response to TMC USA seeking unilateral deep sea mining licences from the Trump administration. If the US administration unilaterally allows mining of the international seabed, it would be considered in violation of international law.
Greenpeace International has compiled and submitted evidence to the ISA Secretary-General, Leticia Carvalho, to support the ongoing inquiry into deep sea mining contractors. This evidence shows that those supporting these unprecedented rogue efforts to start deep sea mining unilaterally via President Trump could be in breach of their obligations with the ISA.
The analysis focuses on TMC’s subsidiaries — Nauru Ocean Resources Inc (NORI) and Tonga Offshore Mining Ltd (TOML) — as well as Blue Minerals Jamaica (BMJ), a company linked to Dutch-Swiss offshore engineering firm Allseas, one of TMC’s subcontractors and largest shareholders. The information compiled indicates that their activities may violate core contractual obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). If these breaches are confirmed, NORI and TOML’s exploration contracts, which expire in July 2026 and January 2027 respectively, the ISA should take action, including considering not renewing the contract.
Letícia Carvalho has recently publicly advocated for governments to finalise a streamlined deep sea mining code this year and has expressed her own concerns with the calls from 40 governments for a moratorium. At a time when rogue actors are attempting to bypass or weaken the international system, establishing rules and regulations that will allow mining to start could mean falling into the trap of international bullies. A Mining Code would legitimise and drive investment into a flagging industry, supporting rogue actor companies like TMC and weakening deterrence against unilateral mining outside the ISA framework.
Casson added: “Rushing to finalise a Mining Code serves the interests of multinational corporations, not the principles of multilateralism. With what we know now, rules to mine the deep sea cannot coexist with ocean protection. Governments are legally obliged to only authorise deep sea mining if it can demonstrably benefit humanity – and that is non-negotiable. As the long list of scientific, environmental and social concerns with this industry keeps growing, what is needed is a clear political signal that the world will not be intimidated into rushing a mining code by unilateral threats and will instead keep moving towards a moratorium on deep sea mining.”
—ENDS—
Key findings from the full briefing:
- Following TMC USA’s application to mine the international seabed unilaterally, NORI and TOML have amended their agreements to provide payments to Nauru and Tonga, respectively, if US-authorised commercial mining goes ahead. This sets up their participation in a financial mechanism predicated on mining in contradiction to UNCLOS.
- NORI and TOML have signed intercompany intellectual property and data-sharing agreements with TMC USA, and the data obtained by NORI and TOML under the ISA exploration contracts has been key to facilitating TMC USA’s application under US national regulations.
- Just a few individuals hold key decision-making roles across the TMC and all relevant subsidiaries, making claims of independent management ungrounded. NORI, TOML, and TMC USA, while legally distinct, are managed as an integrated corporate group with a single, coordinated strategy under the direct control and strategic direction of TMC.
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