A global goal to protect 30% of the planet’s land and sea ecosystems by 2030 is at risk of falling off track due to a decline in international finance, a new report has found, which leaves developing countries with a $3 billion funding gap.

The target known as “30×30” was adopted at UN biodiversity talks in 2022, and aims to protect nature and cut emissions by increasing protected areas across the world. Experts estimate this can contribute to slash at least 10 gigatonnes of carbon emissions annually.

To achieve this target and as part of the landmark Kunming-Montreal biodiversity pact, developed countries agreed to mobilise $20 billion directly to developing countries by 2025. About a fifth of this funding is estimated to reach protected areas, which means that developing countries should receive $4 billion by 2025 for this purpose. By 2030, this figure should reach $6bn.

But a new report by Indufor – a forest intelligence group supported by nature NGOs – found that developed countries only delivered $1 billion in 2024 for protected areas, falling $3 billion short of the 2025 target. 

Last year also marked the first year-on-year decline in funding for protected areas after a post-pandemic growth, the report shows.

$3bn funding gap 

The report shows there has been an increase in support for protected areas in developing countries, which has grown by more than 150 percent in the last decade. After the pandemic, philanthropic funding drove most of the growth, rising by more than 70 percent during this period.

These funds are meant to pay for establishing new protected areas, providing capacity to park rangers, and supporting Indigenous groups and local communities, among other initiatives.

However, the current rate of increase is too slow to reach the $6 billion by 2030 target, the report says. To achieve this, international funding must grow by about 33 percent each year between now and 2030, since at the current pace developing countries would only receive $2bn by 2030.

The drop in 30×30 funding in 2024 could be driven by a reporting lag by philanthropies, the report says, as some grants are coming to an end after the growth in post-pandemic contributions and could be renewed. However, the reports also warns that cuts to US foreign aid could further reduce the available finance in 2025.

Small islands underfunded

So far, Africa has received the most finance with about half of the overall funding reaching the continent in 2024, while small island developing states remained severely underfunded by international flows.

Safiya Sawney, Grenada’s Climate Ambassador, said at the report launch on the sidelines of the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi that the funding coming to the Caribbean is not enough. She added that “we’ve heard from the report that there has been scaled up philanthropic financing, I can tell you that it’s not reaching my region, it’s not reaching my country”. 

Jiwoh Abdulai, Sierra Leone’s minister of environment and climate change, also told the event that developed countries should step up finance, warning that the cost of inaction will be higher. “The best time to put out a fire is when it is in your neighbour’s house before it gets to yours,” he added.

Earlier modelling by Campaign for Nature in 2020 suggested that expanding and managing the world’s protected areas would require an average investment of at least $140 billion per year globally by 2030, funded through a mix of domestic and international sources. Already, the $6bn target falls significantly short of this figure.

Abdulai said that besides the funding gap, there is also an accessibility problem. Countries ask for funds and it comes five years later, making “the money not even close to enough to solve the problem” as the funding needs tend to grow after the initial request.

He said developed countries need to fulfil their pledges because “if the funding is not coming then we are not addressing the problem and if we are not addressing the problems today in the frontline countries, tomorrow the frontline will move from our countries to yours”, he added.

US retreat sounds alarm

The report also shows that the funding for protected areas has come mostly from a few sources. Since 2022, just Germany, the World Bank, the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the European Union, and the United States, provided more than half of all international finance for the 30×30 goal.

“There is a real risk or a significant vulnerability if even one major donor were to pull back,” said Michael Owen, one of the authors of the report. He warned that this leaves global biodiversity protection vulnerable to political transitions, at a time of rising geopolitical tensions, which could trigger sudden changes in funding or even retrenchment. 

The report notes that “the shuttering of USAID leaves a significant gap to be filled, as it has been the sixth largest international 30×30 funder making up nearly 5% of total flows”.

With just five years left to meet the 30×30 target, Brian O’Donnell, director of Campaign for Nature, said there is “a clear need to ramp up marine conservation finance”, especially to small island states. He added that meeting the 30×30 target “is essential to prevent extinctions, achieve climate goals, and ensure the services that nature provides endure, including storm protection and clean air and water.”

Anders Haug Larsen, advocacy director at Rainforest Foundation Norway, said the world is currently far off track, both in mobilizing resources and protecting nature.

“We now have a short window of opportunity, where governments, donors, and actors on the ground, including Indigenous Peoples and local communities, need to work together to enhance finance and actions for rights-based nature protection,” Larsen added.

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Funding for protected areas fell in 2024, threatening global nature target

The world’s efforts to avert catastrophic climate change are still far off track a decade after the Paris Agreement’s adoption, but the landmark pact has spurred big strides on cutting planet-heating emissions and reducing the expected rise in global warming.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres conceded for the first time this year that the global average temperature will increase by more than the 1.5C limit above pre-industrial levels agreed in the Paris deal, though he described it as a “temporary overshoot” that could be reversed before the end of this century.

The legally binding accord set an overarching goal to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels” while pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5C.

But even if the most symbolic 1.5C target is missed, the projected global temperature increase by the end of the century has fallen in the decade since the Paris deal was struck on December 12, 2015 – and climate experts say the agreement is still the compass of global climate action.

To mark the agreement’s 10-year anniversary, we take a look at what it has achieved, and what remains to be done:

What has the Paris Agreement achieved on emissions?

When the Paris deal was adopted, no countries had pledged to cut their emissions to net zero. Now, about 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions are covered by net-zero pledges.

“Countries have moved from a patchwork of targets to economy-wide, absolute emission-reduction goals, and projected 21st-century emissions under both current policies and targets have fallen markedly since 2015,” said an analysis by Climate Analytics, adding that climate policies meant global emissions could peak before 2030.

Assuming current policies on tackling emissions are maintained, the world’s projected temperature increase by the end of the century has fallen to 2.8C from 3C-3.7C when the deal was struck, according to the UN Environment Programme’s latest Emissions Gap Report, showing the impact of climate action.

If countries’ national climate targets, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), are fully implemented, projected warming would come down to between 2.3C and 2.5C, the report said.

Paris Agreement helping to avert dozens of hot days each year, scientists say

Still, climate action since 2015 has not been sufficient to prevent overshooting of the 1.5C limit. And even if that happens temporarily and temperatures are brought back down again, it could still have disastrous consequences for ecosystems, economies and vulnerable communities.

“This is not a failure of the Agreement’s design; it is a failure of collective ambition to match its aims,” the Climate Analytics analysis said.

The State of Climate Action 2025 report from the World Resources Institute (WRI) also found there is still a long way to go.

“Across every single sector, climate action has failed to materialise at the pace and scale required to achieve the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal,” the WRI report said.

What are the biggest hurdles for the key Paris goals?

None of the 45 indicators assessed in the WRI report were found to be on track to reach their 1.5C-aligned targets by the end of this decade, with some of the worst-performing metrics including halting permanent forest loss, phasing out coal-generated power and scaling up climate finance.

At the same time, public finance for fossil fuels continues to grow – even two years after the world agreed to transition away from coal, oil and gas in energy systems – rising by an average of $75 billion per year since 2014, the WRI report said.

Elsewhere, climate experts say progress has started to slow down, warning that this could push the Paris Agreement’s goals on limiting temperature rise further out of reach.

“Progress made in decarbonising steel has largely stagnated; and the share of trips taken by passenger cars – many of which still rely on the internal combustion engine – continues to rise,” the WRI report said.

The Climate Action Monitor 2025, issued by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, shows that the number and stringency of policies increased by only 1% in 2024.

Climate Analytics CEO Bill Hare said that while improved national policies meant a global peak in emissions before 2030 was now in sight, a dwindling sense of urgency among decision-makers must be tackled.

“Action has slowed in the last four years, even as climate impacts have grown, and we are still a long way from 1.5C. But the science shows that it is still possible to bring temperatures back well below 1.5C by 2100 after a brief period of overshoot,” Hare said.

COP30 this November highlighted the political challenges in weaning the world off fossil fuels.

While there was growing momentum for an agreement to start work on a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels during the summit, the proposal did not make it into the final Belém deal due to opposition from nations that are heavily reliant on fossil fuel production.

The Trump administration, which is withdrawing the US from the Paris Agreement for a second time, did not send a formal delegation to the talks in Brazil, and Washington is expected to use its year in charge of the G20 to promote fossil fuels.

Ten years on, what is actually working?

However, the obstacles to meeting the world’s climate goals do not mean no progress has been made towards them.

“Paris is working: it bent the curve,” said Hare from Climate Analytics. “Now our future depends on the political will to move forward fast enough to finish the job,” he added.

Framework climate laws have more than tripled since 2015 and national climate policy tools are up seven-fold, a recent study by the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) found.

When it comes to the clean energy rollout, “the Paris Agreement has had a transformative global impact”, the ECIU report said.

Renewables now provide an additional 20% or more of electricity in 20 countries, according to a new study by Zero Carbon Analytics. Global clean energy capacity has increased 2.4 times since the pact was agreed, reaching 4,448 gigawatts (GW) in 2024.

Solar and wind have grown more than 1,500% faster than forecast by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in 2015, and renewables have just overtaken coal as the largest source of electricity generation.

“We are already investing twice as much into renewables than fossil fuels. Now renewables meet 80% of global electricity demand growth [and] solar has been deployed 15 times faster than predicted 10 years ago,” said Christiana Figueres, one of the architects of the Paris Agreement and a founding partner of the Global Optimism civic organisation.

The adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) is already 40% above the IEA’s 2015 projections and on track to be 66% higher by 2030.

Yet despite the faster-than-expected growth in EV adoption, the WRI analysis said the sector was still off track for achieving the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C warming limit.

“The advances we’re seeing in the real economy are telling us we are walking in the right direction, even if too slowly,” added Figueres.

What’s next for the Paris Agreement?

On top of US President Donald Trump’s abandonment of climate action, heightened geopolitical tensions, trade rivalries and aid cuts could hamper the new cycle of national climate plans (NDCs), said Paula Castro from the Center for Energy and the Environment at Zurich University of Applied Sciences.

The NDCs are a key Paris Agreement mechanism and must be strengthened in a five-year cycle. The latest round of plans were due by September 2025, but around two-thirds of countries missed the UN deadline. Several dozen NDCs have filtered in since then, including the European Union’s plan.

Global emissions are expected to fall by about 10% by 2035 based on a preliminary assessment of the new NDCs announced by countries that produce nearly 60% of the world’s greenhouse gases, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has said.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that countries should cut their emissions much more rapidly, with a 60% drop from 2019 required by 2035 to limit warming to 1.5C.

Angola lowers climate ambition in blow to “spirit” of Paris Agreement

Trump’s decision to pull the world’s biggest economy out of the Paris Agreement drew international criticism, but climate experts do not expect it to halt progress elsewhere.

“While it’s clear the speed and scale has to increase, the institutional buy-in of the Paris Agreement continues and moves forward despite two pull-outs by the US,” said Jennifer Morgan, former German state secretary and special envoy for international climate action.

She said the rising cost of climate-linked disasters should give fresh impetus to the goals of the 2015 accord.

“We know just in Europe extreme weather events cost 43 billion euros per year … Not acting on climate has a huge cost to the economy, and that’s beginning to resonate with leaders,” she said.

The Paris Agreement paved the way for the establishment of a global fund to help deal with the growing “loss and damage” from worsening extreme weather and rising seas in developing countries.

It recognised the issue – and the need to address it – for the first time in an international treaty, while stipulating in line with rich nations’ demands that this should not open the door for liability or compensation for the effects of the climate crisis.

Nonetheless, a loss and damage fund was subsequently launched in 2023 with contributions from donor governments and is due to start allocating money next year for projects in vulnerable countries.

This article was updated on December 11 to add the latest projections and the outcome of COP30.

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As the Paris Agreement turns 10, what has it achieved?

Amid stalled talks on finance, adaptation and fossil fuel transition at the COP30 climate summit in Brazil’s Amazon region, governments agreed to an ambitious Just Transition package combining the strongest rights- and inclusion-based language yet seen in the UN climate process with a new global mechanism to support countries reshaping their economies.

The COP30 decision also confirmed that Just Transition must take a whole-of-society and whole-of-economy approach – covering mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage, and finance – a broad scope that observers said marked a significant step forward for the process.

Delegates described the outcome in the city of Belém as a rare convergence of political will, technical facilitation and years of groundwork by civil society and governments.

For Indian women workers, a just transition means surviving climate impacts with dignity

The decision also places stronger emphasis on the social and economic foundations of transition than many observers had expected. The text links Just Transition explicitly to poverty eradication and decent work, and recognises the need for just energy transitions as part of implementing the Global Stocktake – including the transition away from fossil fuels.

Finance provisions were also firmer than in previous drafts, with governments agreeing that support for Just Transition should prioritise grants and non-debt-creating instruments, a framing long pushed by developing countries and civil society.

Civil society kept the issue alive

The Work Programme on Just Transition, launched in 2022, remained low-profile across several COP cycles. Unions, youth networks, feminist groups, social movements and environmental organisations continued refining proposals and pushing negotiators even when political attention was limited – while activists also took to the streets across the world calling for a Just Transition.

As momentum built toward COP30, these groups began referring to their proposal as the Belém Action Mechanism – the “BAM” – signalling the level of institutional ambition they believed the process required. Alongside this sustained organising, unions stressed that Just Transition had to move beyond principles and into practice.

Key governments shifted earlier than expected

As colourful activists danced and chanted “We want the BAM!” in the COP30 conference centre, a key moment arrived on day two, when the G77+China group of developing countries came out early and clearly signalled its support for establishing a Just Transition mechanism. This leadership was widely described as the turning point that made an ambitious outcome possible.

The EU followed at the end of the first week, tabling a “bridging proposal” in the form of a Just Transition Action Plan. From that point, civil society campaigns intensified across the Global North, aimed at shifting governments that had so far resisted any new institutional arrangements.

COP30: Spain’s unions say just transition means renewing communities beyond jobs

The UK – initially identified by observers as the main hold-out – faced sustained campaigning, including an NGO sign-on letter and direct engagement with ministers. The political shift became visible inside the talks when Ed Miliband signalled support for the EU plan during the High-Level Ministerial Roundtable.

That shift extended beyond the UK. Canada, previously quiet on new institutional arrangements, began describing itself as “open to options” after targeted domestic media coverage. Australian civil society leveraged the country’s COP31 bid to draw attention to the need for coordination institutions, while NGOs in Belém maintained pressure on Swiss negotiators.

The push for the mechanism reached the highest level of the UN system. After a meeting with civil society, UN Secretary-General António Guterres added his voice of support for the mechanism and urged COP30 to operationalise a Just Transition aligned with 1.5°C.  

Facilitators and ministers closed the gaps

Last year at COP29 in Baku, the Just Transition track ended without an outcome partly because no ministers were mandated to land one. Belém took a different approach: Mexico’s Alicia Bárcena and Poland’s Krzysztof Bolesta were appointed as ministerial leads and played a central role in balancing strong rights language with the institutional detail.

Technical co-facilitators Joseph Teo of Singapore and Federica Fricano of Italy were credited with producing a clear, workable draft that helped bridge divides. Delegates said its readability – unusual for UNFCCC text – helped maintain trust. UNFCCC secretariat staff supported the process with rapid revision work through the second week. 

Brazil’s presidency and the significance of place

Brazil made Just Transition one of its three priorities, ensuring the track remained visible amid wider disputes.

The signal came early: at Climate Action Network’s Annual Strategy Meeting in Rio de Janeiro in February, attended by more than 170 climate justice activists, COP30 President Ambassador André Correa do Lago and COP30 CEO Ana Toni told participants that Just Transition would be a “vital” issue for COP30. The presidency also guided parties toward addressing the issue of “institutional arrangements” during the Pre-COP.

“Water is worth more than lithium,” Indigenous Argentine community tells COP30

Belém’s context also mattered. The region is a long-standing focal point for debates over livelihoods, extractivism and environmental protection, grounding negotiations in lived realities.

A symbol of this was the People’s March on the streets of Belém, with over 50,000 people participating, and thousands more across the world. The message of the Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon was clear: a Just Transition cannot be designed about them or around them – it must be shaped with them, and how transition minerals are managed is central to this. 

What the decision changes

The final text sets out principles for rights-based, inclusive transitions and establishes a global mechanism to support countries in implementing these principles – elevating the mechanism to a structural component of how climate action will be delivered in the Paris Agreement era.

The agreement also reinforces the expectation that social and economic dimensions must be central to national climate plans, not appended to them. 

A just transition for renewables: Why COP30 must put people before power

The work starts now

Civil society will remain closely engaged as the mechanism takes shape, arguing that its effectiveness will depend on whether it reflects the realities facing workers, communities and families in transitions already underway. 

The next phase will hinge on the operational details governments agree in the months ahead. Key questions include the design of the committee, what form secretariat support will take, and whether civil society and trade unions will have a formal seat in its work.

Parties will also need to decide whether the mechanism should help convene a wider network of practitioners. Its first workplan, the identification of support needs, and clarification of how it will interact with existing UNFCCC bodies, will shape how effective it becomes – with decisions expected at COP31.

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