Summary and reflections on COP30
The 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30) of the UNFCCC took place from November 10 to 22, 2025, in Belém, Brazil. Ten years after the Paris Agreement, this COP was called the ‘implementation’ COP, setting also high expectations in terms of climate change adaptation. Next to this, some of the debated topics were the roadmap for phasing out fossil fuels, climate finance, trade and climate, and national commitments. Curious about decisions made at COP30 and some reflections of adaptation researchers from our research group? Continue reading to find out more!
Adaptation Finance
Since the impacts of climate change are already visible and impacting many parts of the world, one of the key topics of COP30 was climate adaptation and its finance. Who pays for the costs of adapting, particularly in those countries that have minimal contribution to climate change? The group of Least Developed Countries demanded a tripling of adaptation finance by 2030, which was also included in the first draft of the decision text. However, instead of achieving this goal by 2030, the final decision calls for a tripling of the current climate adaptation finance from developed country Parties to developing country Parties by 2035. While this decision sets the annual adaptation finance at $120 billion, the actual need in the developing countries for climate adaptation is far higher, assed in the Adaptation Gap Report to be at least $300 billion per year by 2035.
Global Goal on Adaptation
Another much-awaited decision related to the adoption of the adaptation indicators to measure the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA). COP30 preceded a two-year process involving a group of experts and a consultative process to prepare a list of indicators to enable aggregation of country-level progress to the global level, facilitate cross-country comparison, and inform global assessments under the GGA. Despite the reported tension among the parties, the COP adopted 59 voluntary adaptation indicators. The decision document reflects a compromise in terms of ambition and political feasibility: the aim to provide a comprehensive global framework to track adaptation versus the wide diversity in adaptation contexts and the need for flexibility in country-level monitoring. The key to the rollout and operationalisation of this framework is the development of technical guidance to specify the indicators and provide direction on data collection and analysis approaches. At best, this new indicator framework and its technical guidance can facilitate and complement national adaptation planning, monitoring, and reporting, as well as raise ambition in adaptation action. At worst, it will be perceived to be too far from national realities, processes, and adaptation priorities, or data availability and resources for data collection are inadequate.
Fossil Fuel Transition Roadmap
“The best adaptation is mitigation". While adaptation is gaining the much-needed attention in the global policy arena, the ambitious mitigation targets, commitment to these targets and actions by the Parties to reduce their greenhouse gas emission, remain detrimental to climate action and for addressing the root cause of climate change. The Parties had a deadline in February 2025 to submit the updated nationally determined contributions (NDC), including mitigation targets. Only 13 countries submitted these in time. By the time COP30 started, 64 Parties had submitted these, and by the end of COP30, around 120 Parties had updated these. Unfortunately, the updated NDCs are not sufficient to reach the target agreed on in the Paris Agreement to limit global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius.
The ‘coalition of the willing’ of 88 countries were united to push for the road map to phase out fossil fuels but in the end the 194 parties did not agree on this roadmap due to lobbying from the fossil fuel industry led by Saudi Arabia. Fossil fuels did not even make it into the final decision text, diluting the earlier commitments made in COP28 for the phase-out agenda. The absence of the United States and the lack of their support added to the political weight working against a unified roadmap. On the other hand, the close collaboration of the 88 countries pushing for the fossil fuel transition roadmap is something unique in the history of COP underscoring how fragmented the parties are in the global fossil-fuel phase-out. This polarisation between “willing” and the “unwilling” sets a challenging road to the future COP and mitigation efforts. As an effort to still get to an agreement on this topic, Colombia will organise a first global conference for the phase-out of fossil fuels in April 2026. This will be organised outside of the formal COP setting, which means that this will be voluntary by countries to participate in. Let’s see what this will bring!
Conclusion
To conclude, the decisions made at COP30 are insufficient but a step in the right direction in terms of climate adaptation. At the same time, the important commitments to mitigate climate change are stagnating. Much bigger steps are needed to reach the mitigation goals set out in the Paris Agreement, and, at the same time, adapting to the impacts of climate change already happening now and in the future.
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