COP30: World Continues to Take Action on Climate

While current actions have reduced the emissions trajectory that the world is headed toward, we are not yet on the necessary path to cut emissions at the pace and scale needed. As a result, taking additional actions to cut all greenhouse gas emissions will be a priority at every climate summit; COP30 showcased some essential new directions.

Outside the negotiations, key decision-makers continue to show up and showcase action to speed up efforts to reduce emissions by driving key solutions or acting more aggressively than the national targets. Some of the 100 largest cities in the world have shown that they are cutting per capita emissions five times faster than the global average. A few other notable announcements included:  

With more than 3,000 GW of renewables still waiting in line to connect to the electricity grid, the electricity companies in the Utilities for Net Zero Alliance announced that they will invest $82 billion in grids and storage expansion. The Asian Development Bank and World Bank Group are putting $12.5 billion into the ASEAN power grid, with the Inter-American Development Bank launching a new region-wide platform to help 16 countries with grid modernization and expansion. South Africa and Türkiye are in negotiations with the multilateral development banks to support grid investments to enable greater renewable energy penetration. 

• A new effort—the Super Pollutant Country Action Accelerator—will help 30 developing countries accelerate cuts of greenhouse gases like methane, nitrous oxide, and hydrofluorocarbons by 2030.
• More than 250 global companies are helping their small suppliers cut emissions and build resilience through the Climate-Proofing Small and Medium Enterprises program.  

Mobilizing additional climate finance is consistently a top priority of international climate negotiations. COP30 was no different, with several key finance elements, both in the formal negotiations and in the new initiatives announced. 

Countries agreed to a new goal to at least triple adaptation finance by 2035 that complements the overarching international climate finance goals agreed to at COP29 last year (the new collective quantified goal, or NCQG). While the new adaptation finance goal wasn’t the tripling by 2030 that developing countries wanted, it helps ensure that funding for adaptation will continue to grow as climate impacts continue to rise. Having this goal within the framework of the NCQG means that developed countries take the lead, with other countries encouraged to contribute voluntarily.  

The tripling goal is ambiguous about the baseline year, but since the previous adaptation goal was due in 2025, the decision to triple was taken this year, and absent saying anything different in the text, the most logical reading is that it is from 2025 levels. If the previous goal of doubling adaptation finance from 2019 levels by 2025 is met, it will mean the new goal is at least $120 billion per year by 2035. Data on 2025 climate finance would normally be reported in 2027, but if it can be released sooner, it would help provide clarity on the exact amount.  

The new tripling goal includes important language on increasing the trajectory of finance provision. Even though the deadline is a decade away and the exact amount is not yet known, developed countries can’t be complacent and must immediately get to work scaling up adaptation support. The new goal also notes the NCQG commitments to triple UNFCCC climate funds, a critical source of grant-based adaptation finance. 

After last year’s climate finance goals were agreed upon, the COP29 and COP30 presidencies were asked to come up with a plan for how to reach the $1.3 trillion financial goal by 2035. They presented this Baku to Belem Roadmap to $1.3T the week before COP. The road map was a sober assessment of the challenges in scaling up climate investments—particularly the growing inequality within countries—and set out action areas to unlock progress. 

At COP30, governments took note of the road map and committed to urgently advancing actions to enable the scaling up of financing toward both the $1.3 trillion and $300 billion goals agreed to last year. Unfortunately, countries missed the opportunity to create a clear process that tracks progress and advances the essential reforms needed to unlock finance. Instead, they agreed to hold a high-level ministerial roundtable to reflect on the implementation of the goals at an unspecified future date and established a two-year work program on climate finance that is not formally connected to the new climate finance goals. It will take smart diplomacy to ensure these processes become fit for purpose by focusing on real world action that delivers support for those who need it most. 

As highlighted in NRDC’s Climate Funds Pledge Tracker, COP30 saw some governments make new pledges to the Adaptation Fund and the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD). Ten countries—Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Walloon Region of Belgium—announced new pledges to the Adaptation Fund of $135 million. For the third year in a row, this fell short of the fund’s $300 billion annual fundraising target. The FRLD received new pledges from Spain and Luxembourg, taking total pledges since the fund launched in 2023 to more than $800 million. COP30 also saw the FRLD launch its first call for funding requests, with $250 million set aside for projects in 2025 and 2026.  

With climate impacts already wreaking havoc on communities and countries, building up more resilience to climate change was a priority for COP30. While the negotiations over a specific international target to scale up adaptation finance was a priority (as discussed above), there were also important signals to advance implementation of resilience strategies on the ground. 

As part of the Paris Agreement, the global goal on adaptation (GGA) aims to enhance adaptive capacity, strengthen resilience, and reduce vulnerability to climate change. However, measuring progress on these lofty goals has proven to be difficult. COP30 was the culmination of a two-year work program to develop quantifiable indicators that would track progress on the GGA. Experts worked throughout this period to develop a list of 100 indicators that could be used by countries to track adaptation progress, and the list was presented for adoption at COP30. However, in a highly contentious process, the curated list of indicators was shortened, language was changed, and the indicators were adopted.  

In an unprecedented display of discontent, many countries objected after the decision on the indicators was gaveled through, citing major concerns with the process and final list of indicators. Discussions on the indicators will continue in the coming year, with hopes that disagreements about the revised set of indicators can be resolved and that countries will have useful metrics to track progress on adaptation.  

New coalitions and partnerships were formed to drive adaptation and resilience investments. At COP30, NRDC, the Atlantic Council’s Climate Resilience Center, and other partners founded the Fostering Investable National Planning and Implementation (FINI) for Adaptation and Resilience collaborative. FINI connects more than 100 organizations from governments, development banks, investors, insurers, philanthropies, and civil society with the aim of strengthening collaboration to scale up investments into adaptation and resilience projects. This collaborative is part of a broader effort aimed at accelerating the effective and impactful implementation of National Adaptation Plans (NAP) through the NAP Implementation Alliance, which was launched by the COP30 presidency in partnership with the U.N. Development Programme, the governments of Italy and Germany, the NAP Global Network, and the NDC Partnership. 

With COP30 being held in the gateway to the Amazon rainforest, protecting forests and the carbon they store was a headlining priority. Two years following the enshrinement of the goal of halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation by 2030, the focus at COP30 was on implementation—starting with the launch of the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), an innovative financial mechanism that invests public, philanthropic, and private capital, using the revenues to pay countries to conserve or restore their tropical forests, with at least 20 percent of payments going to Indigenous and local communities.  

The fund has received $6.5 billion in pledges from seven governments; a significant sum but far short of the $25 billion goal for public contributions that would be needed to mobilize $100 billion in private investment. Additionally, the TFFF requires some significant adjustments before it is fully positioned to effectively advance forest protection, including closing loopholes that risk incentivizing industrial logging. European countries also pledged to back $2.5 billion over the next five years for the protection of the Congo Basin.  

The negotiations themselves ultimately failed to deliver a formal road map to meeting the 2030 goal; however, out of the flurry of dealmaking and brokering, a coalition of 92 countries emerged to champion a clear plan to meet the world’s commitments to end deforestation and forest degradation by 2030.  

Brazil also announced that, as the presidency, it would pursue a road map on forests, alongside one on phasing out fossil fuels. This road map process offers the opportunity to breathe life into the targets after two years of stalled implementation, providing a space to understand what is needed—including harmonizing accountability between the Global North and Global South—and how to initiate and implement the critical transformations to deliver for forests, people, and the planet. 

While COP30 signaled clearly that countries are going to continue to go about the business of acting on climate change domestically and internationally, it left the world needing more—more signals, more commitments, and more implementation. The path ahead will likely face ups and downs because if tackling this issue were easy, we wouldn’t need to keep pressuring for more.  

But despite COP30 not giving as clear a signal as it could have done, we already know where the next three-plus years will need to take us:  

• Significantly scaling up climate finance, with rich countries delivering more than $200 billion and all actors mobilizing at least $650 billion annually for developing countries by 2028 in order to stay on track to meeting the 2035 goals. Rich countries also need to get to work immediately on scaling up adaptation finance so they deliver the on the new goal of at least $120 billion per year by 2035.
• Scaling and targeting multilateral development bank clean energy finance to reach more than $31 billion by 2028, with key investments to support efforts to triple renewable energy capacity, increase storage sixfold, more than double grid investments, and double the rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030.
• Finalizing the set of adaptation indicators to generate and highlight the opportunities and value of adaptation action. This is essential to boosting investment and resilience of communities around the world.
• Developing comprehensive global road maps to both transition away from fossil fuels and to halt and reverse deforestation and forest degradation by 2030—including tackling systemic issues such as accountability inequities between the Global North and Global South to meet and exceed 2030 and 2035 national targets while fostering more synergistic coordination between climate and nature ambition.
• Leveraging the just transition mechanism and the momentum witnessed at COP30 on climate and trade, disinformation, and AI to overcome the challenges and seize the many opportunities from the real economy.
• Amplifying the role of local leaders and non-state actors, as highlighted in the pre-COP events in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, Brazil. The targets agreed to this year are more ambitious, but they should mark just a starting point, not the end goal. Countries must follow through on what they promised in Brazil, whether it’s reducing pollution or boosting climate finance.  

The bright spot is that COP30 didn’t slow the global push for climate action. A decade after the Paris Agreement, we must use COP30 as a springboard to accelerate the transition toward a resilient, fossil fuel–free, prosperous economy.