To learn more, revisit our live reporting from COP30.
Key takeaways:
From the start until the very last moment, COP30 was dramatic – with floods, fire, evacuation and constant rumors of collapse all plaguing the two-week conference.
Even the final meeting ground to a halt for more than an hour while COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago consulted his lawyers.
But why was this UN climate summit so divisive, what did it achieve and was it all worth it in the end?
Every year, the United Nations hosts a summit for the parties of the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to assess progress, negotiate new strategies and make decisions to combat the climate crisis.
This year’s conference of the parties (or COP) was the 30th such meeting – hence COP30, also known as the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference.
There are 198 parties to the UNFCCC, but not all of them attended COP30. Most notably, the United States abstained – either a blessing or a barrier, depending on who you ask.
COP30 was hosted by Brazil and took place from 10–21 November in the city of Belém, located in the Amazon rainforest in the northern state of Pará.
Before the summit kicked off, Brazil also hosted a leaders’ summit with heads of state on 6 and 7 November.
The first week of COP30 mainly consisted of technical negotiations as delegates attempted to agree on draft texts for ministers to later approve.
The second week was the ‘high-level’ week, which saw ministers take over to hash out the final agreement.
This year also marked 10 years since the landmark Paris Agreement and four major issues dominated the talks: a roadmap for the fossil fuel transition, the inadequacy of existing commitments, tripling adaptation finance and climate restrictions on trade.
Despite the drama, COP30 did end in a deal, which can be considered a success in itself given the current state of global politics.
“In a year when polarization could easily have frozen the talks, the simple fact that countries moved is proof that multilateralism isn’t dead,” says Natalie Unterstell, president of Instituto Talanoa and a member of the COP30 Adaptation Council.
However, reactions to the outcomes themselves were mixed, with many people left disappointed over some of the key issues.
“As COP30 draws to a close, we must acknowledge a sobering reality: the talks, held in the heart of the Amazon, fell short of delivering the ambitious decisions on nature and climate that the world urgently needs,” says James Lloyd, director of advocacy Nature4Climate Coalition.
We’ve put together some of the most important (and prickly) issues to come out of Belém so you can decide for yourself.
The most contentious issue of the talks was the inclusion of a roadmap to “transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems” – a goal agreed two years ago at COP28.
However, there was never an agreement on how or when this would happen, which is why Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva proposed such a roadmap during the leaders’ summit.
While not on the official agenda, the roadmap picked up steam as the talks went on.
By the end of COP30, more than 80 countries were backing it, but they were ultimately defeated by a coalition of oil-producing and oil-dependent countries, most notably Saudi Arabia.
The result was a text that offered no clear path to fulfilling the COP28 promise and no mention of fossil fuels at all.
“Themutirão[cover] text’s lack of explicit references to the core cause of the climate crisis – whether phasing out or transitioning away – risks making fossil fools of us all,” says Clare Shakya, global managing director for climate at The Nature Conservancy.
Hosted in the Amazon, COP30 was billed as the ‘rainforest COP,’ with were high hopes that it would produce a roadmap to end deforestation.
Four years ago at COP26, more than 130 parties committed to halting and reversing deforestation by 2030, but we are not on track to meet this goal.
The first draft of the cover text, which was titled ‘Global Mutirão’ and outlined the main issues at COP30, did include an optional text on a roadmap to deforestation.
However, by the second draft, any mention of a roadmap to end deforestation was removed, and it remained absent in the final decision despite the support of more than 90 countries.
Unlike fossil fuels, deforestation is briefly mentioned in the main text, which could be seen as a step in the right direction but one that still falls far short of expectations.
“The absence of a roadmap to eliminate deforestation by 2030 represents one of the most significant defeats of this COP, wasting a unique opportunity to consolidate global leadership and commitment around forests,” says Heitor Dellasta, an economist at Conservation Strategy Fund and coordinator of policy at the Global Youth Biodiversity Network.
In a relative success, Global North countries agreed to a text that “calls for efforts” to triple adaptation finance by 2035.
This rather weak language aims to increase the funding they will be giving Global South countries to help them adapt to the effects of the climate crisis.
Wealthy parties at COP30, especially the European Union, pushed back against tripling adaptation finance but eventually agreed to USD 120 billion per year by 2035 – five years later than the first draft suggested.
“The commitment to triple adaptation finance is weak, vague, and tragically late,” says Fanny Petitbon, France team lead at 350.org.
“When cyclones and droughts strike now, a 2035 deadline is a cruel joke.”
This newly agreed sum will form part of the USD 300 billion-a-year goal Global North countries pledged at last year’s COP, rather than an addition, as many Global South countries had hoped.
Many groups were also pleased that the deal included an agreement for a “just transition mechanism.”
A just transition ensures that workers in polluting industries are helped into new, cleaner jobs as countries move away from fossil fuels, making sure that no one is left behind.
According to the COP30 organizers, the initiative agreed in Belém will “enhance international cooperation, technical assistance, capacity building, and knowledge sharing” to ensure a just transition.
However, there was no specific funding allocated for this transition, nor any mention of the exploitation linked to the critical minerals being used in the green transition.
The final ‘Global Mutirão’ cover decision also included an agreement to review trade – a first for a climate COP.
Countries agreed to three annual “dialogues” on trade, the first of which will be held next June.
The deal also “reaffirmed” that climate measures, including “unilateral” ones, should not create arbitrary or discriminatory trade restrictions.
Many countries at COP30, especially China and India, argued forcefully against what they dubbed “unilateral trade agreements,” claiming that these measures harm Global South countries under the guise of climate policy.
This censure was mainly directed at the EU’s upcoming Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM).
CBAM is a tariff scheme designed to put a price on carbon-intensive goods – such as concrete, electricity and steel – entering the EU market and will come into force in 2026.
The EU has maintained that CBAM is a climate tool, not a trade measure, and rejected calls for exemptions.
“[CBAM] is meant as part of our climate toolbox, making sure that emissions don’t leak out of the European Union,” said EU climate chief Wopke Hoekstra at a press conference.
“The best CBAM is one that doesn’t make any money.”
Another positive outcome was the adoption of a new gender action plan.
The plan outlines a framework for implementing gender-responsive climate action and indicators to measure progress.
It includes five priority areas:
There was a lot of debate around the language in the gender plan earlier in the negotiations.
Multiple parties, such as Argentina, Paraguay and the Vatican, pushed for a binary definition of gender, which critics claimed was a distraction tactic aimed at stalling the negotiations.
All parties to the UNFCCC were required to submit their individual plans on cutting emissions and adapting to the climate crisis – also known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – ahead of COP30.
However, not all did, and the NDCs that were submitted aren’t enough to limit global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, as stipulated in the Paris Agreement.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)’s Emissions Gap Report 2025: Off Target, published just before COP30, found that even if all NDCs are fully implemented, we’re still on track to hit 2.3 to 2.5 degrees Celsius this century.
A separate report by Climate Action Tracker puts that figure at 2.6 degrees.
“While national climate plans have delivered some progress, it is nowhere near fast enough, which is why we still need unprecedented emissions cuts in an increasingly tight window,” said Inger Andersen, executive director of UNEP, in a statement.
Addressing this, the final COP30 agreement included a “global implementation accelerator”, a voluntary initiative that encourages countries to meet and exceed their NDCs to keep the 1.5 degree target “within reach.” It will be reviewed at COP31 next year.
The agreed text also called on countries to ensure the “full implementation of NDCs while striving to do better.”
While not technically an outcome of COP30, the launch of the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF) at the leaders’ summit was a significant part of the overall talks in Belém.
The TFFF is a Brazil-led mechanism that aims to compensate countries for preserving tropical forests.
It plans to raise USD 25 billion from “sponsor governments,” which is expected to then attract another USD 100 billion from private investors.
This USD 125 billion fund will be invested in emerging markets, with the profits used to pay forested countries per hectare of standing forest, assuming they hit certain deforestation targets.
The launch hit an early snag when the U.K., which had been involved in the design of the facility, announced it would not be contributing to the fund.
The TFFF has also come under fierce criticism from some civil society organizations, who consider it either inadequate or detrimental to real progress.
Others, such as Greenpeace, have taken a more balanced approach, describing it as “a step in the right direction.”
The past few UN climate conferences have been held in countries where protest is heavily restricted, but in Belém, they came out in force.
The People’s Summit is a space for “those who have contributed the least to the climate crisis but suffer its impacts the most” and are often excluded from the COP itself.
It ran in parallel to the official COP from 12–16 November and attracted more than 25,000 participants – the largest number since it began in 1992.
This culminated in a climate justice march of 70,000 people, also the biggest demonstration of its kind at a climate COP.
The official COP also felt the presence of civil society, with activists breaking through security lines and entering the restricted Blue Zone early in the talks.
Later in the week, around 100 Indigenous protesters blocked one of the venue entrances, demanding to speak to Brazilian President Lula. Various other demonstrations continued throughout COP30.
In the wake of the demonstrations, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell demanded more security and was later accused in an open letter of instigating a crackdown on demonstrators, especially Indigenous Peoples.
There was a lot of discontent with the final deal, with Colombia complaining that their objections went unheard before the final text was approved.
As a result, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago promised that the issue of stronger language around a fossil fuels phaseout could be addressed at an interim COP meeting in six months.
Unsurprisingly, this was in turn met with objections by oil-producing countries such as Saudi Arabia.
Do Lago also announced two “presidency roadmaps”: one to transition away from fossil fuels, and another to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030.
The outcomes of both these roadmaps will be reported at COP31.
Marina Silva, Brazil’s minister of the environment and climate change, said this was the presidency’s response a failure to address these two contentious issues in the main “Mutirão” decision, according to the International Institute for Sustainable Development.
Despite not forming part of the actual agreement, some see these as a step in the right direction.
“It’s incredible to see much progress outside of negotiations, from the launch of the Tropical Forest Forever Facility to the Belem Joint Statement on the Rio Conventions and the roadmaps on fossil fuels and deforestation,” says Cathy Yitong Li, global climate & energy policy lead at BirdLife International.
Finally, COP30 brought us the host of COP31: Turkey.
Australia had also been competing for the summit but reached a compromise that will see it assume the role of COP31 vice-president and ‘president of negotiations.’
The conference is set to take place in November 2026 in the resort city of Antalya on the Mediterranean Sea.
As part of the deal, there will also be a pre-COP summit held in the Pacific, an important detail for Australia, whose motive “has always been to elevate the views and the interests of our Pacific brothers and sisters,” said the country’s climate minister, Chris Bowen.
While hosting rights for COP31 were fiercely contested until the last minute, the host of COP32 has already been agreed.
Ethiopia will lead the 2027 talks in its capital city, Addis Ababa, fending off a bid from Nigeria.
COP31 isn’t the only conference to watch next year. Colombia has announced that it will host the first international conference on the phaseout of fossil fuels next April in partnership with the Netherlands.
Taking place from 28–29 April 2026 in Santa Marta, Colombia, the conference aims to work in parallel with the UNFCCC to advance international cooperation on transitioning away from fossil fuel extraction.
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