The world agreed to give more aid for developing nations to adapt to climate change without delivering a plan to deal with the root cause.
The COP30 U.N. climate summit in Belém, Brazil, concluded on Saturday in a tense political compromise. Negotiators agreed to triple adaptation finance for vulnerable nations but backtracked on a binding roadmap to phase out fossil fuels, drawing condemnation from dozens of countries.
"Many countries wanted to move faster on fossil fuels, finance, and responding to spiraling climate disasters. I understand that frustration, and many of those I share myself," U.N. Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell acknowledged in his closing speech.
The watered-down result fell far short of the high hopes that many delegates brought to COP30, where diplomats, scientists, activists and Indigenous people clamored for meaningful cuts in carbon emissions.
Stiell argued, however, that still represents progress because it spells out for the first time that a global transition to less emissions and more climate resilience cannot be reversed.
For the first time, the text negotiated by the 30th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCC, acknowledged the need to tackle climate disinformation and pledged to safeguard public trust in science-based climate policy.
Negotiators at UNFCC, the 1994 treaty for negotiating an agreement to combat "dangerous human interference with the climate system," also pledged to create a mechanism for a "just transition" to a green economy that protects economies dependent on high-carbon industries.
That includes the first language on the centrality of human and labor rights for Indigenous peoples and other vulnerable groups under UNFCC.
In a world of rising temperatures, even the negotiating venue caught on fire and had to be evacuated a day before the talks were to conclude. Organizers said the fire was controlled in just six minutes, and 13 people were treated on site for smoke inhalation.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he could not pretend the conference delivered everything needed: "The gap between where we are and what science demands remains dangerously wide."
The central conflict was driven by the host’s initial draft, which omitted clear commitments on the fossil fuel transition. That provoked a sharp response from 36 nations calling themselves the Coalition of Ambition, while OPEC and Gulf nations firmly opposed a mandated phaseout.
Tuvalu's Environment Minister Maina Vakafua Talia underscored the existential risk, noting the draft "did not even name the main threat for our very survival."
Panama’s negotiator, Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez, summarized the frustration. A decision that "cannot even say ‘fossil fuels’ is not neutrality, it is complicity," he said.
Ultimately, the final negotiated text delivered a formal agreement to triple adaptation finance, a primary demand from the Global South. The timeframe for delivering it was postponed by five years, a delay criticized for leaving vulnerable countries without adequate support to meet escalating climate risks.
A compromise was reached on the world's energy future, with 194 nations formally agreeing the "global transition to low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilience is irreversible and the trend of the future," though no binding transition mechanisms were specified.
U.K. Energy Minister Ed Miliband offered a pragmatic summary, saying he would have preferred a "more ambitious" agreement. Palau's Ambassador Ilana Seid similarly offered muted praise, calling the deal "the best that could be achieved in trying times," reflecting a widespread sense of political exhaustion.
The final plenary session dissolved into procedural chaos. The swift approval of the main package prompted several nations to protest that their objections were ignored. Colombia’s chief negotiator, Daniela Duran Gonzalez, publicly blasted the presidency for rushing the process, saying the summit "cannot support an outcome that ignores science."
The procedural rush affected technical details, notably the Global Goal on Adaptation, with negotiators cutting the number of tracking indicators from 100 down to 59 and altering technical wording. Several Latin American countries and the European Union called the final metrics unclear and unworkable.
In a parallel track, the Global Climate Action Agenda highlighted the major real-economy commitments of those outside of government. That included an investment pipeline of $1 trillion by 2030 aimed at tripling collective renewable capacity and strengthening power grids.
The agenda also noted commitments of $148 billion a year from the Utilities for Net Zero Alliance, which includes the world's leading utilities, alongside the endorsement by 23 nations of the "Belém 4x Pledge on Sustainable Fuels," a commitment to at least quadruple their use by 2035.
Despite these advances, critics like Greenpeace International’s Jasper Inventor maintained the summit was fundamentally lacking: "Strip away the outcome text and you see it plainly: The emperor has no clothes."
The final Belém Political Package did secure governance guidance for the Loss and Damage Fund and the Green Climate Fund, and advanced the Baku-to-Belém Roadmap for mobilizing $1.3 trillion annually for developing nations.
