Experts React: Progress and Setbacks at COP30

The 30th United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP30) gathered heads of state, diplomats, climate stakeholders, and business leaders at the “gateway to the Amazon” in the city of Belém, Brazil. Despite the absence of the United States, which eliminated the possibility of a large breakthrough on climate, the summit delivered noteworthy progress in several areas.

CSIS experts unpack some of COP30’s most notable outcomes and their implications for the future of climate, energy, health, development, and the COP process at large.

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The End of Big Climate Promises and the New Role for COP

Leslie Abrahams, Deputy Director and Senior Fellow, Energy Security and Climate Change Program

Thirty years after the first COP in Berlin, greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. This year’s COP30 marked a notable turning point, with global ambition lagging and the U.S. delegation absent for the first time in the conference’s 30-year history. With a record of big promises and notably little progress, has COP outlived its usefulness? The answer, of course, depends on its intended purpose. The era of increasingly bold (and unrealistic) commitments is over. COP should instead focus on accountability. With growing recognition that decarbonization will evolve through markets and technology innovation rather than via top-down government target-setting alone, COP should evolve into a platform for transparency and governance—one focused on monitoring progress, promoting adaptation and resilience, elevating vulnerable countries, and governing global climate finance.

This year’s momentum shift shows that COP has outlasted its historical role in producing headline-grabbing pledges, but not its utility as a climate change champion. It remains a powerful symbol of collective action. However, to stay relevant, COP should pivot toward a mandate of accountability and measurable progress rather than ever-bolder promises.

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Why Shouldn’t China Be Ready for Climate Leadership?

Jane Nakano, Senior Fellow, Energy Security and Climate Change Program

What a difference a decade has made for China. China, which was skeptical that global climate negotiations were intended to undermine China’s economic rise at the time of the Paris COP in 2015, is now a leading voice on the value of global climate cooperation. Now a behemoth in the global clean tech economy, China offers many solutions to both developed and developing economies that seek to deliver more energy with less emissions to their populations.

Yet, it remains unclear as to whether China sees climate cooperation primarily as an avenue for global emissions reduction or a multiplier for economic opportunity. For example, while its 2035 Nationally Determined Contribution was the first for the nation to pledge to reduce economy-wide net greenhouse gas emissions, the 7–10 percent reduction level is far too unambitious. Also, China commenced constructing 94.5 gigawatts of new coal power capacity last year.

Climate change efforts need a strong leader, and with the U.S. departure from the Paris Agreement, China has an opportunity to step up to be one. If China sees climate cooperation as an avenue for emissions reduction, shifting from receiving climate finance to providing it would be an important step in demonstrating this leadership. The United States—alongside Japan, Germany, and France—was among the few nations that have consistently been the top climate finance donors. In contrast, China received over $3 billion of climate finance in 2021–2022 despite being the world’s second-largest economy. By stepping into this role that the United States has ceded (at least for now), China has an opportunity to shape the global climate agenda for decades to come, deepening its influence by better aligning its supply chains and emerging global dependencies with concrete progress in emissions reduction. 

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An Exercise in Resilience?

Noam Unger, Vice President, Global Development Department, and Director, Sustainable Development and Resilience Initiative

At COP30, the absence of official United States participation seemed to take center stage as countries including China, India, Russia, and significant oil-producing economies were seen to win in a struggle to influence how decidedly or slowly the world shifts away from fossil fuels. But while much of the reporting on the conference portrays the outcome as inconsequential because it was a missed opportunity for an agreement among world leaders on mitigating climate change, what I saw while at COP30 in Brazil demonstrated a continued trend that is highly consequential, nonetheless.

Progress on mitigation may be lamentably halting due to realpolitik and a tug-of-war as countries around the world struggle to both grow their economies and transition away from fossil fuels, but extreme weather catastrophes are rising relentlessly. COP30 in Belém, touted as the “adaptation COP,” featured more central attention on adaptation indicators and finance, resulting in a tepid international agreement that “calls for efforts to at least triple adaptation finance by 2035.” Such language is fuzzy, but it is officially being framed by the COP presidency as a commitment, and it could mean a new goal of $120 billion for adaptation within the overall $300 billion climate financing goal for 2035, agreed to at COP29 last year.

Beyond the official negotiations, however, a range of semiofficial and nongovernmental dialogues that surrounded the deliberations at the core of COP illustrated a story of increasing focus on the resilience agenda. For example, in partnership with the COP30 presidency, the Asia Investor Group on Climate Change, together with Laudes Foundation, ClimateWorks Foundation, and a network of European impact capital providers, hosted a high-level dialogue on the “Continuum of Capital” to scale finance for resilience. Conference participants discussed the actions of institutional investors as well as a corporate survey by MSCI Institute on resilience and physical risk, which showed that “80 [percent] of companies say their operations, including supply chains, have been impacted by extreme weather events,” and more than two-thirds report that “investments in resilience have boosted their access to capital or lowered their insurance bill.”

Insurance itself was a significant topic of focus across the conference, too, whether it was through the Enabling Insurance Breakthrough, the many sessions at the COP30 House of Insurance, meetings at the Peru Resilience Hub, the Singapore pavilion’s focus on resilient supply chains, or related events at other venues in both São Paulo and Belém. Together, these events represented more than a signal amid noise. They are harbingers of an emerging resilience economy that is inevitable and worthy of investments by governments and the private sector alike.

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Extreme Heat Rises in Belém

Stephen Morrison, Senior Vice President and Director, Global Health Policy Center, and Katherine Bliss, Director and Senior Fellow, Immunizations and Health Systems Resilience, Global Health Policy Center

One promising piece of health news out of COP30 in Belém, Brazil, the hot and muggy gateway to the Amazon, is that extreme heat and heat-related disasters now enjoy marquee status in discussions of the intersection of climate and health.

At the meetings, countries endorsed a nonbinding Belém Health Action Plan, which has three components: monitoring and forecasting to improve detection and reporting of climate-linked health conditions; strengthening health systems to assess and treat heat-related illness; and supporting research to innovate heat-resistant medical products, curb the contribution of health supply chains to pollution, and expand the health sector’s adoption of digital solutions and renewable energy sources.

The COP30 Special Report on Climate and Health, which underpins the Belém Health Action Plan, includes the claim that 540,000 people die each year from heat-related illness and that 1 in 12 hospitals worldwide are at risk of shutdown from extreme weather events.

There was some good news. The COP30 report found that between 2015 and 2023, the number of countries with early warning surveillance systems doubled to 101, covering two-thirds of the world’s population. Climate-health financing rose from $1 billion globally in 2018 to $7.1 billion in 2022, according to a Rockefeller Foundation report. A funding coalition, including the Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and the Rockefeller Foundation, committed $300 million to support climate-health adaptation measures.

But the shadows over the Belém Health Action Plan’s future match an overall gloomy picture for health at COP30. While roughly two dozen countries initially endorsed the action plan, the United States was absent from Belém. As of November 13, this year’s official COP Health Day, China and several major Middle East powers were not listed among the plan’s supporters. In a year when development assistance for health declined by 21 percent, the action plan has no funding attached. And the World Health Organization, which serves as the plan secretariat, faces severe budget shortfalls and staffing contraction.

One stark conclusion emerges from COP30: It remains overwhelmingly the responsibility of individual countries to demonstrate the high-level political will and financial commitments essential to prioritize battling the health consequences of extreme heat and heat-related disasters. That is not going to be easy or simple, given competing demands, crushing debt obligations, and limited resources for technical assistance and support.

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A Multiplier Pledge for Sustainable Fuels

Mathias Zacarias, Associate Fellow and Energy Transitions Fellow, Energy Security and Climate Change Program

After previous pledges to double energy efficiency improvements and triple renewables and nuclear capacity, COP30 now adds its own multiplier: the Belém 4x pledge for sustainable fuels. Led by Brazil and cosponsored by India, Italy, and Japan, the pledge promotes the quadrupling in production and use of sustainable fuels by 2035.

Sustainable fuels—such as biofuels, synthetic fuels, biogases, and hydrogen and its derivatives—are an underdeveloped piece of the climate puzzle, a solution for sectors where electrification falls short due to technoeconomic realities. Recent global policies are already anchoring nascent demand. The International Civil Aviation Organization’s Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation framework allows airlines to reduce their offsetting requirements with sustainable aviation fuels, while the International Maritime Organization’s 2023 greenhouse gas strategy seeks to push ships toward low- and zero-carbon fuel adoption. The Belém 4x pledge would support these and other emerging regional policies by mobilizing high-level political support that sends a positive signal to global stakeholders.

For the United States, Belém 4x is both an opportunity and a warning. As the world’s largest sustainable fuels producer and a leading technology provider, the United States could very well supply new fuel demand while exporting technologies for nascent solutions such as advanced biofuels and hydrogen derivatives. However, that will require increased investments geared toward sustainable feedstock sourcing, expanding production capacity, and building out enabling infrastructure—all to position domestic producers to lead in international markets. If successful, the United States could turn a global climate pledge into durable jobs and economic growth at home.

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Rainforests and Climate Finance’s Equity Challenge

Ray Cai, Associate Fellow, Energy Security and Climate Change Program, and Alexis Burns, Intern, Energy Security and Climate Change Program

Rainforest protection has been a focal point at COP30, both as a priority for host Brazil as well as a test for whether multilateral climate efforts can meaningfully protect the world’s endangered critical ecosystems. Central to this question is the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), a newly launched international financing program aimed at providing long-term incentives for countries to preserve their tropical forests. Administered by Brazil in coordination with the World Bank, TFFF set out to mobilize $25 billion in sovereign and philanthropic funding and $100 billion from private investors.

The TFFF’s mechanism for allocating funds that support Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples (LCIP)—a total of 50 million globally who depend on tropical rainforests—has been a source of contention. While the proposed framework requires that 20 percent of funds flow to LCIP, national governments are set to retain control over the administration of TFFF resources. Activists say this echoes the recurring flaws of past forest finance programs, including Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, a Paris Agreement mechanism criticized for providing little livelihood support and failing to support indigenous self-determination and territorial sovereignty. These tensions were visible at COP30, where LCIP groups protested for “Free, Prior, and Informed Consent”—a procedural mechanism that requires consultation with LCIP who may be affected by the adoption of a policy or program.

How TFFF addresses these concerns going forward will shape its legitimacy and effectiveness. With LCIP stewarding more than 30 percent of the Amazon rainforest, greater coordination with LCIP will strengthen the TFFF and help advance more inclusive, durable climate action. As such, decisionmakers should ensure meaningful LCIP participation as they solicit funding and build out the program’s long-term, self-financing structure. Most importantly, implementation mechanisms should recognize LCIP stewardship and practices as climate solutions. Such a tailored approach would help center bottom-up approaches to conservation that are attuned to local contexts and needs.