Climate change affects every country on every continent. It is disrupting national economies and affecting people’s lives, and the cost of inaction keeps increasing.

In 2015, governments adopted the Paris Agreement on climate change and committed to limit the rise in the global average temperature to “well below” 2°C above pre-industrial levels, pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. However, progress toward this goal is off track. When governments gathered for the UN Climate Change Conference in Belém, Brazil, amidst intense geopolitical turmoil, they needed to focus on keeping this goal within reach.

A key expectation for this year’s Climate Change Conference was to reach agreement on indicators for measuring progress towards the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) that was established in the Paris Agreement. This would have been the culmination of a process meant to narrow down a set of 100 indicators that match the 11 targets of the 2023 GGA Framework. In particular, the indicators relating to means of implementation remained a subject of much debate, leading the relevant experts to outline options for political decisions makers to sort out.

Another key focus was the latest round of nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement. Parties were originally supposed to submit their NDCs by February 2025, but a number of them, including many big emitters, have yet to do so. At the June Climate Meetings several country coalitions called for providing a space to reflect on these NDCs in Belém and agree on an action package aimed at addressing the expected shortfall in collective ambition. Substance-wise the main question is whether parties’ NDCs are 1.5°C-aligned, cover all sectors and greenhouse gases, and respond to the calls for energy transition formulated in the decision on the first Global Stocktake.

In terms of finance, parties went into COP 30 looking for the Presidency’s roadmap to USD 1.3 trillion, which was mandated in the 2024 decision on the new collective quantified goal on climate finance (NCQG), which was set at USD 300 billion—much to the dismay of developing countries. With the time to achieve the goal to double adaptation finance from 2019 levels by 2025 running out, developing countries pushed for progress.

Building on constructive discussions in June, parties progressed the preparations for the transitioning of the Adaptation Fund to exclusively serve the Paris Agreement, now that the building blocks are in place with regard to the Agreement’s market mechanisms. As usual, parties also debated guidance to the operating entities of the Financial Mechanism, with many especially keen to reflect on progress made in operationalizing the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage.

Other key items for deliberations in Belém included:

• agreement on the host of the thirty-first session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 31) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC);
• the development of a new gender action plan;
• progress on the just transition work programme;
• negotiations on technology and capacity-building;
• discussions on how to enhance the efficiency of the UNFCCC process; and
• the synthesis report on the first round of biennial transparency reports

Several items included in the provisional agendas, as per the draft rules of procedure, were contentious and subject to debate. 

The UN Climate Change Conference convened from 10-21 November 2025 in Belém, Brazil. It included the 30th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 30), the 20th meeting of the COP serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP 20), and the seventh meeting of the COP serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA 7). The 63rd sessions of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA 63) and the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI 63) also convened.

The Writers for the Earth Negotiations Bulletin COP 30 team were: Jennifer Bansard; Tomilola Akanle Eni-ibukun, Ph.D.; Marc Calabretta; Daniel Bertram; Anna Dubrova; and Mari Luomi Ph.D. The Digital Editor was Mike Muzurakis. The Editor was Pamela Chasek, Ph.D. French translation by Mongi Gadhoum; Spanish translation by Alexandra Lefevre.