Council of Councils
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Alice C. Hill is the David M. Rubenstein senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Angus Soderberg is a research associate for climate change policy at CFR.
The thirtieth Conference of the Parties (COP30) will present a stress test for multilateralism and the greater climate effort when it kicks off on November 10 in Belém, Brazil. Negotiators from around the world will gather to curb global emissions and strengthen climate ambition, but they will face substantial headwinds. While countries have made progress since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015 and projected warming for this century has fallen, according to the United Nations, the Paris Agreement goal of keeping global average temperature rise well below 2°C—and preferably at 1.5°C below the pre-industrial era—is moving out of reach. In 2024, global average annual temperature rise breached 1.5°C for the first time, while atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide increased by a record amount since measurements began.
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The current commitments made by countries are not enough to rein in accelerating warming, and some are stepping away from the effort despite a need for greater implementation. The Donald Trump administration, for one, does not appear interested in honoring any promises that the United States—the world’s second-largest emitter and historically greatest emitter—has made at previous summits. Against this backdrop and the heightened stakes of a warming world, COP30’s ability to address and help the globe navigate the climate crisis will be challenged.
The stakes of this year’s COP
Brazil wants to capture the ambition evident during the first climate summit it hosted, the Rio Earth Summit, thirty-three years ago. But the world looks vastly different than it did in 1992—economically, politically, and environmentally—and climate efforts have only managed to grow incrementally in recent years. Brazil has framed COP30 as the COP of implementation and adaptation, which has invited the burden of expectation. The question now is whether it lives up to that name.
At its core, the COP process relies on countries to voluntarily choose to engage in ambitious collective action. After three decades of meetings, the COP process has faced mounting criticism for stalled negotiations, weak implementation, and an inability to spur sustained climate ambition. Perhaps the best measure of ambition is the expectation under the 2015 Paris Agreement that nations will submit their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) every five years to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Fewer than 10 percent of countries managed to meet the February 2025 deadline for submission of their latest commitments. The NDCs that subsequently trickled in generally lack ambitious targets.
In late October, the United Nations issued its 2025 Synthesis Report on Nationally Determined Contributions [PDF], which analyzed the NDCs received to date from 64 of the 195 parties to the Paris Agreement. By 2035, those current pledges will yield a modest 17 percent reduction below the 2019 global emissions level, which is well short of the estimated 55 percent needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C. If ambition is not increased and implementation is not carried out, the gap between aspiration and action will widen—and the threat of locking in worsening climate impacts will grow.
What to watch for at COP30
To support the themes of adaptation and implementation, Brazil has promoted the COP30 Action Agenda, which seeks to draw in non-negotiating actors and reorganize existing COP initiatives to accelerate their implementation. Brazil hopes these themes will also extend into negotiations, where it will be important to make progress on three priority areas: delivering finance, strengthening emission reductions, and operationalizing adaptation.
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Money. Funding is a theme at almost every COP, with the question of who will pay ringing loudly in negotiation halls. At COP29 in Azerbaijan last year, negotiators agreed to a new financial goal called the new collective quantified goal, mobilizing a benchmark of $300 billion per year to developing countries by 2035, with the potential to reach a more ambitious $1.3 trillion target. Much was left to be negotiated at this year’s COP, as countries now must untangle how to operationalize the promise, figuring out who pays what, and whether the finance will be concessional or loans, among other contentious issues.
The Fund for responding to Loss and Damage, a carry-over from COP28 in the United Arab Emirates, will also be assessed in Brazil, with questions of who pays, how much, and how fast still unresolved. Those questions have only become tougher with the United States’ exit from the fund.
Emissions Reduction. At COP28, the global stocktake—an assessment of the world’s progress under the Paris Agreement—revealed how far off track the world remained in its climate ambition. In Belém, negotiators may spotlight laggards and explore the credibility of implementation policies, especially given the current state of the NDCs.
A related issue looming at COP30 is Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which governs voluntary cooperation among countries to meet their NDCs. It creates three pathways: the trading of emissions reduction or removals bilaterally or multilaterally, a mechanism for trading carbon credits for emissions-reduction projects or programs, and non-market approaches like technology development and transfer. In Brazil, one aim is to make progress on implementing the agreed-upon rules.
Adaptation: Climate adaptation—the process of adjusting to current or anticipated climate effects—has long been neglected compared to climate mitigation. But COP30 President André Aranha Corrêa do Lago has called for this meeting to be a “COP of adaptation,” describing adaptation as the “next step in human evolution.” Discussion of climate adaptation has been present in the COP process, but this COP president’s framing signals it is likely to take a more central role in 2025.
The task at hand is to agree on a set of global indicators to measure progress for the global goal on adaptation. Despite progress on defining the indicators, some countries are expected to resist the effort for universally comparable adaptation metrics out of fear they will reveal weak adaptation efforts or lead to new requirements. Countries are also expected to finalize a progress assessment of national adaptation plans in Belém.
The contrasting roles of the United States and China
Trump’s reelection initiated a hard tack away from federal climate action in the United States.
Although the United States remains a part of the UNFCCC despite withdrawing from the Paris Agreement a second time, the Trump administration has said that it will not be sending high-level representatives to COP30.
But under Trump, the United States may not just be absent from global climate negotiations—it has shown signs of taking an adversarial stance toward them. In October, the Trump administration successfully worked to halt the adoption of the first-ever global carbon tax on shipping intended to reduce industry emissions. In an open letter, the White House has pressured European Union member states to repeal a law that regulates corporations’ greenhouse gas emissions. And domestically, it has taken actions that favor the fossil fuel industry while cutting support for clean energy like wind and solar.
Meanwhile, China has positioned itself as a world leader in renewable energy, and Chinese President Xi Jinping has reaffirmed China’s commitment to climate negotiations. As the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, China’s climate commitments have huge implications for the rest of the world. Yet, it remains to be seen whether China will lead from the front on global climate action.
At the 2025 UN General Assembly, Xi unveiled China’s latest NDC, earning praise for its continued engagement on global climate efforts but drawing criticism for its limited ambition. The headline target was a 7–10 percent reduction in economy-wide emissions from their peak by 2035, but it’s expected that this will not meet the reductions needed to keep warming below 1.5°C. In Belém, China can offer its green supply chain strength and industrial production of clean energy as a contrast to U.S. disengagement.
What does success look like?
A successful COP in Belém would deliver concrete outcomes in several areas:
- climate finance, including named contributors, early-year targets, and transparency on accounting and mobilization;
- loss and damage funding, including new pledges and clarity on channels for funding to cover near-term needs;
- emissions reductions, including heightened pressure for commitments for economy-wide, all-gases reductions and explicit policy packages on how the reductions will be achieved; and
- adaptation, including a baseline set of indicators for measuring progress.
Brazil’s COP president has admitted that this year’s convening faces an “uphill” battle with the United States’ exit from the Paris Agreement. But Brazil is betting on actionable ambition and a focus on implementation to achieve progress in Belém. The troubling political and economic headwinds, however, suggest that COP30 may prove yet another convening with modest progress—where the UNFCCC will continue to limp along.
This work represents the views and opinions solely of the authors. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.