Consenso e implementação na COP30

Humanity is already witnessing extreme weather events that would have seemed dystopian even a few decades ago, as disasters that scientists predicted for a distant future have become omnipresent in headlines around the world. The results of more than three decades of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its 2015 Paris Agreement cannot be overlooked or underestimated (UNFCCC 2015). Projections that pointed to warming above 4 °C have been reduced to a range of 2.1 °C to 2.8 °C under the full implementation of the current Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Much remains to be done to keep 1.5 °C within reach, but this outlook would be far worse without the climate regime. Reality is also making it clear that this same climate regime has no choice but to evolve and keep pace with the times. 

The 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30) of the UNFCCC, held in Belém in November 2025, celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement. With the Paris rulebook complete–the rules, operational guidelines and procedures for implementing the accord negotiated and approved by the eight previous COPs–and, thus, with the Paris policy cycle in motion, COP30 marked the start of a new phase of COPs: one in which negotiation and implementation move in sync, each reinforcing the other. 

Climate negotiations currently involve 194 countries searching for consensus. Other stakeholders, including subnational governments, businesses, academia, and civil society, participate in COPs not directly as formal actors in the negotiations, but indirectly and decisively through various forms of exercising influence on countries or groups of countries in their positions in the negotiations.

Throughout 2025, the COP30 Presidency recognized the extraordinary potential of the Action Agenda and realized that some structural changes would accelerate and strengthen COPs’ ability to translate formal decisions into concrete measures in a clearer and more effective way. As the climate emergency exposes the limits of consensus decision-making, the COP30 Presidency made it a priority to bring these two tracks–the formal negotiations and the Action Agenda–closer together. 

Under the “Global Mutirão Decision”, adopted in Belém, countries resolved to shift their focus from negotiations to implementing the Paris Agreement–a fundamental step to strengthen legitimacy and accelerate much-needed transitions. Simultaneously, the COP30 Action Agenda was purposely structured to support the delivery of the First Global Stocktake (GST1), approved by consensus at COP28 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, which assessed progress and challenges in implementing the Paris objectives. 

“Transitions”, the theme of this issue of CEBRI-Journal, captures the conceptual change Belém sought to consolidate. Fundamentally, responding to climate change means decarbonizing and adapting, which extends far beyond the negotiating rooms where the regime first took shape. COP30 reaffirmed what was already happening on the ground: climate action moves through economies, cities, financial systems, people, jobs and everyday choices. 

This changing reality is why the COP30 Presidency has proposed that climate multilateralism evolve toward a new two-tier model. The first tier, anchored in consensus-based negotiations, retains its traditional and fundamental functions. The second tier operates at a faster, complementary pace: coalitions of governments, subnational authorities, companies, NGOs, financial institutions, and a series of other actors organize to deliver on what was adopted by consensus, each according to its circumstances.

Consensus is the backbone of the regime: it produced the Climate Convention, the Kyoto Protocol, and the Paris Agreement, and confers universality and legal force on the decisions of nearly 200 parties. Nothing in the transition to implementation denies this, but consensus, by nature, is slow–and fighting the climate emergency demands speed. That COP30 managed to inaugurate a new chapter of the UNFCCC is a signal that actors are still willing to commit and cooperate to fight the defining crisis of our time, despite the challenging geopolitical context. 

From the outset, our efforts were guided by three interconnected objectives: a) to strengthen multilateralism and the climate regime under the UNFCCC; b) to connect the climate regime to people’s real lives and to the real economy; and c) to accelerate the implementation of the Paris Agreement under the Convention and beyond it.

During 2025, as we prepared for COP30 negotiations, there was an expectation that climate policies in countries and institutions could irreversibly backslide following the United States withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. The delayed formal presentation of NDCs by key countries and difficulties in achieving results in other multilateral fora, such as the plastics negotiations and the International Maritime Organization, accentuated the skepticism. 

By the last gavel of COP30, however, no other country had left the Paris Agreement–122 parties had submitted new NDCs, and 72 National Adaptation Plans (NAPs, an important policy tool for planning adaptation at the country level). In Belém, more than 50 decisions were approved by consensus, confirming the commitment to the climate regime. Multilateralism was strengthened thanks to the 194 countries that still believe we need to create rules and act as united as possible. Despite the many different interests, it is clear that multilateral cooperation cannot be weakened or abdicated if we are to stand a chance of overcoming our collective challenge. 

THE MUTIRÃO

Hosting the climate conference in Brazil meant the climate regime was coming home: it was in Rio, during the 1992 Earth Summit (RIO-92), that the UN conventions on climate, biodiversity, and desertification were born (United Nations 1992). Since then, these conventions have produced tremendous advances in changing how we see progress, accelerating the transition to a more sustainable development model. 

It is fitting that the climate COP would return as it reaches full maturity and heads towards this new concomitant era of negotiation and implementation. To do so, the COP30 Presidency worked tirelessly to ensure that the road to Belém was inclusive, participatory, and grounded in scientific evidence. 

In recognition of this crossroads moment, the COP30 Presidency materialized across four pillars: 1) Global Mobilization; 2) the Leaders’ Summit; 3) the formal negotiations; and 4) the Action Agenda. They were united by the call for a Global Mutirão: a concept inherited by the Brazilian indigenous peoples that refers to a community coming together to work on a shared task, each doing what they do best.  

Global Mobilization

The COP30 Presidency was determined to serve as a vehicle for empowering stakeholders from all walks of life to deliver concrete results. To facilitate this whole-of-society mobilization, we introduced several innovative mechanisms to expand the plurality, outreach, and participation in the COP process. 

During 2025, I published a series of letters that provided political direction and a call to collective purpose. Together, they formed the backbone of the Presidency’s vision and our commitment to turning urgency into concrete delivery. Their themes included a call for a Global Mutirão; the four pillars of the COP30 Presidency; priorities for the sessions in June 2025 in Bonn, Germany; the Action Agenda structure; the role of people and climate justice at the center of COP30; the launch of the Presidency consultations; a call for private sector cooperation; and the reinforcement of adaptation as a key priority, among other topics. 

In preparing COP30, I had the exceptional support of COP30 CEO Ana Toni, who co-led with me every step of the way. The team of the Brazilian COP Presidency had a series of extremely talented and committed members, but none had as much influence as Tulio Cesar Mourthé de Alvim Andrade, COP30’s Chief Strategist. We also counted on existing functions under the UNFCCC on which a COP President relies, including the host country’s nominations to two other high-ranking positions: the High-Level Champion, Dan Ioschpe, one of the most respected businessmen in Brazil, who led the significant changes in the Action Agenda and continues to bring a new dynamic in the relationship with the international private sector; and the COP30 Presidency Youth Climate Champion, Marcele Oliveira, who was chosen after many consultations and is surpassing all expectations.

Until the opening of COP31, the COP30 Presidency will also continue to count on the assistance, suggestions and actions from a series of relevant actors and experts through a structure of four Circles, 22 Special Envoys, seven International Envoys, and four Advisory Councils. 

The four Circles

The Circle of Finance Ministers, under the leadership of Fernando Haddad, Finance Minister of Brazil in 2025, united Finance Ministers from 35 countries to provide inputs to the development of the Baku to Belém Roadmap to 1.3T, building on the work of the Brazilian G20 Presidency in 2024. The Circle's contributions were captured in the “Report of the COP30 Circle of Finance Ministers on the Baku to Belém Roadmap to 1.3T” (Brazil 2025c).

The Circle of Peoples, under the leadership of Sonia Guajajara, Brazil's Minister of Indigenous Peoples in 2025, aimed to strengthen the COP30 Presidency’s capacity to listen to and integrate the demands and contributions of the world’s Indigenous Peoples, traditional communities, and Afro-descendant groups. This circle helped mobilize movements that culminated during COP30 in the World Climate March, which gathered around 70,000 people, and in Aldeia COP, a space that hosted 3,500 indigenous peoples from around the world.

The Circle of the Global Ethical Stocktake, sponsored by President Lula and UN Secretary-General António Guterres, led by Marina Silva, Brazil’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change in 2025, issued a global call for climate action grounded in ethics, religion, philosophy, cultural diversity, and science. This circle produced the “Global Ethical Stocktake: Global Report” (Brazil 2025a).

The Circle of COP Presidents, which brought together, under the chairmanship of Laurent Fabius, President of COP21, the Presidencies that have shaped the regime since Paris. Their constant contributions ensured that the preparation of Belém was faithful to the spirit of Paris and the COPs that followed. 

Advisory Councils

Four International Advisory Councils were also established and remain active, convening leading experts to advise the Presidency and strengthen the scientific, economic, technological, and resilience dimensions of the COP30 agenda: the COP30 President’s Council on Economy, Finance, and Climate, which brought together more than 20 world-renowned economists, including Nobel Prize laureates, coordinated by José Alexandre Scheinkman; the COP30 President’s Council on Science, led by Thelma Krug; the COP30 President’s Council on Technological Innovation and Artificial Intelligence, chaired by Ronaldo Lemos; and the COP30 President’s Advisory Council on Adaptation, which brings together a series of experienced scholars, specialists, and local leaders to advance themes related to adaptation, one of COP30’s main priorities, and to strengthen preparedness for the impacts of climate change.

Special Envoys and International Envoys

It was particularly important for the Brazilian COP Presidency to gather support and stimulate broader debates and engagement within the country. To increase this cross-sectoral mobilization and expand participation beyond formal negotiations, the COP30 Presidency appointed 22 Sectoral Special Envoys, representing key constituencies across Brazilian society and the economy. The Special Envoys and the sectors they represented were as follows: Roberto Rodrigues (2025) and Luiz Carlos Corrêa Carvalho (2026), for Agriculture; Marcello Brito, for Amazonian Subnational Governments; Joaquim Belo, for Amazonian Civil Society; Denis Minev, for Amazonian Private Sector; Marcelo Behar, for Bioeconomy; Sérgio Xavier, for the Brazilian Climate Change Forum; Marina Grossi, for the Business Sector; André Guimarães, for Civil Society; Maguy Etlin, for Culture and Creative Industries; Elbia Gannoum, for Energy; Paulo Petersen, for Family Farming; Beto Veríssimo, for Forests; Etel Maciel, for Health; Denise Dora, for Human Rights and Just Transition; Sinéia do Vale, for Indigenous Peoples; Frederico Assis, for Information Integrity; Marinez Scherer, for Oceans; Jurema Werneck, for Racial Equality and Marginalized Urban Communities; Maya Gabeira, for Sports; Clemente Ganz, for Trade Unions; Philip Yang, for Urban Solutions; and Janja Lula da Silva, for Women. 

Additionally, the COP30 Presidency appointed seven Regional Special Envoys to strengthen dialogue and engagement across key geopolitical regions: Carlos Lopes, for Africa; Laurence Tubiana, for Europe; Patricia Espinosa, for Latin America and the Caribbean; Adnan Amin, for the Middle East; Jonathan Pershing, for North America; Jacinda Ardern, for Oceania; and Arunabha Ghosh, for Asia. 

The structure created to support the COP30 Presidency serves as sounding boards, facilitating the flow of information and qualified advice, expanding the plurality of voices, and allowing us to reach sectors, communities, and areas that would otherwise have been difficult to reach. This joint effort to deliver a solutions-oriented and representative COP30 culminated in an unprecedented civil society mobilization in Belém.

Thematic mutirões unfolded across all continents during 2025 and, at COP, the Green Zone welcomed nearly 300,000 visitors. The World Climate March and the Indigenous presence were the largest ever recorded at a COP. The logic of the Mutirão sought to treat bottom-up cooperation as a way to build the trust on which top-down agreements could be achieved, while ensuring that various groups–indigenous peoples, traditional communities, youths, black and Afro-descendant communities, women, among others–could present their demands and make their voices heard. 

As it was with civil society, a similar impact was felt within the business community and in the active participation of governments and subnational governments in the restructuring of the Action Agenda.

Important impulses also resulted from the interest raised by the COP inside Brazil: the substantial involvement of more than 15 ministries, as well as local governments, municipalities and the private sector, stimulated initiatives that connected the debate on climate to Brazilian realities.

Many sectors in Brazil, led by business associations and other groups, took on the task of producing reports and activities on a variety of issues, like transport, insurance, minerals, agribusiness, science, technology innovation, among others.

An example was set by sectoral national initiatives from the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, the Ministry of Agrarian Development and Family Farming, the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) and the National Confederation of Agriculture (CNA) that resulted in the impressive Agrizone, a space in Belém to showcase Brazilian best practices that attracted international attention.

Another initiative was the launch by the Brazilian National Confederation of Industry (CNI) of the Sustainable Business COP (SBCOP), which evolved into a global alliance to engage the private sector in climate action, and now gathers thousands of institutions from more than 60 countries.

In the same line, the efforts by the Ministry of Cities with Brazilian municipalities contributed to the hosting of the “COP30 Local Leaders Forum” in Rio de Janeiro on November 4-5, which brought together representatives of local governments and subnational entities from all continents.

This internal Mutirão allowed an extraordinary aggiornamento of Brazilian society regarding the international debate on climate change, highlighting the opportunities for Brazilian development. This is being perceived as a similar movement to the one seen in Brazil after the Earth Summit in 1992, when the country understood that its development was linked to sustainability.

Belém

A few weeks after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was reelected to his third term in 2022, he traveled to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for COP27 and announced that Brazil would submit its candidacy to host COP30 in the Amazon. Heads of State and negotiators, he reasoned, had to witness the reality of the Amazon and see firsthand what is at stake if our fight against climate change fails.

The efforts required to welcome over 40,000 delegates in Belém were not small, and a team at the Special Secretariat for COP30 (SECOP), in the Office of the Chief of Staff of President Lula, was tasked with the conference’s logistical operations. For the better part of 2025, questions about accommodation and organization were plentiful, but President Lula was clear that Belém was the appropriate place for the “COP of truth”–witnessing the reality of the Amazon also means witnessing the truth of many mid-sized cities in developing countries. 

As the COP approached, most challenges had been addressed by SECOP, and solutions were in place to ensure the participation of the 194 delegations and other stakeholders, including tens of thousands of members of civil society. The overwhelming majority of those who came to Belém understood President Lula’s choice of the city. The charm of the old town, the unique cuisine that uses local products, and the kindness and enthusiasm of the local population contributed significantly to the positive mood that conquered the participants of COP.

The Leaders’ Summit and the President’s Call for a Roadmap

President Lula also wanted COP30 to be a pivotal moment for global leaders to prove their seriousness in facing the climate emergency and their commitment to multilateralism and scientific evidence. “The era of declarations of good intentions has ended: the time for action plans has arrived”, President Lula wrote in an op-ed published as COP30 was about to begin. 

“COP of truth” became a motto in the run-up to Belém and led to the hosting of a Leaders’ Summit designed to promote the direct involvement of Heads of State and Government in accelerating efforts against the climate emergency. Held from November 6-7, 2025, the gathering was conceived as a catalyst for action, intended to build convergence around core priorities that would shape and strengthen outcomes at COP30.

The Summit’s call to action centered on accelerating the global energy transition, closing gaps in ambition, finance, and implementation, aligning solutions with social justice and human rights, and bridging inequality across all levels of the climate agenda. A series of landmark initiatives and declarations presented by world leaders reflected a broader shift in global climate governance toward recognizing forests, people, racial justice, resilience, and sustainable development as mutually reinforcing pillars of climate action. 

A clear call for a political impulse to move beyond formal negotiations toward accelerated implementation came from President Lula during the Summit, as he presided over a session focused on energy. “It took 28 Climate COPs for us to commit, in Dubai, to a just, orderly, and equitable energy transition,” he said, remembering paragraph 28 of the First Global Stocktake, approved in 2023 at COP28 (UNFCCC 2023). “The Earth can no longer sustain a development model based on the intensive use of fossil fuels that has prevailed over the past 200 years (...). The world needs a clear roadmap to end its dependence on fossil fuels,” he added.

President Lula’s call sparked an unprecedented debate on advancing the pledge to transition away from fossil fuels–an issue that defined the discourse and headlines throughout the two weeks in Belém. The inclusion by consensus of a sentence on “transitioning away from fossil fuels” in the Global Stocktake was considered a major achievement of the United Arab Emirates’ Presidency at COP28. The insistence on addressing the theme in the negotiating text in Baku, at COP29 in 2024, however, did not bring effective results, since the negotiation of a new text was seen by many as a danger of a watered-down reference to fossil fuels compared to the GST1 text. After Baku, negotiators knew there could be no consensus to reintroduce text on fossil fuels in formal negotiations, and throughout 2025 no country proposed to include an agenda item on this topic, confirming the concerns expressed at COP29.

Conscious of the expectations around the theme, the COP30 Presidency announced in June 2025 the new structure of the Action Agenda as an implementation instrument of the Global Stocktake. It included “transitioning away from fossil fuels” as a key objective of one of the six thematic axes of the Action Agenda. The implementation track–unlike the negotiating track–was ready for the debate.

President Lula’s call for a Roadmap ignited new possibilities and, realizing the opportunity being built for COP30 to address the urgency of this movement in the most effective way, I proposed, at the closing session of the COP, my commitment to develop a Roadmap for the implementation of the consensus in Dubai on transitioning away from fossil fuels. The publication of the Roadmap shortly before COP31 should bring the results of intense consultations and new elements that can contribute to the acceleration of the transition. 

The realization that the mandate of the Global Stocktake was enough for the implementation of new steps regarding fossil fuels also inspired Colombia and the Netherlands to convey an important event in April 2026, in Santa Marta. The First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels was organized by a coalition of more than 80 countries convinced that it is possible to implement the mandate of Dubai. It showed how much progress can be achieved by a significant group of countries without waiting for a consensus under the UNFCCC. The second conference, to be chaired by Tuvalu and Ireland in 2027, should continue to show how much progress the two-tier multilateralism structured at COP30 can achieve in the implementation track.

In the spirit of the COP in the Amazon, I also announced the development of an international roadmap on another consensus of the Global Stocktake approved in the United Arab Emirates: the Roadmap on Enhancing Efforts Towards Halting and Reversing Deforestation and Forest Degradation by 2030. The document, to be presented before COP31 under my responsibility as COP30 President, was also elaborated based on extensive consultations with countries, experts and NGOs, with significant contributions by the Advisory Councils and the Circles of the COP30 Presidency.

Action Agenda

With the Paris Rulebook–the rules, operational guidelines and procedures for implementing the accord–finalized at COP29, COP30 was ready for a new phase of climate conferences. In this new two-tier stage of the regime, where negotiation and implementation are simultaneous and complementary, the Global Climate Action Agenda becomes a key tool to mobilize the whole of society and its collective power. 

Since 2015, engagement, initiatives, and innovations from all stakeholders have grown exponentially, encouraged and facilitated by the role of the Climate High-Level Champions and the increased use of the Action Agenda frame by COP Presidencies. To cement it as a tool for promoting engagement and accelerating action, the COP30 Presidency and the Climate High-Level Champions proposed a renewed framework. 

After a series of consultations with stakeholders on the criteria for improving the Action Agenda, the COP30 Presidency chose to structure it around the findings of the GST1, as we could stimulate action by implementing decisions that were already agreed by consensus. Six thematic axes were chosen based on the GST: (1) transitioning energy, industry, and transport; (2) stewarding forests, oceans, and biodiversity; (3) transforming agriculture and food systems; (4) building resilience for cities, infrastructure, and water; (5) fostering human and social development; and (6) a cross-cutting unleashing enablers and accelerators including finance, technology, and capacity building. Under these six axes, 30 key objectives were designed to turn agreements into transformative actions.

Thirty key objectives became thirty living communities under the six axes. Essentially, the Action Agenda mapped and engaged, for the first time, initiatives created in previous COPs–over 480 coalitions of different actors (countries, subnational entities, businesses, investors, NGOs, international organizations, etc.), providing a space for them to coordinate, cooperate, and report results towards the implementation of the GST.  

By the end of 2025, initiatives reporting outcomes to the official UNFCCC Global Climate Action Portal (NAZCA) increased sixfold. Together with the Climate High-Level Champions and the Climate Champions Team, the COP30 Presidency also developed a Granary of Solutions: a global repository of over 200 cases and 62 solution banks developed to highlight climate solutions already implemented worldwide. 

These solutions, already working on the ground, became the basis for plans to scale them up. Throughout the COP30 process, 120 Plans to Accelerate Solutions were developed, providing a structural approach that brought together initiatives that had previously worked in silos into coordinated collaboration around specific solutions, while encouraging a systemic approach focused on removing roadblocks and unlocking potential levers, such as demand aggregation, bespoke financial instruments, and standards.

This new architecture frames the Action Agenda as the executor of the agreements, promoting interdependence with the formal negotiation process in which one feeds off the other, creating an improvement loop. It aims to coordinate and monitor initiatives, creating conditions for them to gain scale–an approach embodied in the Five-Year Vision for the Global Climate Action Agenda, also presented in Belém. 

Starting from what already existed allowed the Brazilian Government to work closely with the COP30 Presidency to create new initiatives only where gaps were identified, particularly coalitions designed and led by developing countries. Examples include the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), an innovative funding model that rewards countries for forest conservation, with an initial capitalization exceeding US$ 6.7 billion and endorsed by 52 countries and the European Union. The Open Market Coalition on Compliance Carbon Markets was launched in Belém as an international collaborative initiative to align regulated carbon pricing systems, strengthen transparency, and promote high-integrity carbon credits, led by Brazil, with China and the European Union as co-chairs. Also, the Country Platforms Hub was launched by developing countries to support navigating this transition from ambition to delivery, facilitating a joint effort to invest in emerging country platforms.

Most of the cross-government efforts focused on strengthening the delivery of existing coalitions through collective Plans to Accelerate Solutions. Among them, the plan to quadruple sustainable fuels deployment by 2035 gained political momentum at COP30 with a clear goal, supported by countries through the Belém 4X Pledge on Sustainable Fuels and an action plan focused on demand creation in key sectors such as maritime, aviation, heavy industry, and road transport. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has agreed to provide annual progress monitoring. 

Almost 50 other examples where the Brazilian Government engaged to accelerate solutions through existing initiatives and coalitions included grids, green industrialization, minerals for the transition, decarbonization of road transport, universal access to energy, sustainable fire management, land tenure, oceans, environmental crime, recovery of degraded lands (RAIZ), agroforests and agroecology, multilevel governance, resilient infrastructure, resilient buildings, combating extreme heat (Beat the Heat), recovery of organic waste, resilient health systems (Belém Health Action Plan), jobs and skills, culture, taxonomy, adaptation (NAP Implementation Alliance), bioeconomy, harmonization of carbon accounting, a catalogue of digital public infrastructures and digital public goods for climate, public procurement, methane and information integrity.

Negotiations

COP30 delivered decisions that reinforced the Paris Agreement across all pillars of the regime, in one of the most adverse geopolitical environments since the climate regime was established. The Belém Political Package consolidated the institutional legacy of the Paris Rulebook and advanced concrete measures to respond to climate urgency through accelerated implementation, solidarity, and international cooperation.  

Adaptation was consolidated as a structural pillar of the regime, bringing instruments to enable action compatible with the undeniable challenges of the acceleration of climate change. Around 3.6 billion people, nearly half of the global population, are currently highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, according to data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2022). This number will keep increasing as the world gets warmer, forcing countries, states, cities and communities to adapt to this new reality. On the negotiation front, parties adopted 59 voluntary indicators to monitor progress under the Global Goal on Adaptation, metrics that will improve progress tracking and transparency. Countries also called for tripling adaptation finance by 2035 and concluded the assessment of progress on NAPs, confirming the level of priority the COP30 Presidency wanted to attribute to adaptation.

Another important issue with tangible results was just transition. In Belém, parties agreed to establish the Just Transition Mechanism, a breakthrough initiative long defended by workers, communities, and social movements, particularly from developing countries, which aims to enhance international cooperation, technical assistance, capacity-building, and knowledge-sharing, enabling an equitable, inclusive just transition, making sure the shift to a carbon-neutral economy is fair and inclusive. It carries comprehensive language on rights and inclusion, referencing human rights, labor rights, the rights of Indigenous Peoples, people of African descent, and the empowerment of women, among others.

Other decisions were recognized as major achievements, such as the Belém Gender Action Plan, a framework to integrate gender equality into global climate policy. The vital roles of Indigenous Peoples and local communities were also acknowledged, with recognition of Indigenous lands and knowledge as essential to mitigation.

On the issue of finance, the COP formally recognized the Baku to Belém Roadmap, presented in Belém by Mukhtar Babayev, the COP29 President, and myself, endorsing the ambition to mobilize US$ 1.3 trillion annually for developing countries by 2035. The COP also established a two-year work program on climate finance, enhancing planning for developing countries, and launched trade-climate dialogues, highlighting the need for policy coherence across global systems.

These results reflected the Presidency’s efforts to build trust and facilitate dialogue through a year-long process, visiting dozens of countries on every continent and holding many meetings with all parties. Consultations were held with negotiation groups in preparation for COP30, which allowed us to debate contentious topics whilst ensuring an inclusive, transparent, and predictable process–an effort that culminated in the Mutirão Decision.

FROM BELÉM TO ANTALYA

For COP31, Türkiye and Australia have structured a partnership in which Türkiye holds the Presidency, hosts the conference in Antalya and leads the Action Agenda. Australia presides over the negotiations, and a Pre-COP in the Pacific will place the perspective of small island developing States at the center of the road to COP31. Their working plan has incorporated the transition launched by the Mutirão Decision, which clearly establishes a new focus on both implementation and negotiations.

The COP30 Presidency is engaged in supporting Türkiye and Australia throughout 2026 and ensuring continuity in the process until November 9, when we will formally elect my dear friend Minister Murat Kurum as COP31 President. He will receive a beautiful gavel by a leading Brazilian designer in Amazonian wood.

The many meetings we have had with Minister Murat Kurum and Minister Chris Bowen have allowed the necessary coordination between the Presidencies to fulfill mandates that will help accelerate implementation, among them the Global Implementation Accelerator and the Belém Mission to 1.5.

As we work towards Antalya, the COP30 Presidency has been focused on six key priorities:

1 – To deliver the two COP30 Presidency International Roadmaps. These are the COP30 Presidency International Roadmap on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in Energy Systems, in a Just, Orderly, and Equitable Manner, so as to Achieve Net Zero by 2050, in Keeping with the Science (paragraph 28d of GST1); and the COP30 Presidency International Roadmap on Enhancing Efforts Towards Halting and Reversing Deforestation and Forest Degradation by 2030 (paragraph 33 of GST1).

The existence of these texts is a consequence of this emerging two-tier climate multilateralism. They are not negotiated texts, nor are they drafts for the possible negotiation of future binding instruments. They are to be inputs for the implementation of decisions that have already reached consensus.

The roadmaps are conceived, by design, to strengthen the fact that each country will have to choose its path and the confirmation that, in this process, there can be no “one size fits all” solutions: structural transitions are systemic, and must come from choice by individual countries, not the imposition of models. These shifts involve all countries in different ways and must engage not only countries, but many other stakeholders. The roadmaps will include long-term planning options to address risks and opportunities, contributing to orderly transitions.

2 – To implement the Baku to Belém Roadmap to US$ 1.3 trillion. Building on the publication of the Baku to Belém Roadmap to US$ 1.3 trillion in Belém, the COP30 Presidency will publish a document on its implementation before COP31. This entails: (i) deepening the understanding of the key sources of climate finance identified in the Roadmap, in order to clarify the policy interventions and future pathways, including indicative quantitative trajectories, needed to scale finance across public and private sources; (ii) developing a monitoring tool to track progress on the measures set out in the Roadmap; and (iii) identifying feasible capital structures that link climate finance to national priorities, including Nationally Determined Contributions and National Adaptation Plans. Together, these actions will help respond to the decision taken in Belém “to urgently advance actions to enable the scaling up of financing” to US$ 1.3 trillion.

3 – The Global Implementation Accelerator. Created by the Global Mutirão decision and led jointly by the COP30 and COP31 Presidencies, it is structured to identify, within the Action Agenda, the solutions with the greatest potential to trigger positive tipping points and to accelerate a selected set of them from commitment to delivery, in support of NDCs and NAPs. It combines two roles the system has performed only in fragments: joining, around each solution, the finance, technology, and capacity-building it requires; and convening the actors whose alignment determines whether it scales. Fragmentation remains one of the principal obstacles to climate action, and the Accelerator will be an instrument for reducing it.

4 – Belém Mission to 1.5. Led by the COP29, COP30 and COP31 Presidencies’ Troika, the initiative reaffirms the collective resolve to keep the Paris temperature goal within reach and to limit both the magnitude and the duration of any overshoot, delivering its report to the international community.

5 – The continuity and enhancement of the Action Agenda. After being restructured in Belém, the Action Agenda and its five-year plan now enter a delivery phase: at COP31, the so-called Plans to Accelerate Solutions are expected to report concrete outcomes, converting mobilization into measurable progress and affirming the Agenda as the regime’s standing interface with the real economy. The ten priorities of the Turkish Presidency for the COP31 Action Agenda were announced in Bonn in June, strengthening the implementation of the Global Stocktake and reinforcing the structure based on the six axes adopted in Belém.

6 – Adaptation. After the decisions of Belém, which gave this agenda its most complete architecture to date, the task now is to make that architecture operational, aligning the indicators of the Global Goal on Adaptation, National Adaptation Plans, and the tripling of adaptation finance into investment pipelines, so that adaptation becomes as scalable and financeable as mitigation.

A LONGER HORIZON

In Belém, from the outset, the COP30 Presidency deliberately privileged structural change: it invested in securing results designed to compound over the decade and beyond. The reference, here too, is the 1992 Earth Summit: a conference whose significance was not exhausted in the days after the negotiation, but revealed itself in the institutions, legal frameworks, and transformations it set in motion over the following decades.

The broader picture remains challenging: geopolitics are worsening, the global order is shifting, the fiscal space of many countries is narrowing, and the backlash against the perceived costs of climate policy is real. Yet the structural forces at work point in a clear direction–the economics of the transition have shifted decisively; the legal environment is tightening; and the institutional infrastructure built over three decades is complete and in motion.

The “transitions” this issue of CEBRI-Journal examines will occur in any scenario. What remains open is whether they will be planned or improvised, cooperative or fragmented, equitable or brutal. The purpose of the major changes that were collectively decided in Belém is to raise the probability of the first outcome in each of those pairs. In the present state of the world, we are conscious that agreements at COP30 were considerably ambitious.

As the COP30 Presidency, we aimed at a conference that fulfilled its role as part of a process, confirming the necessity and effectiveness of continuously improving the multilateral climate regime and empowering all actors to accelerate climate action well beyond the negotiations.

We have collectively chosen to engage in a new phase in which the legitimacy of negotiations, combined with exponential implementation, can lead us consciously and responsibly to the future. These two tiers in this new, emerging phase of the climate regime are not hierarchical–neither tier prevails over the other. From now on, progress in fighting climate change will largely be dictated by how well these two fronts inform and complement one another within the short timeframe science gives us.

As climate change quickly accelerates and despair begins to set in, this twofold approach gives us reason to believe the transition we have committed to can be achieved, stimulating a new economy that can change the perception that we are facing insurmountable obstacles and discouraging uphill battles. We hope the efforts made by so many of us at COP30 will contribute to the ultimate goals of the climate regime, stimulating as many stakeholders as possible that we can do much more, more quickly, improving people’s lives.

References

Brazil. 2025a. “Global Ethical Stocktake: Global Report.” Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change. Brasília, DF: MMA.

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Submitted: August 23, 2026

Accepted for publication: September 2, 2026

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