A look back at COP30 in Belém
Estelle Herlyn
After an extra day, the COP30 climate conference in Brazil came to an end on 22 November 2025.
A promising start
At the start of the conference, Simon Stiell, head of the UN Climate Secretariat, emphasised what is necessary for successful climate protection: Addressing the industrialised countries, he said that isolated European, national, regional or even municipal measures do not serve climate protection, but that only “many streams of international cooperation” offer the prospect of success.
He thus repeated a statement that the leading German economic institutes had already made in their autumn report a few weeks earlier: national solo efforts do not help the climate – and also entail competitive disadvantages for the domestic economy.
One might have hoped that such voices in Belém would lead to a reorientation of climate protection towards cooperation and effective international contributions to achieving “global net zero”. Things turned out differently.
Disappointing final declaration
“Global Mutirão (Global Effort): Uniting humanity in a global mobilisation against climate change” is the promising title of the final declaration. However, its contents are disappointing, as many had expected more from a conference hosted by one of the BRICS countries, whose venue could not have conveyed the importance of the rainforest for the climate more directly.
Phrases such as “we recognise”, “we reaffirm”, “we call on”, “we invite”, “we encourage”, etc. dominate. Goal orientation sounds different. In an international context where nothing more than the lowest common denominator and non-legally binding agreements can be expected, this is not surprising. However, the fact that so little progress has been made in terms of content gives pause for thought.
Concrete measures to reduce the CO2 content of the atmosphere remain completely unmentioned. Not even the rainforest, which was supposed to be the central theme of the conference and which received a lot of attention from the TFFF (Tropical Forest Forever Facility), at least during the conference, is mentioned.
The linking of the fund to volatile financial markets leaves many questions unanswered for the future. It should also be mentioned that, in the shadow of the TFFF, a Call to Action for the Congo Basin Forests was launched, which can be traced back to Christian Ruck’s long-standing commitment.
In the area of climate adaptation, agreement was reached on the goal of tripling financial resources by 2035 – a sad necessity that makes it even more difficult to raise funds for climate protection.
Following Simon Stiell’s clear statements on the need for international cooperation at the beginning of the conference, the final declaration only mentions another voluntary initiative, the Global Implementation Accelerator, and the value of voluntary commitment is emphasised several times.
The final declaration of COP29 in Baku reiterated that US$1.3 trillion in international climate finance will be required annually by 2035 to achieve the conditional climate targets of developing countries. In this sense, last year’s conference produced clearer and more important insights.
It is hardly surprising that a phase-out of fossil fuels was not acceptable, as it would lead the world into energy poverty, given that 80 per cent of the energy used today is still of fossil origin. There is no technology in sight that could even begin to serve as a substitute on the scale required.
Conclusions
After COP30, it is still unlikely that global CO2 emissions will fall the foreseeable future – on the contrary. For this sad reason, the topic of adaptation is becoming increasingly important. What remains is to seek out and form “coalitions of the willing” that attempt to bring as many others on board as possible. Of course, this does not do justice to the task at hand. It is also to be hoped that the figures from Baku will be used in future to finally oblige industrialised countries to engage in international cooperation on a large scale and to ensure that funds are used efficiently at home. Global Energy Solutions has put forward several proposals on how domestic climate protection and, in particular, the energy transition can be made more efficient. In addition, we have made recommendations on how international cooperation should be structured – in such a way that prosperity and climate protection go hand in hand worldwide.
