COP30 delivers disappointment but some wins & a sense of momentum
- Susie Weldon
- 13 hours ago
- 3 min read
The UN's climate conference, COP30, ended this weekend in Belém, Brazil, with mixed and for many delegations, including faith-based representatives, disappointing results.
It delivered a major win for climate resilience, including a breakthough on adaptation finance (although the deadline has been pushed back to 2035).
But it failed to explicitly agree on the roadmaps to transition away from fossil fuels, thanks to 'intense lobbying from a few petrostates', according to World Resources Institute President & CEO Ani Dasgupta.
COP30 focused more than ever before on the economic transition, said Ani Dasgupta. 'Countries recognised by accelerating climate action they will be rewarded through growth, investment, security, competitiveness and good-paying jobs,' he said. 'The just transition outcome underscored that decarbonising our economies and advancing social and economic development are mutually reinforcing.'
He added: 'COP30 delivered breakthroughs to triple adaptation finance and protect the world’s forests, and it elevated the voices of Indigenous Peoples like never before. This shows that even against a challenging geopolitical backdrop, international climate cooperation can still deliver results.
No agreement on fossil fuels
However, many left Belém disappointed that negotiators couldn't agree to develop a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels. Instead, planning for the transition, along with ending deforestation, have both been hived off to processes outside the UN to be pushed forward by coalitions of willing nations.
But despite at times bitterly contested discussions, Cop30 showed that 'climate cooperation is alive and kicking', said Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief.
Making an oblique reference to the United States' decision not to send official representation to Belém, he added: 'Amid the gale-force political headwinds, 194 countries stood firm in solidarity – rock solid in support of climate cooperation'.
Stiell said the global transition towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development was irreversible and the trend of the future: 'This is a political and market signal that cannot be ignored.'
A moral duty
As at previous COPs, faith voices had called for strong climate action as a moral duty. Pope Leo had implored the participants of COP30 to 'commit themselves to protecting and caring for the creation entrusted to us by God in order to build a peaceful world', and all major faith traditions had sent representatives.
While there was disappointment at the failures of COP30, the ACT Alliance's Global Climate Justice Programme Manager Julius Mbatia celebrated the fact that multilateral cooperation had 'proven to work'.
'Despite COP30 not meeting all expectations, it has set the much needed momentum. It is no longer business as usual,' he said. 'A new adaptation finance target, a newly launched roadmap to accelerate implementation of actions to limit temperature rise below 1.5 degrees, and a Presidency-led discussion next year to phase out fossil fuels in an orderly, and just manner demonstrate the unhinged resolve to move into implementation.'
CAFOD's Climate Change Policy Lead Liz Cronin, who was also in Brazil, agreed, saying the final text 'though not everything we had hoped, contains a very significant victory on a just transition implementation mechanism'.
She added: 'This should be celebrated; it is a testament to the strength of civil society and developing countries, and what the multilateral COP process can achieve.'
However, as Barbara Rosen Jacobson, senior advocacy adviser at Mercy Corps, pointed out, the underlying math hasn’t changed. Taken together, national climate plans – what countries have pledged to do, also called nationally determined contributions or NDCs – do not put the world on a 1.5-degree pathway.
She added: 'The world needs a strong plan to close the gap between current NDCs and what science shows is required to keep temperature rise under control.'
More information
Read the ACT Alliance's assessment of COP30's key outcomes.
Colombia and the Netherlands have announced they will co-host the First International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels in Santa Marta, Colombia, in April 2026.
In one of the biggest divestment announcements to date, dozens of faith institutions announced their divestment from fossil fuel companies at COP30.
The list of 62 divesting institutions includes five Catholic dioceses (four in Italy and one in Canada), Catholic religious orders in France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the UK and the US, Catholic and Protestant banks in Germany and 42 members of the Arbeitskreis Kirchlicher Investoren (AKI), a network of institutional investors in the German Protestant Church.