Highlight 48/2025: COP30: Outcomes and challenges in climate justice, financing, and the just transition debate
Louise de Bruyne, 10 December 2025
In November 2025, the 30th UN Climate Change Conference (COP30) convened in Belém, Brazil. The summit aimed to center the Amazon, indigenous rights, and climate justice. It concluded with the adoption of the « Belém Package« , anchored by the « Mutirão » decision, as a call for collective action. While the summit delivered a new financial framework and the Tropical Forests Forever Fund (TFFF), it faced intense criticism for failing to mandate a fossil fuel phase-out, highlighting a persistent gap between financial ambition and mitigation reality.
Hosted at the gateway to the Amazon, COP30 made strides in nature-based solutions but faced backlash over implementation.
Brazil launched the TFFF as a major new fund to reward countries for keeping their tropical forests standing. By the end of COP30, governments and partners had pledged 6.7 billion US dollars in initial capital, with a long‑term goal of building a 125‑billion‑dollar fund whose investment returns would be used to pay countries according to the number of hectares of forest they conserve. The idea is to create stable, performance‑based payments that encourage countries to reduce deforestation without increasing their public debt.
A key design feature of the TFFF is a rule that at least 20% of all payments must go directly to Indigenous Peoples and local communities, who are recognized as crucial stewards of tropical forests. During COP30, some groups organized protests and road blockades around the venue to demand greater decision‑making power and a larger, more direct share of funding, highlighting the tension between high‑level global agreements and local demands for autonomy and climate justice.
The most significant deliverable was the agreement to mobilize $1.3 trillion annually by 2035 for developing nations. This new global finance target replaces previous targets but has sparked controversy.
The figure blends public grants with private investment. Developing nations and civil society criticized this structure, arguing it prioritizes loans over grants, potentially worsening debt crises in the Global South.
Additionally, a critical win was the commitment to triple adaptation finance by 2035 (from 2019 levels), offering vital support for nations facing immediate climate threats like sea-level rise.
The summit operationalized the « Just Transition » but struggled with its scope.
Parties established a Just Transition mechanism to support technical cooperation and capacity building. This marked a shift from viewing transition solely as energy decarbonization to a broader developmental goal including social protection.
Despite this progress, the final text omitted a binding fossil fuel phase-out. Critics, including delegates from Colombia and Panama, argued that a transition cannot be « just » if it ignores the root cause of the crisis – fossil fuel extraction.
COP30 succeeded in building financial scaffolding but failed to address the existential threat of fossil fuels. The Belém Package offers a roadmap for adaptation and forest conservation, because there are no strong plans to cut emissions, the world is only dealing with the effects of climate change, not stopping its main cause.
Louise de Bruyne, Highlight 48/2025: COP30: Outcomes and challenges in climate justice, financing, and the just transition debate, 3 December 2025, available at www.meig.ch
The views expressed in the MEIG Highlights are personal to the authors and neither reflect the positions of the MEIG Programme nor those of the University of Geneva.