The 2025 summit arrived at a critical moment: scientific evidence indicates that climate risks are intensifying, while global mitigation efforts remain insufficient to meet internationally agreed temperature limits.

Recent analyses indicate that global warming has already reached 1.4C above pre-industrial levels, with 2024 recorded as the hottest year in modern history by the Copernicus Climate Service. The world is currently on target for 2.6C of global heating, which will ensure catastrophic and irreparable damage done to the planet.

There will be little that came out of Belem to reverse recent trends, despite the thousands of passionate climate professionals, negotiators, activists and Indigenous Peoples that took to Belem to try an ensure this was an “implementation COP”.

In this report, supported by contributions from We Mean Business, Fauna & Flora, the Energy Transitions Commission and more, you’ll see what was announced and delivered under key topics including energy, fossil fuels, climate finance and adaptation.

It was hardly the most enabling of negotiation grounds. The US leaders were absent from discussions, leading to some scathing remarks from other nations. Leaking roofs and poor facilities prompted a letter from the UN’s climate chief Simon Stiell to be sent to the Brazilian presidency. Just as momentum started to build for a potential fossil fuel roadmap, the Blue Zone had to be evacuated following a fire on what was meant to be the penultimate day.

From that moment on, COP30 was always going to spill over into the weekend, and spirits were immediately dampened by the emergence of new draft texts of a “Global Mutirao” that had stripped references to fossil fuels.

The COP30 Presidency has stated an intention to introduce a voluntary roadmap, backed by more than 90 nations, which is cause for optimism. Breakthroughs on the Just Transition and Adaptation finance also mean that this was a COP of progress, just not enough.

There is a sense that COP, as a process, is running out of steam. The next two summits, to be chaired by Australia in Türkiye next year and then hosted by Ethiopia in 2027 will again bring nations together to try and restitch a global pathway to a low-carbon and Just future.

Colombia, one of the driving forces behind the call for a global roadmap off fossil fuels is notably hosting the first International Conference for the Phase-Out of Fossil Fuels in April 2026 and what a disappointing indication of what COP has become that a standalone event is needed to mobilise action on a topic that the final texts in Belem refused to even mention.

This COP was very much one of an anxious step forward, rather than the strides needed to deliver the 1.5C requirement of the Paris Agreement.