COP30 marked a new stage in decarbonisation. After COP28 in Dubai secured agreement on the need to move away from fossil fuels and achieve net zero emissions by 2050, this year’s summit turned to the thornier question: how to actually get there.
But the first COP of the implementation era didn’t deliver the milestone many expected. COP30 closed without a roadmap to guide the global phaseout of fossil fuels.
On deforestation — a central topic for host-country Brazil — progress also stalled. The final text merely repeated what was agreed at COP26. The only major breakthroughs came on adaptation finance, with richer countries committing to triple funds to support the countries most exposed to climate change.
"We are going from ambition to implementation," Jens Mattias Clausen, director of the European Union division at Danish think tank CONCITO, told The Parliament, noting that it "was reflected all over the COP."
A power vacuum and Europe’s new climate role
For the first time, a COP took place without a US delegation. In Belem, that absence reshaped the balance of power and left the EU without its strongest ally in climate diplomacy.
At every COP, finance debates revolve around the long-standing divide between mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation aims to reduce the emissions — switching to renewables, changing consumption patterns — to limit global warming. Adaptation concerns adjusting to the consequences of planetary warming by, for example, protecting coastal cities against rising sea levels or introducing drought-resistant crops.
Developing countries fear both the consequences of climate change and the competitive disadvantages of stricter emission rules. They therefore push for significantly more adaptation funding. Wealthier countries, meanwhile, traditionally favour stronger mitigation targets, as they are responsible for funding much of what COPs agree. Lower warming means lower future adaptation costs.
But with the US out of the Paris Agreement, Brussels can no longer rely on Washington to support a mitigation-oriented agenda and push back against mounting demands from developing nations.
"The EU needs to face that new reality where we just don't have the same weight that we used to have," Clausen said.
Into the vacuum stepped the BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — now among the world’s fastest growing economies. Together they resisted any fossil-fuel phaseout that could damage their oil-dominated markets.
"In this situation that we saw this year, where you don't have the US anymore, you have some of the big emerging economies that are increasingly confident in throwing their weight around in these kinds of negotiations," Clausen added.
China in particular, with its booming green-tech sector and grip on critical resources for green-tech manufacturing, was "very vocal on climate financing," Valeria Zanini, policy advisor on climate diplomacy at ECCO think tank, told The Parliament.
But taking over American or European leadership does not appear to be its ambition. "If the question is whether China can take the place of the EU, the answer is no, but China doesn’t aim to do that," said Zanini.
Beijing, Clausen said, instead appears keen to broaden the space for discussions on trade.
China, which manufactures 70% of the electric vehicles sold worldwide and over 80% of the global solar panel production, is looking to leverage COP to create more favourable conditions for its own market by, for example, adjusting global levies on its exports, especially as its domestic demand shrinks.
Europe’s credibility wavers
Last year’s COP in Baku, Azerbaijan, had already left many developing countries disillusioned over climate financing. "The EU refused to engage on the actual number until the very last minute, which caused a lot of frustration among developing countries," said Clausen, adding that providing clear numbers is essential for trust.
This disappointment, he added, had begun even earlier, with African countries in particular disapproving of Europe’s approach to addressing the COVID-19 fallout in the Global South.
This year, Europe’s credibility took another blow. The EU approved its 2040 climate targets and submitted updated NDCs or, nationally determined contributions, only in early November — just days before COP30 opened. These commitments, due every five years, were penciled for February, but internal divisions among increasingly climate-skeptical governments stalled agreement.
"This didn't help, obviously. We would have been able to use this much more proactively in our NDC diplomacy," Clausen said, noting that the delays might reflect deeper strategic flaws: "You just don't have this very coherent strategy and different member states work in different ways and the right hand doesn't necessarily know what the left hand does."
From ‘shiny deals’ to coalitions
As attention shifts to how countries will phase out fossil fuels, COPs are entering a stage that requires concrete solutions and hard deadlines rather than sweeping declarations. While some of the most ambitious players were disappointed over the failure to agree on a universal decarbonisation, COP30 may have paved the way for a new tool: multilateralism among coalitions.
"There will be no more big, shiny deals like the Paris Agreement. That's not coming back," said Clausen, adding that some of the aspects of mitigation are likely to move to different grounds: "coalitions of the willing across countries, companies, investors, cities."
While COP30 failed to reach an agreement on a roadmap for fossil-fuel phaseout, with 90 of 195 countries in support, 24 of them instead endorsed Colombia’s Belém Declaration for a transition away from fossil fuels. The proposal will be presented at an April conference in Santa Marta, Colombia.
Clausen acknowledged that the lack of a formal roadmap was disappointing for many, but said the broader picture was more encouraging. In his view, the fact that around 90 countries were ready to shift from what to how represented meaningful momentum. He added that smaller multilateral settings could help push this progress further. "You can also do a lot more things in those conversations if Saudi and Russia are not around the table," he said.
Reaching ambitious mitigation agreements within COPs is inherently difficult because consensus is required — including countries whose economies heavily depend on fossil fuels. "On one hand, [consensus] allows countries like Tuvalu to sit at the same table as the European Union," said Zanini. "But at the same time, on topics that have such a significant impact on economic reality, the requirement of consensus can be problematic."
Multilateral settings may therefore become the space where higher ambition is set, while COPs continue to monitor progress and keep all parties engaged.
The future of climate diplomacy
One of the clearest takeaways from COP30 was that adaptation finance can unlock stronger mitigation commitments. Most participating countries are developing or emerging economies. They won’t agree to deeper emission cuts without robust financial assurances, Zanini said.
Instead of treating adaptation and mitigation as competing priorities, financing could be leveraged to secure more ambitious targets. To achieve this, she added, "the EU will need to commit more in terms of finance for adaptation and mobilise both private and public funding towards developing countries."
Looking ahead, rebuilding trust will require a more coherent European strategy and deeper engagement with the Global South. These relationships, Clausen said, must be genuinely reciprocal — "not just some kind of donor-recipient relationship."
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