At COP30, All Eyes Are On Climate Finance, Forests, And Adaptation

COP30 begins next week in Belém, Brazil, bringing together governments, civil society, and businesses in the heart of the Amazon. Even if you are not boarding a flight to Belém soon, the decisions there will affect your lives — through the national policies it will shape, the corporate priorities it will steer, and in turn, the kind of planet we leave for our children.

This year’s COP carries the slogan Mutirão, an indigenous Tupi-Guarani term meaning collective action. However, despite the optimism in the slogan, Brazil has faced criticism in the lead-up to this COP — from forests being cleared to prepare for the event to very high accommodation prices in the city, making it difficult for governments and other participants to manage logistics.

However, beyond criticisms, as people gather at one of the most anticipated COPs, attention now turns to the content of the talks. What are the key things to watch out for? From the Baku-to-Belém climate-finance roadmap and Brazil’s new Tropical Forests Forever facility to the launch of adaptation indicators, these items at this COP will shape global climate discussions for years to come.

A Climate Finance Roadmap For Developing Countries

The just-released Bau to Belém roadmap for 1.3 T will be officially launched at the event. This roadmap follows from a discussion last year where countries agreed under the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance, NCQG, to mobilize at least USD 300 billion annually by 2035 for developing countries, with a broader target to scale finance to at least USD 1.3 trillion per year by 2035 from all sources — public and private. NCQG was a step in the direction of quantifying the need for more capital in climate finance. However, many countries felt that the target still fell short of the required scale.

The consultation process of the roadmap

The roadmap was shaped through a consultative process, drawing 227 submissions — including 52 from NGOs and approximately 50 from the finance and business sectors. A recent UN summary document on responses summarised the key messages: the importance of increasing concessional finance, reducing debt burdens for vulnerable countries, de-risking early private capital, and streamlining climate finance from multilateral institutions, among other measures. There was also emphasis on accountability and transparency to avoid a repetition of past gaps between promises and delivery, with experts highlighting the need for much stronger implementation — especially after the USD 100 billion target was missed.

IIGCC, the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, submitted an official response to this consultation on the roadmap paying special attention to the role of private sector. Its submission highlighted that climate risks are still not priced into private sector strategies and pointed to examples of investment vehicles already delivering risk-adjusted returns, as well as the need to strengthen disclosure regimes.

Reflecting this emphasis, Arianna Griffa, Senior Policy Manager at IIGCC, notes, ‘COP30 should define a credible pathway that mobilizes all financial actors to close the USD 1.3 trillion climate finance gap, underpinned by the Baku to Belém Roadmap to scale private capital mobilization’.

However, it is not just about attracting new private capital. It is also about reforming inefficiencies in the existing public finance system that are slowing capital flows and harming the environment.

Helena Wright, Policy Director at the FAIRR Initiative, notes: ‘Government incentives will need to be shifted, for example, by repurposing harmful subsidies. At FAIRR, investors with $7 trillion in assets have called on governments to repurpose harmful agricultural subsidies towards sustainable agriculture, which is essential for climate mitigation and long-term resilience.

What’s in the new roadmap?

The roadmap identifies five key action fronts, 5Rs, for scaling climate finance.

Replenishing: Calling for more concessional or low-cost financing — essentially increasing the pool of money available with simpler access.a
Rebalancing: Putting fiscal stability at the centre, recognizing the need to avoid increasing debt burdens through higher borrowing costs and encouraging climate-resilience loans.
Rechannelling: Focusing on getting the private sector more involved in scaling both mitigation and adaptation, including through multilateral banks providing patient capital, securitizing their loans, as well as the broader role of carbon markets in mobilizing private finance.
Revamping: Strengthening institutional capacity to ensure climate action is not fragmented and aligns more closely with national planning.
Reshaping: Improving internal financial architecture — better disclosures and harmonized reporting.

The roadmap hits the right notes identifying many of the barriers holding back climate finance, especially around the cost of capital, debt burdens, and coordination. But the key question is: what now? We have a roadmap; yet more clarity is needed on how to walk it.

The document outlines the necessary steps but falls short on specifying who will hold key players accountable or how transparency will be ensured. A follow-up report with concrete financing pathways is expected in October 2026.

One issue the current roadmap does not adequately address is clear responsibility and attribution for developed countries. The language remains loose and optional — developed countries could consider working together on delivery plans, which weakens accountability at a time when their role is central to achieving the USD 1.3T ambition.

The roadmap does call on the world’s 100 largest investors and companies to report how their activities align with national climate and adaptation plans. Yet, there is no equivalent expectation for the top 10–20 advanced economies to demonstrate how their public finances align with the needs of developing and vulnerable countries.

Forests Are At The Centre Of COP30

Given that the location of this COP is Amazon, it’s no surprise that forests are at the center. The most significant aspect of this is that Brazil aims to launch the TFFF, Tropical Forests Forever Facility, at this COP. The idea was first announced at COP28, followed by conversations with other tropical forest countries and sponsor countries (France, Germany, Norway, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom) to build momentum. The aim is to raise $25 billion in public finance and use that to mobilize an additional $100 billion in private capital to preserve tropical forests.

At the heart of TFFF is a rewards-based mechanism for forest conservation. For every hectare conserved, participating countries receive payments; for each hectare lost, payments drop sharply. If a country cuts even one hectare, it is penalized as if it had destroyed 100 hectares — and if deforestation increases further, that penalty doubles, so one hectare counts as 200.

Brazil has positioned this as a unique initiative, highlighting in the TFFF concept note that there has never been a mechanism that directly rewards forest conservation itself. Other initiatives, such as REDD+, reward emissions reductions, which only indirectly incentivize conservation.

Reyes Tirado, Agri-Food Lead at the Climate Bonds Initiative, describes the $125 billion TFFF as ‘a climate-finance game-changer, especially for the Indigenous Peoples and local communities who safeguard these vital ecosystems.

Her point underscores one of TFFF’s most distinctive features, as for the first time, a mandatory requirement to support Indigenous Peoples has been built into a global forest finance facility — at least 20% of funds will go to Indigenous communities and local guardians of the forest.

Launching the facility is one thing — ensuring it delivers on its promises is another. The latter is about ensuring integrity. Tirado adds that the Tropical Forest Investment Fund must be guided by a robust, transparent, and sustainable finance taxonomy to ensure that money reaches the right beneficiaries and investments, thereby earning trust and protecting forests and the planet.

Indicators For Adaptation To Be Launched At COP30

COP30 will launch a new set of indicators to guide global reporting on adaptation, and the draft list has already been released. The Global Goal on Adaptation elevates this agenda to the same level of priority as mitigation — after years of receiving limited attention in national climate plans, where adaptation often remained secondary to emissions reduction.

These indicators have been backed by negotiations since the Glasgow, Dubai and Baku conferences. Following the work of the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience. COP30 will see the launch of roughly 100 indicators across multiple themes — 7 themes and four areas for monitoring and implementation.

Once adopted, countries will begin reporting on these through their national communications. They are voluntary for now, so only time will tell how many governments actually start using the list — and that uptake will ultimately determine its success. Nevertheless, the indicators provide useful common metrics. Examples include changes in water-stress levels over time and the proportion of agricultural land degraded due to climate-related drivers.

Beyond These: NDC Updates

Countries are expected to submit revised NDCs, which can be loosely understood as the climate commitments of these countries. Although not part of the official COP30 agenda, the summit marks a milestone in assessing the number of countries that have submitted it. So far, 64 have submitted, based on the NDC synthesis report from the UN. There are several positive developments in the synthesis report, including increased references to ocean-based action, carbon markets, and, for the first time, explicit mention of children and youth in the implementation of NDCs.

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