No time to COP out
In Belém, climate geopolitics meets its limits, but not its end.
BELÉM, Brazil — Hopes were high as negotiators gathered in the Amazon this month for the world’s largest climate summit. Climate activists hoped that the COP30, taking place in the world’s largest tropical forest, would lock in tougher language on phasing out fossil fuels, backing forest protection with real money, expanding adaptation finance for the most vulnerable countries, and pivoting from promises to implementation. While there was back-tracking on some fronts there was forward momentum on others.
Fossil fuel phase out omitted
In the end, when the gavel finally fell on a compromise deal after an overtime finale, the fault lines of global politics reasserted themselves. COP30 delivered on forests and finance, but not on reducing dependence on fossil fuel. Missing from the main text was the most important goal of all: explicit language committing nations to phase out coal, oil and gas, the fuels chiefly responsible for heating the planet. That omission reads as a step backward on the central test of credibility (especially the agreement to “transition away” from fossil fuels in energy systems made in Dubai at COP28), even as pieces on finance and implementation moved forward.
The COP30 outcome lands in geopolitically tense and fractured times. A record number of wars, trade frictions, and the weaponization of energy have strained trust in global institutions and scrambled alliances. And for all the criticism of the summit, the process held. In Belém, 193 countries came together and reached a consensus agreement, a reminder that multilateralism can still work even under stress. The machinery of cooperation did not derail. In a year when the U.S., historically the largest emitter, declined to send an official delegation, the fact of an accord at all is notable.
Still, the ambition gap is impossible to miss. The European Union and a broad coalition of high-ambition states such as Colombia, Pakistan and the Pacific Bloc pushed for wording to “transition away from fossil fuels”. Almost 90 countries pushed for a global roadmap to phase out fossil fuels. After a Saudi-led group drew a hard red line, the EU ultimately dropped the demand to close a deal. “We should support [the deal] because at least it is going in the right direction”, said Wopke Hoekstra, the bloc’s climate chief - a tacit acknowledgment that unity, this time, trumped stringency. A separate “side text” on fossil fuels issued by the Brazilian presidency to reflect debates that could not command consensus, underlining just how contentious the energy question remains.
The Global South leans in
If the geopolitics of energy explains why some text disappeared from the COP30 agreement, the geopolitics of the Global South explains the clauses that remained. Developing countries arrived with a simple, urgent demand: adaptation support that is sizable, predictable and mostly grant-based, not recycled loans. The final text nods in that direction, urging wealthy nations to at least triple adaptation finance by 2035 and launching a voluntary initiative to speed delivery on existing emissions pledges.
COP30 also launched a process to review how international trade rules align with climate goals. This represents a subtle but significant recognition that tariffs, subsidies and supply chains now function as climate policy by other means. Yet the numbers and sources of cash remain hazy, and vulnerable states warn that promises to multiply finance a decade from now are not a plan for the floods, heat and storms already here.
Critical minerals come to the table
For the first time at a UN climate summit, negotiators also debated energy transition minerals. The focus was on how the rush for lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper and rare earths will be governed, and who captures value along the chain. Draft text under the Just Transition Work Program explicitly surfaced the social and environmental risks of extraction and processing, linking minerals to just transition principles and to the new trade–climate review. It’s a recognition that clean-tech supply chains are now a front line of climate geopolitics.
The economics of these minerals - and their concentration - are stark. The IEA warns that demand for several minerals is set to soar while refining remains highly concentrated, heightening exposure to price spikes and export curbs. Copper alone faces a steep supply gap without rapid investment, recycling and diversification. Policymakers are responding with industrial strategies that blend climate and security aims. For example, the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act sets 2030 benchmarks for extraction, processing and recycling inside the bloc. Such moves, together with discussions in Belém, show how minerals policy now shapes both decarbonization speed and geopolitical leverage
Climate politics in a multi-aligned world
Belém’s symbolism cuts both ways. Holding the talks at the mouth of the Amazon spotlighted forest protection and the livelihoods of communities who steward it. The presidency made real advances on forest finance, including raising close to $7 billion to kick-start the tropical forest forever initiative, and pledged to keep the hardest conversations alive under Brazil’s stewardship to the next summit. But without a firm decision to wind down fossil supply, forest commitments risk being asked to do too much, too fast, with too little money.
The tensions over the final COP30 text were not only among states. The summit again showcased a multialigned world where governments are not the only, or even the most important, actors. Corporate lobbies turned up in force. By one count, more than 1,600 fossil-fuel lobbyists were accredited, about 1 in every 25 participants and, in many cases, larger than national delegations. Their presence does not alone explain the missing words, but it contributes to a negotiating climate where the costs of strong fossil language rise and the path of least resistance looks like procedural deferral.
Non-state actors also pulled the other way. Indigenous federations across the Amazon pressed for fossil-free zones and for land-tenure protections that act as planetary carbon buffers. Cities and regions touted procurement rules and grid expansions that, multiplied across jurisdictions, can move markets faster than treaties. Investors and insurers arrived with spreadsheets, not slogans, pricing physical risk more aggressively and nudging the cost of capital for high-carbon assets upward.
Power in a multi-aligned world is scattered, and it shows. Without the U.S. to push others toward the right (or simply less wrong) direction, momentum is harder to sustain. Petrostates can still slow progress, but markets and municipalities are shifting the equation. Yet even as the economics evolve, scientists warn that the math still doesn’t add up. According to the UN Environment Programme’s 2025 Emissions Gap Report, current policies put the planet on track for roughly 2.3–2.5°C of warming, well above the Paris target.
The economics of the green transition will define the future
For all the drama in the negotiating rooms, the economics of the transition continue to quicken. Solar, wind and storage dominate new power additions in many regions. It is also clear that electrification is set to overtake fossil demand. And manufacturers are retooling supply chains at speed. But the political economy of incumbency still matters.
National oil companies, commodity exporters, energy-intensive industries and their domestic patrons retain veto power at pivotal moments. Their playbook in Belém was not denial but deferral: keep “multiple pathways” on the table, shift concrete action to voluntary “accelerators”, and relocate the hardest issues such as fossil fuels and certain forest safeguards to side documents and future work programs.
And yet, even in a year of fractures, the institution held. Consensus rules can be an anchor or an ankle weight and in Belém they were both. The same process that allowed a single bloc to block fossil-fuel language also allowed 193 parties to agree on new directions for finance and trade-climate alignment, and to do so at a moment when one of the system’s traditional power brokers stayed home. For process-minded diplomats, that is proof of life. For communities on floodplains or in heat-stressed cities, it is also a stress test of patience.
A warming world looks likely to get warmer
The result is a paradox that will feel familiar to COP veterans. Belém is both an affirmation and a letdown. It is an affirmation that multilateralism can still produce an agreement and that collective action has not been subsumed by great-power rivalry. It is a letdown because the agreement did not meet the moment’s ambition. The optics of a deal that cannot name the fuels at the heart of the crisis will feed skepticism about global forums, even as those same forums remain the only venues where every government, including the most reluctant, must sit under the same tent. A cynical reading is that this is precisely what petro-states hope for: a world in which the process survives, but the text remains soft and the timelines elastic.
Where does that leave the world? The science is blunt. The UN says the 1.5°C limit is now all but out of reach without a period of overshoot; every fraction of a degree matters. In the near term, that means adaptation at scale - and fast cash for it - alongside a sharper, supply-side focus by coalitions of the willing. Even as entrenched interests keep defanging COP commitments, practical action must be taken at scale including debt relief and liquidity tools tied to climate investment; adaptation compacts for regions on the front lines; trade, finance and procurement rules that tilt markets.
The Amazon summit showed both the ceiling and the floor. The ceiling is the veto power of fossil interests. The floor is the stubborn capacity of nations, companies, civil society groups and others to keep talking, and, at least sometimes, to act. The work now is to close the distance between the two.
Robert Muggah as a principal and cofounder of SecDev Group, he attended COP30 in Belem. Between 8-20 November he spoke at over 20 events in the Blue and Green Zones as well as across the city on issues ranging from climate finance and critical minerals to building adaptation and fighting environmental crime.