22 November 2025 - COP30 concluded with a voluntary plan to curb fossil fuels, a goal to triple adaptation finance and new efforts to “strengthen” climate targets.
After negotiations in Belém, the Brazilian presidency released a final package termed the “global mutirão” – which attempted to draw together controversial issues that had divided talks.
Here are the reactions from CISL to the COP30 outcome:
Dr Nina Seega, Director of the Centre of Sustainable Finance at the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), said:
“The outcome of COP30 hinged on fossil fuels and finance. The nature of Mutirao compromise meant that a reference to fossil fuels did not make it into the final text, but rather the Presidency announced two roadmaps – one for transitioning away from fossil fuels and one for halting and reversing deforestation. A climate finance work programme was announced, but situating the adaptation goal within $300bn goal creates a zero-sum dynamic between mitigation and adaptation funding – a false choice that undermines comprehensive climate action.
“The question leaving COP30 is whether that would be enough to prevent millions more from enduring the simultaneous catastrophes of heat, flood, and fire that Belém itself demonstrated so powerfully.”
Eliot Whittington, Executive Director of the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), said:
“COP30 in Belem was a story of slow progress and complicated politics struggling to catch up with growing green economy momentum. We saw the launch of new innovative financing mechanisms to protect forests, and an unprecedented movement of countries against fossil fuels – but the final text which did include clarifications and strengthening of many details around international climate action was hemmed in with weak, obscure language and was greeted with opposition by many countries questioning what was actually agreed.
“This is not a failing or weak multilateral process – it was energetic and dynamic and controversial. But it given the diversity of perspectives in the international community it is not delivering the necessary speed of progress on climate action.”