COP30 Belém: A Diagnosis of Inertia and the Imperative for Radical Action

A Green Cross UK Perspective

The COP30 in Belém concluded on 22 November 2025, and the verdict is unequivocal: global climate diplomacy remains trapped in its own inertia, approving an agreement that demands tripled adaptation finance yet fails to deliver a roadmap for abandoning fossil fuels. While science warns that the window to limit warming to 1.5°C is closing precipitously, the results reflect progress insufficient to the real urgency of the crisis.

After thirteen days of negotiation, 195 countries approved the Belém Package, encompassing twenty-nine decisions on just transition, adaptation finance, trade, gender, and technology. Yet the absence of explicit mention of oil, gas, or coal in the final text evidences how short-term interests once again hijacked collective consensus.

At Green Cross UK, this summit reaffirms our conviction: the true climate battle is won through high-integrity action in the real world, beyond the negotiating halls.

The Measurable Gains: Three Pillars to Build Upon

Despite the discouraging overall picture, strategic advances emerge that we must seize and defend with vigour.

1. Adaptation Finance: From Rhetoric to Quantifiable Commitment

The Belém Package includes a pledge to triple adaptation finance by 2035, raising the target from $40 billion agreed at Glasgow 2021 to $120 billion annually. This sounds substantial. Yet developed nations contributed only $26 billion in 2023—a figure that actually declined from 2022, and a fraction of the $310–400 billion annually that UNEP estimates as actual need.

The value of this commitment lies not in its adequacy but in its auditability. For the first time, there exists a quantifiable floor from which civil society, watchdog organisations, and vulnerable nations can demand accountability. The gap between promise and reality is abysmal, but it is now measurable.

Green Cross UK will incorporate this benchmark into our project financing frameworks. When we structure blended finance mechanisms for ecosystem restoration—such as our VITALES initiative at Lake Titicaca—we now have a reference point to demonstrate how private capital can supplement, not substitute for, public adaptation finance.

2. The Global Adaptation Framework: Fifty-Nine Indicators for Accountability

Perhaps the most technically significant advance is the approval of fifty-nine indicators to measure adaptation progress. These span access to potable water, protection of cultural heritage, early heat-warning systems, and food security strategies. For the first time, adaptation—that "vague sister of mitigation"—becomes measurable and comparable across nations.

This matters profoundly. In our work with the Autoridad Autónoma Binacional del Lake Titicaca (ALT), we have observed how the absence of standardised metrics allows governments to claim adaptation success while ecosystems collapse. These indicators, if mandatory and publicly reported, provide the technical infrastructure to distinguish genuine restoration from institutional greenwashing.

We note, however, that indicator approval does not guarantee implementation. The coming years will require sustained pressure to ensure these metrics are embedded in national reporting requirements and, crucially, in the conditionalities of multilateral development finance.

3. Implementation Mechanisms: From Discourse to Execution

Two mechanisms launched at Belém merit attention: the Global Implementation Accelerator to support nations in executing their Nationally Determined Contributions and National Adaptation Plans, and the Belém Mission towards the 1.5°C Target, a cooperation platform for mitigation.

These are not merely bureaucratic innovations. They represent a tacit recognition that the era of voluntary commitments is ending. The Accelerator, in particular, acknowledges that developing nations require technical and financial support not merely to plan but to execute. This aligns with Green Cross UK's operational model: we do not advise from London, but deploy specialists to work alongside national authorities and local communities.

The Critical Void: Fossil Fuels and the Failure of Consensus

What the Belém Package omits is as significant as what it includes. The final text contains no explicit mention of oil, gas, or coal. This is not oversight; it is the calculated result of petrostates' systematic obstruction. When the science demands rapid, managed decline of fossil fuel production, diplomacy produces silence.

This silence has consequences. The International Energy Agency's 2025 World Energy Outlook confirms that current national policies, even if fully implemented, would result in 2.4°C warming by 2100. The "implementation gap" between stated ambitions and actual policies is now wider than the "ambition gap" between current pledges and the 1.5°C target.

For organisations like Green Cross UK, this imposes a clear operational imperative. We cannot wait for diplomatic consensus to act. Our Natural Asset Company framework, currently deployed at Lake Titicaca and under development for other critical ecosystems, demonstrates that restoration finance can be structured without reliance on public climate funds that may never materialise.

The Geopolitical Shift: Climate Action in an Age of Fragmentation

Belém occurred against a backdrop of intensifying geopolitical fragmentation. The traditional division between "developed" and "developing" nations—already strained at Glasgow and Sharm el-Sheikh—has become increasingly untenable. The emergence of major economies that are simultaneously large emitters and vulnerable to climate impacts complicates coalition-building.

Yet this fragmentation also creates opportunities. The coalition of "high-ambition" nations—small island states, progressive Latin American governments, and an increasing number of African nations demanding climate justice—gained procedural sophistication at Belém. Their ability to force adaptation finance onto the agenda, despite resistance from major emitters, suggests that diplomatic creativity can overcome structural power imbalances.

Green Cross UK's response to this shifting landscape is to deepen our bilateral and multilateral partnerships with nations that demonstrate genuine implementation commitment. Our memorandum of understanding with the ALT, for example, prioritises measurable ecosystem restoration over aspirational target-setting. This is not a rejection of multilateralism, but a recognition that climate action, like politics, is the art of the possible.

From Diagnosis to Action: The Green Cross UK Response

The diagnosis of COP30 is clear: incremental progress within a failing framework. Our response is equally clear: accelerate high-integrity action in the spaces where we have direct influence.

Operational Priorities

First, we will expand our Natural Asset Company pilot at Lake Titicaca to demonstrate that private capital can finance ecosystem restoration at scale without public debt or resource privatisation. The VITALES project—restoring 1,750 hectares of critical wetland while generating verified biodiversity credits and water quality improvements—provides a replicable model for other stressed ecosystems.

Second, we will integrate the fifty-nine Belém indicators into all our project monitoring frameworks. This serves two purposes: ensuring our own accountability, and generating the empirical evidence base to demonstrate what effective adaptation actually requires in terms of finance, technology, and institutional capacity.

Third, we will intensify our engagement with corporate partners seeking genuine climate impact. The "greenhushing" phenomenon—where corporations retreat from public climate commitments due to fear of criticism—represents a strategic threat. Our response is to provide verified, high-integrity project pipelines that allow corporate actors to invest in measurable outcomes rather than purchase reputational cover.

Advocacy Priorities

First, we will support the coalition of nations and civil society organisations pressing for mandatory implementation of the Belém indicators. Without enforcement, these fifty-nine metrics will join the graveyard of unfulfilled climate commitments.

Second, we will advocate for the reform of multilateral development bank practices to align with the Global Implementation Accelerator's objectives. Too often, "climate finance" is repurposed existing development assistance, relabelled but not additional. The Accelerator's mandate for technical support must be matched by genuine financial additionality.

Third, we will continue to press for the inclusion of fossil fuel phase-down in future COP texts. This is not symbolic. The absence of explicit language on oil, gas, and coal from the Belém Package signals to markets and policymakers that the transition remains optional. It is not.

Conclusion: The Radical Imperative

The COP30 in Belém will not be remembered as a turning point. It will be remembered, if at all, as another station in the long delay of adequate response. Yet within its limitations, it provides tools—quantified finance commitments, measurable adaptation indicators, implementation mechanisms—that can be wielded by those determined to act.

At Green Cross UK, we reject the false choice between diplomatic engagement and operational independence. We will continue to participate in the COP process, pressing for more ambitious outcomes. Simultaneously, we will accelerate our field-level work, demonstrating that high-integrity climate action is possible now, with existing technologies and financing structures, in the places where it matters most.

The diagnosis is inertia. The prescription is radical action—radical not in its violence, but in its root-ness, its return to first principles. Protect the ecosystems that sustain life. Restore what has been degraded. Finance what must be done without waiting for perfect consensus. Measure what matters, and be accountable for results.

The next COP will convene in a world that has warmed further. The question is not whether diplomacy will eventually catch up with science. It is whether, in the interim, those with the capacity to act will do so with the integrity and urgency that the crisis demands.

Green Cross UK intends to.

Ruy Campos Dugone is Executive Director at Green Cross UK. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position of Green Cross International.