COP30: Climate governance at a crossroads
Contributors: Eklavya Gupte, Matt Macfarland
Editor: Jonathan Fox
Design: CI Content Design
Published on: October 28, 2025
COP30 priorities
The 30th UN Climate Change Conference in Belém, Brazil, will serve as a critical test of global climate momentum, with geopolitical and trade tensions dominating headlines in 2025.
Looking ahead to COP30 in Belém, the focus will shift from setting new targets to evaluating whether current commitments are ambitious enough and can actually be implemented.
COP30 aims to operationalize the Global Goal on Adaptation by establishing 100 specific indicators to measure progress in building climate resilience, reducing vulnerability and enhancing adaptive capacity worldwide.
The summit will serve as a critical checkpoint to assess global climate progress while addressing ongoing challenges such as funding shortfalls, inconsistent political commitment and varying national capabilities that continue to stunt global climate ambition.
COP30’s key themes are presented here with an assessment of how likely meaningful progress will be made in Brazil. Click on each theme to explore.
Road to COP30
Despite momentum from Climate Week NYC and updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) from major economies like China, Australia and Brazil, persistent challenges remain ahead of COP30. These include plateaued climate finance from developed countries and uneven political engagement that constrains implementation capacity in developing nations.
Challenges to net zero
In 2025, S&P Global Commodity Insights developed five scenarios to explore how the world could evolve under a range of different sets of assumptions about the future.
Under the Base Case scenario, global emissions of greenhouse gases are expected to decline gradually from a peak of 50 billion mtCO2e in the early 2020s to approximately 40 billion mtCO2e by 2050.
But under the Adaptation scenario, which balances fossil fuel-powered economic growth against heightened global warming, emissions rise to just over 53 billion mtCO23 by 2050. Adaptation requires more primary energy than the Base Case, largely due to stronger macroeconomic growth, but also due to less switching from fossil fuels to non-fossil fuels.
Under the Fractures case, there is accelerated technological progress, but against a backdrop of weak policy and governance.
In the Renaissance scenario, emerging markets play a key role in driving a late but accelerated energy transition. Lastly, the Net Zero 2050 case illustrates a speculative and challenging path to global net-zero GHG emissions by 2050.
The differing speeds of the energy transition across key markets are reflected in their GHG emission trajectories.
Globally, GHG emissions are stable to declining, but all outlooks except Renaissance and Net Zero 2050 imply warming of well above 2 C by 2100.
Coal is the only fossil fuel facing net demand decline across all scenarios; oil and gas demand win or lose depending on each outlook’s technology pathway.
The varying regional trends within each scenario are also very important to the evolution of energy demand; electrification of final energy demand is particularly significant.
In the Renaissance scenario, emerging markets play a key role in driving a late but accelerated energy transition. Lastly, the Net Zero 2050 case illustrates a speculative and challenging path to global net-zero GHG emissions by 2050.
The differing speeds of the energy transition across key markets are reflected in their GHG emission trajectories.
Globally, GHG emissions are stable to declining, but all outlooks except Renaissance and Net Zero 2050 imply warming of well above 2 C by 2100.
Coal is the only fossil fuel facing net demand decline across all scenarios; oil and gas demand win or lose depending on each outlook’s technology pathway.
The varying regional trends within each scenario are also very important to the evolution of energy demand; electrification of final energy demand is particularly significant.
Climate commodities
The climate crisis has created a new universe of environmental markets.
Among them is the voluntary carbon market, trading credits from projects that avoid or remove GHG emissions. Since 2023, the voluntary carbon market has faced a barrage of pressure and criticism over the efficacy of some carbon offsets and projects, leading to a steep drop in both liquidity and prices.
Despite these challenges, there are signs of a resurgence in the market, with the number of credit issuances and retirements beginning to rise.
This has led to a gradual rebound in prices for some categories and projects. The uptick in prices suggests that stakeholders are actively working to address concerns around quality and transparency, potentially signaling a turning point for the carbon market as it strives to regain credibility and foster renewed investor confidence.
Key aspects of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement were finalized at COP29 in Baku. This has led to a particular boost in Article 6.2 activity, with nearly 100 bilateral deals signed under this mechanism, which sets out a system of national accounting for GHG emissions, allowing the cross-border exchange of carbon credits.
Under Article 6.2, countries can adopt credits, known as Internationally Transferable Mitigation Outcomes, under this mechanism.
After several nations agreed on a landmark decision to adopt the guidelines for a new carbon market under Article 6.4 in Baku, the focus has moved to implementation.
The Article 6.4 Supervisory Body continues to hold technical discussions focused on governance, regulatory and procedural issues.
These negotiations ahead of COP30 will be central to the credibility of international carbon markets and their contribution to climate ambition.
Many countries see Article 6 as a key tool for stimulating decarbonization and private investment, which can reduce GHG emissions.
Climate risks
With adaptation and resilience to the physical risks of climate change becoming more central to COP negotiations, countries are working to develop and implement their National Adaptation Plans (NAPs).
This shift has placed the private sector under growing pressure from investors, policies and regulations in some jurisdictions to assess exposure to climate hazards. Some companies are creating plans to improve the climate resilience of their operations, but in most regions and sectors, climate adaptation plans are the exception, not the rule.
The S&P Global Corporate Sustainability Assessment (CSA) is a framework that assesses climate and sustainability practices at thousands of companies annually.
The assessment shows that while about 54% of companies are assessing for acute physical risks and 49% are determining their exposure to chronic physical risks, only 35% of companies have formed some kind of adaptation plan, indicating that assessing physical risk is more common than forming plans to adapt to those risks.
The CSA defines acute physical risks as those that are event-driven, including increased severity of extreme weather events, such as tropical cyclones or floods. It defines chronic physical risks as longer-term shifts in climate patterns, such as sustained higher temperatures, that may cause sea level rise or chronic heat waves.
While all companies and communities face at least some amount of climate physical risk, some climate hazards are more material than others in different parts of the world. The relative impact of different hazards will inform how countries prioritize their investments in adaptation and resilience. Countries in western Asia, for example, face greater potential impacts from drought and water stress than nations in the Caribbean, where extreme heat poses the greatest risk.
The S&P Global Sustainable1 Physical Risk dataset shows that these risks are projected to rise over time. The composite risk score for Australia and New Zealand, for example, is projected to increase 33% over the next 25 years to 2050. That projection is based on a climate change scenario known as SSP2-4.5, which contemplates relatively strong greenhouse gas mitigation. The need for investment in climate adaptation is great even if significant progress is made on decarbonization.
Conclusion
COP30's success will depend on Brazil's ability to facilitate meaningful coordination between governments, financial institutions and non-state actors while addressing the persistent challenges of financial shortfalls and uneven implementation capacity that continue to constrain global climate action.