COP30 had been billed as the first real “implementation COP” since Paris – a chance to make good on the unfulfilled commitments of the Paris Agreement, which promised a Just Transition, but instead delivered a decade of drift and broken trust.

In Belém, agreement on a Just Transition was widely viewed as the clearest test of seriousness: proof that governments would finally be ready to embed justice across every part of the outcome – finance, adaptation, and accountability.

Midway through COP30, the negotiations now stand at a crossroads. Across all major negotiating tracks – adaptation, finance, Just Transition, trade, and the still-unresolved agenda – a single message reverberates: the implementation gap is a finance gap, and credibility will not be restored until that gap is addressed. Climate Action Network attempts a midway assessment.

The COP of Truth – and a managed agenda

President Lula opened COP30 with a blunt recognition of the present crisis. Climate change, he said, is not a distant threat but a current tragedy, already pushing millions back into poverty and striking hardest at Afro-descendant communities, women, and children. He repeated his expectation that COP30 must be a COP of Truth – one willing to face the inequalities that drive the climate crisis, not speak around them.

This call for truth shaped much of the first week. COP30 has seen an unprecedented focus on combating climate misinformation and ensuring that people – from negotiators to communities – have access to accurate, factual information on which to base responsible decisions.

The Presidency’s proposal to run four consultations together, covering the four extraordinary agenda items, was tactically useful. It allowed for a smooth start and let technical negotiations begin. But it was really just window-dressing. The political agenda remains unresolved, and it rises to the surface in every negotiation room. Throughout the week, Parties were told to speak directly to each other without prepared statements, searching for bridges between ambition and implementation.

Yet developing countries expressed deep unease that the process risked diluting their central demands. A five-minute stocktake plenary only deepened the sense of uncertainty, and although a further stocktake took place on Saturday, many fear the substantive issues are still being set aside.

Just Transition: a breakthrough at risk

The most significant political development of the first week – and the most contested – unfolded in the Just Transition negotiations. In a notable shift, G77+China called for the creation of a Global Mechanism for Just Transition, echoing long-standing demands from civil society and trade unions embodied in the proposal for a Belém Action Mechanism (BAM). The EU, for its part, also tabled a proposal for an institutional arrangement – a real evolution in the international conversation, though still far from the kind of mechanism that could deliver justice in the transition.

But the breakthrough remains fragile. There are already clear signs that the political fight is only beginning. Several wealthy countries have pushed back hard against the idea of any new mechanism, arguing that existing arrangements are sufficient – despite broad evidence that current structures cannot deliver the scale or coordination required. The blockers are consistent: denial of responsibility, resistance to coordinated international action, and a refusal to recognise that transitions without justice are neither durable nor legitimate. 

This is the COP where climate justice and social justice must finally be married – where workers are recognised not as footnotes to climate policy, but as central actors in shaping the new economy. A credible Just Transition mechanism is essential not only for climate ambition, but for rebuilding trust between countries, trust between governments and workers, and trust in a process that must deliver real change on the ground.

Critical Issues Shaping the Just Transition Outcome

There was overwhelming support for including transition minerals within the scope of Just Transition work – the first time such recognition has entered UNFCCC text.

Beyond this, trade is emerging as a defining fracture. Developing countries insist that unilateral trade measures – such as the EU’s CBAM – must be addressed within the climate process. For many, a meaningful Just Transition cannot be separated from the inequities embedded in global trade rules. Developed countries refuse outright.

The carbon markets discussions added another layer of concern. In the Article 6.4 room, some Parties sought to weaken already insufficient safeguards, threatening environmental integrity and eroding human rights protections. These efforts run counter to science and contradict the public demand for accountability.

Finance: the heart of the blockage

The core of the current impasse is the same issue we’ve faced for years: justice and responsibility – represented most clearly through climate finance. Every negotiation room – whether the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) discussions, the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) processes, or the Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP) sessions – circled back to the same inescapable truth: developing countries cannot implement their climate plans without real, predictable, grants-based finance.

Yet many developed countries continued to resist language that implies obligation, creating growing frustration and widening trust gaps – despite the Paris Agreement and ICJAO ruling. ENGO observers were explicit: the implementation gap is the finance gap, and until this is resolved, no amount of political choreography will restore trust.

The Loss and Damage Fund took a step forward with the official launch of its first Call for Funding Requests. But with only $250 million allocated for 2025–26, the fund remains dramatically under-resourced.

Adaptation: clarity in need, uncertainty in delivery

Adaptation issues dominated much of week one. The first draft of the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) text includes an option for a new adaptation finance target, proposing to triple adaptation finance by 2030 and reach at least $120 billion annually – a demand strongly backed by civil society. The draft signals recognition of need but not yet agreement on delivery.

Parties remain divided over whether the GGA indicators should be adopted, welcomed, or simply noted. Developing countries maintain that the current list still fails to reflect the guidance from SB62, particularly on Means of Implementation. Across GGA, NAP and agenda consultations, the message from developing countries was consistent: adaptation without finance is not adaptation – it is rhetoric.

Civil society and Indigenous movements return to the streets

Belém witnessed what the last three COPs did not: a mass, peaceful mobilisation of up to 70,000 people. A theatrical funeral for coal, oil and gas captured the public mood and reinforced the call for a clear, uncompromised fossil fuel phase-out. Indigenous leaders amplified demands for land rights, consent-based decision-making, and an end to the extractive violence tied to both transition minerals and fossil fuel expansion. Their presence and leadership remain a moral compass for the negotiations.

However, as Larissa Baldwin-Roberts, Widjabul Wia-bal woman, Director of Common Threads and Climate Action Network International Boardmember, observed: “This was promised to be the Indigenous COP – yet thousands of Indigenous peoples are still outside. They were promised to be inside the venue to be heard on what’s happening to their territories: the privatisation of their waters, the illegal mining of their land. The UNFCCC needs to do much more in making sure that Indigenous organisations are here as rights-based constituencies.”

A summit searching for its backbone

As COP30 moves into its second week, the process enters its most demanding and political phase. Technical work must be completed by Tuesday for ministers to begin the high-level political negotiations. UN climate chief, Simon Stiell, urged governments “to give a little to get a lot,” a message widely interpreted as a call for real compromise after a week of cautious manoeuvring and word soup.

The Presidency is due to release a Sunday report summarising progress on emissions ambition, finance, unilateral trade measures, and transparency of national data reporting. That document will shape ministerial negotiations in the critical days ahead.

What Week Two must deliver

The second week must break from the incrementalism that has defined too many COPs. To honour Lula’s call for a COP of Truth, ministers will need to resolve the agenda impasse transparently and without sidelining the finance debate. They must confront the finance gap directly – especially on adaptation finance and Article 9.1 obligations – and demonstrate that implementation is not a slogan but a commitment.

Delivering justice now depends on delivering the proposed Belém Action Mechanism: the clearest pathway to a Just Transition mechanism grounded in global consensus rather than veto power. Week two must also protect, not weaken, carbon market integrity; recognise trade justice as integral to climate justice; and provide meaningful direction on phasing out fossil fuels while rejecting false solutions.

Ultimately, the stakes are not whether COP30 appears orderly or well-managed, but whether it delivers for the communities President Lula named on Day 1 – the millions already living inside the consequences, thousands of whom marched through the streets of Belém on Saturday to demand governments to deliver climate justice.