Toute l'actualitéFrom 10 to 21 November 2025, the 30th Conference of the Parties on climate (COP30) was held in Belém, Brazil. Located in the heart of the Amazon, the summit was expected to be the COP of “implementation”. After fifteen days of negotiations, mobilisations and scientific or civic initiatives, the outcome is mixed: tangible progress in some areas, but also missed opportunities and an overall level of ambition deemed insufficient in light of the climate emergency. What are the key structural takeaways for the years ahead? Discover our full analysis.
Notable Advances and Persistent Blind Spots
A Global Financial Objective Consolidated Between Baku and Belém
COP30 builds on the work initiated at COP29: the objective of mobilising USD 1.3 trillion per year by 2035, formulated in Baku as part of the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on climate finance, was confirmed and further structured in Belém.
This objective aims to align global financial flows with the real needs of the transition. It does not refer to a single fund, but to a global effort involving public, multilateral and private finance, as well as innovative financial instruments. It covers the full spectrum of climate priorities — mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage, nature-based solutions and the energy transition — and responds to a clear finding of the Global Stocktake: current climate finance remains far below needs, estimated at several trillion dollars per year by 2030.
Tripling Finance Dedicated to Adaptation
One of the most consequential announcements of COP30 concerns adaptation. States agreed to triple adaptation finance by 2035 to support territorial resilience, protect vulnerable populations and develop climate-resilient infrastructure. This decision is fully consistent with the USD 1.3 trillion per year objective: it strengthens one of the most underfunded dimensions of the transition, which is essential to support the resilience of the most vulnerable countries.
For investors and financial institutions, this development opens new perspectives: deeper integration of physical climate risk into investment strategies; a rise in territorial resilience projects; growing opportunities in green infrastructure, water resource management and ecological restoration.
This commitment reflects a reality that is now widely acknowledged: adaptation has become a central pillar of global climate strategy, on an equal footing with mitigation of climate change.
New Initiatives to Accelerate Implementation
These financial ambitions are part of a broader framework designed to accelerate the implementation of commitments made by States. Two core instruments form its backbone:
- The Global Implementation Accelerator, which aims to provide concrete support to countries in delivering their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and national adaptation plans, through reinforced technical assistance and better access to finance;
- The Belém Mission to 1.5°C, an international action platform designed to structure international cooperation led by the COP29–COP31 Troika, strengthen climate ambition and mobilise the investments needed to maintain a trajectory compatible with 1.5°C.
These two initiatives were created, named and officially launched as part of the Belém Political Package adopted at COP30. They are intended to narrow the gap between ambition and action by aligning financial orientation, implementation capacity and international cooperation.
The Launch of the Tropical Forests Forever Facility
COP30 was also marked by the official announcement of the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), a mechanism intended to become a global fund for the preservation of tropical forests. Led by Brazil, the facility aims to provide financial incentives for countries with extensive tropical forest cover to ensure their long-term conservation, by mobilising up to USD 125 billion through a hybrid structure combining public and private finance.
The TFFF “Launch Declaration” received the support of 53 countries, including 19 potential sovereign investors — essentially governments and public institutions — among them Norway, Brazil, Indonesia, France and the Netherlands. Several major announcements have already been made, such as Norway’s pledge of nearly USD 3 billion, providing an initial financial backbone for the facility.
However, many parameters still need to be clarified. The TFFF is based on a still-novel model — endowed foundation, payments conditional on conservation — and its governance, monitoring, traceability and involvement of local and Indigenous communities must still be consolidated. Thus, while the TFFF represents a significant symbolic step forward for the protection of tropical ecosystems, its success will depend on its ability to rapidly demonstrate operational credibility to investors, forest countries and stakeholders on the ground.
According to Stéphane Hallaire, President of Reforest’Action, “the fund’s greatest impact may come from its investments—if they truly drive a regenerative economy. With $125 billion, TFFF could help beneficiary countries transition toward an economic model that respects planetary boundaries, provided it doesn’t overlook the root causes of deforestation and the essential shift needed in agricultural practices.”
Loss and Damage Fund: A Mechanism Still in a Fragile State
Politically created at COP27 and made operational at COP28, the Loss and Damage Fund is intended to support the most vulnerable countries in addressing the irreversible impacts of climate change — those that go beyond adaptation capacity, such as the destruction of infrastructure, loss of land or forced displacement. Despite its strategic importance, this mechanism remains fragile: its access modalities, governance and sources of funding are still being consolidated.
COP30 highlighted a twofold reality. On the one hand, the resources mobilised so far remain far below estimated needs — international assessments indicate that loss and damage in vulnerable countries could reach USD 290–580 billion per year by 2030. On the other hand, vulnerable countries continue to stress the complexity of procedures and ongoing uncertainty regarding the fund’s real accessibility and long-term viability.
In the absence of substantial new commitments and a fully stabilised architecture, the fund remains under-sized and operationally limited, even as loss and damage intensify. For both public and private actors, this situation illustrates one of the major challenges of climate governance: ensuring fast, predictable and adequate financing to respond to impacts that are steadily increasing.
Fossil Fuels: A Persistent Deadlock
Despite the climate emergency reiterated in scientific reports and the findings of the Global Stocktake, COP30 did not succeed in reaching consensus on a timetable for phasing out fossil fuels. While many countries — particularly small island States, several European countries and part of the financial sector — advocated for an explicit reference to “phasing out”, negotiations were slowed by the opposition of powerful producer countries and deepening geopolitical tensions.
The outcome is a weakened text on this point: it reaffirms the importance of the energy transition without translating it into binding commitments. This deadlock highlights the persistent gap between trajectories compatible with 1.5°C and current political choices, and sends a signal to economic and financial actors that, for now, the transformation of the energy system will rely more on market dynamics, technological innovation and evolving investment strategies than on a fully defined international framework.
Clarifying International Priorities: Structural Axes for the Years Ahead
Strengthening Indicators, Transparency and Governance of Commitments
COP30 marks the beginning of a cycle in which the value of a climate commitment is no longer measured by its declarative ambition, but by its capacity to be delivered. The final decision explicitly calls for a strengthened revision of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) from 2026 onwards, with significantly higher expectations in terms of precision, quantified trajectories and sectoral coherence.
For both States and companies, this evolution entails three major shifts:
- A move towards standardised, comparable indicators. Negotiators highlighted the need to build a common methodological baseline to assess real impact rather than solely declared effort. In the coming years, States, public banks, private investors and donors will therefore require companies to provide much more precise, detailed and verifiable climate data as a condition for accessing certain forms of finance.
- Increasing regulatory pressure. The progressive alignment between national frameworks and international regulations (CSRD, ISSB, TNFD) will require organisations not only to document their emissions, but also their dependencies on ecosystems, exposure to physical risk, impacts on ecosystem services and resilience under different climate scenarios. Finance, legal and sustainability departments are now jointly responsible for climate compliance.
- Reinforced governance and strategic climate steering. States are encouraged to introduce tighter control mechanisms: audits, regular reporting, national monitoring committees, results-based obligations and corrective measures. For private actors, this translates into the need for a dedicated climate committee at board level, science-based targets (SBTi) to ensure credibility, quantified transition plans with associated budgets, and comprehensive traceability covering scopes 1, 2 and 3, as well as biodiversity and physical risk.
Territories, Communities and Governance: Towards a Just and Inclusive Transition
COP30 reaffirms the essential role of territories and communities in climate implementation, stressing the importance of land rights, local knowledge and shared governance that fully involves Indigenous Peoples and local communities in the design, decision-making and oversight of projects.
Given the diversity of climate vulnerabilities, the local scale is becoming a lever of operational effectiveness, capable of identifying specific risks, prioritising tailored solutions and anchoring climate action in socio-economic realities. For projects to be perceived as credible and acceptable, they must therefore meet both international standards and territorial expectations.
Finally, COP30 reiterates that the climate transition can only succeed if it is just and inclusive, which implies a fair distribution of value, protection of the most exposed populations and the development of local skills — requirements that are now central for investors and decisive for stakeholder trust.
Climate Finance: Credibility, Traceability and Internalisation of Risk
Climate finance remains the central bottleneck of global climate governance. Nevertheless, COP30 has clarified expectations and sent clear signals to the financial sector:
- The need to make financial commitments credible. The tripling of adaptation finance must be accompanied by a precise definition of allocation rules, eligibility criteria and performance metrics. For financial actors, climate finance can no longer be merely declarative; it must demonstrate quantifiable, verifiable and comparable impact.
- The emergence of a new paradigm: valuing physical risks. COP30 confirms a major shift: the physical impacts of climate change are no longer considered secondary uncertainties, but key drivers of financial performance. They now directly affect project profitability and the ability of actors to maintain solvency over time.
- Transparency and the fight against greenwashing. Pressure is increasing to put an end to unfounded climate claims. Investors will have to demonstrate the traceability of their investments, the robustness of their impact models, the integrity of the projects they support and compliance with international frameworks (ICVCM, VCMI, TNFD). Regulatory trends point towards increasingly stringent demands for documented evidence.
Confirming the Strategic Role of Nature-based Solutions
The Amazonian setting of the COP catalysed discussions on Nature-based Solutions (NbS). Their role is now fully recognised in national strategies and in both voluntary and regulatory decarbonisation pathways. NbS are expected to sequester carbon, strengthen territorial resilience to climate shocks, preserve biodiversity and durably stabilise soils and water resources. Their contribution is substantial, but remains complementary: even deployed at scale, NbS alone cannot offset the continued increase in fossil fuel emissions.
This is why the transition requires a hybrid approach that simultaneously combines three pillars: operational decarbonisation, relying on energy efficiency, renewables and industrial innovation; ecological restoration, which is essential to reinforce natural carbon sinks and ecosystem resilience; and carbon capture and storage technologies, necessary to address the most difficult-to-abate residual emissions. This triptych, widely confirmed at COP30 in Belém, forms the foundation of climate trajectories compatible with international targets.
To be fully effective, these levers must be integrated coherently into public policies and corporate strategies. This implies explicit inclusion of NbS in NDCs, agricultural policies, adaptation plans, urban planning strategies and international certification frameworks. On the private sector side, the challenge is to move beyond ad hoc approaches and build investment programmes anchored in territories, aligned with high integrity standards and delivering measurable climate, social and economic benefits. Only such alignment between national ambition, local dynamics and industrial strategies will enable the transition to accelerate at the necessary scale.
For Reforest’Action, this dynamic confirms a core conviction: Nature-based Solutions are an essential climate and economic lever, but they must be deployed with rigour and transparency.
COP30 has not met all expectations, but it does mark a major turning point: the start of a decade in which value will be measured by real impact, adaptive capacity and the credibility of commitments. For Reforest’Action, this COP confirms several strong convictions:
- nature is an indispensable pillar of the climate response;
- project quality and integrity are non-negotiable prerequisites;
- transparency and impact measurement are fundamental to building trust;
- the articulation between mitigation, adaptation and biodiversity must guide climate action.
In a context of rapid transformation, we reaffirm the importance of a scientific, rigorous and locally anchored approach to ecosystem restoration. The future will depend not only on the commitments made, but on our collective ability — States, investors, companies and local stakeholders — to turn them into reality.