COP30 Belém Assessment

In 2025, COP30 took place in Belém, a city located in the Amazon region of Brazil. While the summit placed nature-based pillars—such as global warming, the state of forests, and the rights of Indigenous peoples—at the core of the discussions, it also emphasized a key message: “not only decision-making anymore, but implementation.” Nevertheless, the outcomes reflected a picture constrained by limited implementation capacities and the boundaries of global consensus.

The backbone of the summit was built around the Presidency’s “Global Mutirão” (global mobilization) decision and the complementary Belém Package. Across official decision and package pages, stakeholders attempted to convert headline topics—governance of finance, compliance monitoring, technology deployment, and the role of Indigenous/local communities—into actionable programs. However, negotiations failed to produce a binding roadmap for fossil-fuel phase-out, and similarly, a measurable UNFCCC-underpinned pathway to reverse deforestation did not materialize.

On the other hand, the introduction of Plans to Accelerate Solutions (PAS), developed under the “117 Solutions Acceleration Plan,” strengthened COP30’s identity as an “Implementation COP,” by advancing sectoral campaigns clustered under six main axes: energy/communication, forests/biodiversity, agriculture/food systems, cities/infrastructure, human & social development, and finance.

Adaptation and Finance

One of the most tangible progress areas in Belém was adaptation finance. Parties reached a political commitment to triple adaptation finance by 2035, targeting a pivotal figure: increasing annual adaptation funding to USD 120 billion by 2035. This is considered a critical milestone for vulnerable economies, which stand to benefit from scaled support despite the lack of granular breakdowns on who will contribute and how the finance sources will be governed in precise terms.

A two-year financial work-programme was initiated within the scope of the Belém Package, aiming to track future climate-finance instruments provided to developing countries. While this program is expected to ease the resource pressure on adaptation finance for emerging markets, detailed obligations or explicit financing sources were not comprehensively captured in the text.

In addition, COP30 adopted a mid-term adaptation roadmap (2026–2028) and began formal work on adaptation indicators. Under the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA), a new workstream was launched to define measurable KPIs. The Belém Package introduced 59 voluntary indicators across adaptation domains such as water, ecosystems, infrastructure, food systems, and health. These metrics are expected to bolster institutions’ adaptation KPI sets, direct public/private investment toward adaptation projects, and enrich ESG and sustainability reporting frameworks.

Just, Orderly and Inclusive Transition

COP30 announced the establishment of a new mechanism titled Belém Action Mechanism on Just Transition (JTM) with strong support from labor unions. The mechanism is grounded within the UAE-moderated Belém Just Transition Working Program, making it clear that the transition process must be “just, orderly and inclusive”, i.e., socially effective beyond environmental progress alone.

From now on, companies are expected to go beyond pure carbon-reduction objectives when preparing transition plans, including elements such as employment impacts, skills mobility, community participation, and stakeholder equity. This signals that future corporate reporting under frameworks like CDP may introduce new pillars for social impact reporting, governance, and adaptation-forward KPIs.

Mitigation, Fossil Fuels, and Carbon Markets

The mitigation landscape was more ambiguous. No binding fossil-fuel phase-out language (coal, oil, or gas) appeared in COP30 final decisions due to producer-country resistance. Instead, Brazil and Colombia agreed to explore a non-UNFCCC volunteer fossil-fuel transition plan, which is expected to be discussed at an external forum in April.

Governance integration on international carbon markets could not be fully expanded under Article 6 mechanisms. At COP30, Article 6.4 underwent intense negotiation as a global carbon-crediting mechanism but delivered insufficient resolution. This uncertainty could weaken companies’ transition-plan credibility, dampen market trust, and generate risk for corporate carbon strategies until high-integrity verification standards are more comprehensively defined.

Nature-Based Solutions, Forest Protection, and Indigenous Rights

Nature-based discussions gained visibility, especially in forestry, biodiversity, and Indigenous rights. Brazil spearheaded a facility called the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), a multi-stakeholder fund that reached USD 6.7 billion, aiming to remunerate countries protecting tropical forests and strengthen Indigenous communities’ participation. Multilateral development banks jointly published new guidance to scale nature-investments. The Financing Nature: A Practitioner's Guide to Results Metrics Selection report prepared in collaboration between the Inter-American Development Bank and the European Investment Bank identified that nature investments are currently tracked via activity-based KPIs using 600+ indicators but lack systemic ecosystem-impact-based scoring. For tropical forest resilience and restoration, the required investment is estimated at USD 67 billion per year until 2030.

Despite progress, “zero deforestation” obligations remain volunteer-driven rather than multilateral or binding, making the outlook implementation-dependent on finance access, local engagement, and institutional capacity.

NDCs, Monitoring, and Transparency

COP30 urged all countries to adopt stronger science-aligned NDC targets to remain consistent with 1.5°C ambition. Post-Paris, a strengthened Biennial Transparency Report (BTR) framework obliges countries to present progress on emissions reductions and adaptation-finance flows every two years. This concrete accountability framework and post-Global Stocktake review cycle is one of the most systematic institutional accountability architectures so far.

Türkiye’s COP30 Visibility

Within the scope of its updated NDC, the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change of Türkiye announced a target to cap national GHG emissions at 643 million tonnes CO₂e by 2035, from an earlier 2030 projection of 695 million tonnes. This reflects a cap strategy rather than absolute reductions, which is considered inconsistent with 1.5°C alignment. Nonetheless, Türkiye stated that it plays a leadership role in country-specific GHG modelling.

Türkiye’s participation in the 2026 COP31 Belem Declaration (signed by 35+ countries and institutions) signals its willingness to elevate green industrialization, efficiency, clean technologies, and socio-economic protection within its transformation architecture. Türkiye also reinforced its positioning as an active climate-diplomacy actor by building proactive visibility to become the host country for COP31 (Antalya) in 2026, alongside Australia as the President of the Negotiations. COP31 is seen as a major opportunity for Türkiye to demonstrate not a showcase COP, but policy-applicability, implementation capacity, project pipeline readiness, resilience frameworks, stakeholder fairness, fossil-fuel transition planning, and measurable climate KPI architecture for both environmental and social impact objectives.

COP31 Outlook for Türkiye and Global Actors

As COP30 closed in Belém, COP31’s governance balance introduced new geographic and stakeholder distribution: Türkiye (Antalya, 2026) as the host country and Australia as the President of the Negotiations, offering a dual-regional lens (Europe-Asia, North-South, Pacific vulnerability, techno-financial credibility, and legitimacy). COP30’s finance-tracking commitments—“triple funding” and “mid-term adaptation roadmap delivery”—must translate into grants, credit lines, blended guarantees, tax support, and land-water-coastline-ecosystem-resilience deliverables in COP31 implementations.

Implications for Companies and CDP-Reporting Institutions

In COP31 preparation, companies reporting to CDP face rising expectations: adaptation capital allocation should be framed as a strategic imperative; interim mitigation goals (2030/2035) must be finance-backed; carbon claims must align with high-integrity standards; and core supply-chain risks—deforestation, participation, land-use impact, community equity—should be treated not as secondary headlines but as core, measurable, verifiable, and finance-provision-ready climate governance deliverables.