(Belém, Brazil) — COP30 concluded with a package that falls far short of the structural action needed to confront the climate and biodiversity crises. Despite historic Indigenous mobilisation and strong scientific warnings, the outcome reflects governments’ continued failure to regulate the destructive financial flows and extractive industries driving global warming and Amazon destruction — and their refusal to call for fossil fuel phaseout, coupled with their failure to mobilise the predictable, public and grant-based funding developing countries need to adapt and transition equitably and at speed.
The final Mutirão decision did not include a fossil fuel phaseout or defined roadmap, and instead relies on a weak outline of voluntary processes and high-level initiatives without binding commitments.
Fossil Fuels: Not Phased Out
Despite a coalition of more than 80 countries — and President Lula himself — calling for a fossil fuel phase-out, COP30 did not deliver. A group of fossil-fuel-aligned governments, backed by heavy industry lobbying, blocked the inclusion of language committing to a fossil fuel phaseout in the final text delivered to plenary. And while many developing countries rightly insist that equity and historic responsibility require real public finance to realize this goal, COP30 delivered neither the ambition nor the finance needed to make a fair transition possible.
“Belém highlighted the deeper tension at the heart of the climate process: constrained ambition versus a global financial system still built on extraction,” said Tom Picken, Forests & Finance Campaign Director at Rainforest Action Network. “If governments can’t even agree to phase out fossil fuels — the root cause of the crisis — then the trillions still flowing into coal, oil, gas, deforestation and mining will continue unchecked, and developing countries will still be denied the predictable public finance needed for a just and equitable transition.”
Finance and Mutirão: More Dialogues; No discipline on Destructive Flows
The Mutirão cover decision acknowledges the need for finance “at scale,” but offers no clear plan to mobilize predictable, public and grant-based finance and no measures to redirect the far larger sums still flowing into fossil fuels, deforestation and harmful extraction. The text reiterates long-term collective finance ‘pathways’ — 1.3 trillion per year by 2035 and a 300-billion annual sub-goal — and launches a two-year work programme on Article 9.1 public-finance obligations, but without any binding structure, burden-sharing formula or enforcement to ensure delivery. The removal of earlier language recognizing the insufficiency of finance delivered to date weakens accountability at a moment when climate needs are escalating.
“The Mutirão decision talks about trillion-dollar finance but avoids binding commitments, ignores the real scale of unmet public finance needs, and leaves the financial drivers of fossil expansion, mining and deforestation completely untouched. The disconnect between COP30 decisions and the financial reality is stark,” Picken said, referring to Forests & Finance’s Banking on Biodiversity Collapse 2025 report. “The data shows that Brazilian banks are the largest financiers of deforestation-risk sectors globally — including across the Amazon where COP30 is taking place — yet nothing in the outcome seeks to rein in these flows.”
Carbon Markets: System “Not Ready” and Structurally Unsafe for Forests and People
On Article 6, COP30’s decisions now openly acknowledge that the UN carbon market system is not ready: Article 6.2 reviews revealed “inconsistencies,” infrastructure concerns and major funding gaps; Article 6.4 remains largely non-operational.
“The COP30 Science Council says forests ‘cannot be used as offsets’, and the UN’s own decisions now admit carbon offsetting isn’t ready. With no FPIC, no rights safeguards and no way to prevent land grabs, the carbon offset market system is not fit for purpose — the era of pretending offsets can solve the climate crisis must end,” Picken said.
Just Transition: Strong Words on Rights, Silence on Land, Forests and Mining
The UAE Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP) sets strong Indigenous rights language but delays meaningful implementation. Meanwhile, references to critical minerals, mining, land and forests that appeared in earlier drafts have been removed, leavin the programme silent on some of the most urgent transition challenges.
“The text is silent on the mining and transition-minerals boom driving deeper into the Amazon and Indigenous territories. Without confronting extractive expansion and the finance behind it — even with stronger FPIC and Indigenous rights language — a just transition remains a slogan, not a safeguard,” Picken said.
Rights and Indigenous leadership: Strong Presence, Weak Protection
“Indigenous Peoples have brought clarity, solutions and leadership to COP30, but the process still sidelines their meaningful participation and governing authority, reducing their rights to optional language rather than obligations. Until both rights and participation are embedded in binding rules, their territories will remain exposed to extractive expansion,” Picken said.
TFFF and Nature Finance: Still Tied to Extraction
“The TFFF can’t claim to protect forests while relying on investment strategies that still channel money into bonds tied to extraction and forest-risk finance. COP30’s draft texts show the same pattern — talk of mobilizing private capital without any measures to curb the flows driving deforestation,” Picken said.
Adaptation
“Repeatedly name-checking the need to triple adaptation finance means little when COP30 refused to tie those commitments to real money,” said Picken. “Developing countries warned that benchmarks can’t become new hurdles or conditions — and without predictable public finance, hundreds of millions remain unprotected from escalating climate impacts.”
Conclusion
Belém should have been the moment governments protected the Amazon by confronting the financial forces driving its destruction. Instead, the trillions behind fossil expansion, mining and deforestation remain untouched. Without rights, regulation and real limits on extraction — and without predictable public finance for adaptation and just transitions — the Amazon cannot be safeguarded.