Leaders gathered at COP30 in Belém, Brazil. "07.11.2025 – Fotografia oficial da Cúpula do Clima (COP30)” by Lula Oficial, CC BY-SA 4.0

Unlike many COPs before it, November’s climate summit grappled with some of the real-world challenges of reducing emissions – from global trade to the risks and opportunities of the energy transition.

The conference in Belém, Brazil, marked ten years since countries adopted the Paris Agreement to prevent dangerous levels of warming. But it was also the first to take place since the world temporarily hit 1.5C of warming above pre-industrial levels for an entire calendar year. At COP30, the Brazilian presidency focused on turning lofty commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions into real-world action.

Outside the formal negotiations, Brazil, which hosted the first COP in the Amazon, launched the Tropical Forest Forever Facility. It’s a multilateral fund that aims to raise public and private investment and use the returns to reward developing countries for keeping their old-growth forests – those that have developed over long periods of time – intact. The fund raised an initial $6.6bn from governments.

Meanwhile, Indigenous peoples played a larger role at the conference than ever before and COP30 brought commitments to recognising their territories as a climate solution.

Notably, COP30 wasn’t attended by the US government after President Donald Trump pulled the country out of the Paris Agreement for a second time in early 2025. In January, he also withdrew the US from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the international treaty underpinning the Paris accord. The Trump administration says the Convention no longer serves ‘American interests’.

American manufacturers are worried the renewed push for fossil fuels will make US businesses less competitive as the rest of the world embraces renewable energy, says Michael Showalter, an officer of the IBA Environment, Health and Safety Law Committee. However, the White House didn’t appear to have an interest in the COP30 discussions and, more generally, believes it’s in America’s ‘national interest’ to ‘unleash [its] affordable and reliable energy and natural resources.’

At the conference, major emerging economies such as China and India took aim at the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) – a tax on imports of some carbon-intensive goods such as steel, aluminium and cement that came into effect in January – which they have staunchly criticised, calling it ‘protectionist’ and ‘unfair’. The EU says the CBAM is a ‘tool to put a fair price on carbon emitted during the production of carbon-intensive goods that are entering the EU, and to encourage cleaner industrial production in non-EU countries.’ It asserts that the CBAM is a climate measure and not a trade or protectionist tool, and that it’s designed to be compatible with World Trade Organization rules.

In the final COP30 agreement, countries reaffirmed that climate measures ‘including unilateral ones’ shouldn’t constitute trade restrictions that are ‘arbitrary’ or ‘discriminat[ory]’ and agreed to hold further dialogues on climate and trade. Yves Melin, Co-Chair of the IBA International Trade and Customs Law Committee, says these dialogues may prove to be ‘helpful discussions’ in the long term but in the immediate future, countries will need to adjust to the realities of the EU’s carbon border levy.

Despite support from dozens of countries, calls to design roadmaps to phase out fossil fuels and end deforestation failed to reach the necessary consensus. Opposition from large oil-producing countries kept any language on fossil fuels out of the final text. In this sense, the conference ‘fell short of what it actually set out to achieve,’ says Jariwal, who’s a Delhi-based partner within Trilegal’s environment and climate change practice.

Instead, Brazil said it’ll develop voluntary roadmaps outside the formal UN negotiations, which will be presented at COP31 in 2026. Colombia and the Netherlands announced they would host the first conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels in April.

Efforts to address the gap to limit warming to 1.5C also fell short. The carbon-cutting plans submitted by countries for COP30 put the world on track for 2.6C of warming. There was broad recognition that overshooting 1.5C of global warming, at least temporarily, is now inevitable. To bridge the gaps, countries agreed to launch two voluntary initiatives to accelerate the implementation of global climate plans and step up ambition.

But in spite of the headwinds, COP30 showed that multilateral action on the climate is still possible at a time when other environmental negotiations on curbing plastic pollution and cutting emissions from international shipping have stalled.

‘Despite challenging geopolitical circumstances, I think the outcomes of the conference highlighted that international cooperation remains critical to advancing effective global climate mitigation and adaptation,’ says Emily Morison, Project Lawyer within the IBA’s Legal Policy & Research Unit (LPRU). ‘The COP30 President’s commitment to developing roadmaps to transition away from fossil fuels and halt and reverse deforestation by 2030 and the announcement of the First International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels […] will shape the future activities of countries and private actors, and the legal community will be central to helping clients navigate these shifts.’

‘It’s a victory in itself that [COP30] didn’t fall flat’, says Els Reynaers, Co-Chair of the IBA Environment, Health and Safety Law Committee, adding that voluntary initiatives outside the formal negotiations will help to ‘keep up the momentum’. COP30 was also a space for those working to address the climate crisis, from activists to policymakers and entrepreneurs, to brainstorm and collaborate. In today’s world, ‘that in itself is a success,’ says Reynaers, who’s also Head of the Environmental Law Team at MV Kini in Mumbai.