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November 3, 2025
Key Takeaways:
Each year at the United Nations (U.N.) climate change summit, formally known as the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), countries from all over the world—alongside companies, non-governmental organizations, and subnational governments—convene to set new climate goals while building on past commitments to confront the climate crisis.
While the expectation is that these commitments will result in measurable action, there is no guarantee as it is challenging for countries to ultimately hold each other accountable. This year’s COP30 in Belém, Brazil, will offer an opportunity for reflection and course-correction pertaining to previous announcements and commitments. In November 2024, COP29 resulted in numerous advancements, such as the New Collective Quantified Goal on climate finance (NCQG) as well as the finalization of technical guidance for Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which is related to carbon markets. There were also developments related to previous agreements like the Loss and Damage Fund and Global Methane Pledge. This article will summarize where these key efforts stand.
New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance
After lengthy negotiations, COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, concluded with countries agreeing on an updated climate finance commitment to support developing countries’ climate action plans. The NCQG consists of core financing of $300 billion annually through 2035 from developed countries, with an additional call for $1.3 trillion per year, primarily from private financing. The NCQG is a key part of the 2015 Paris Agreement, with Article 9 stating that “developed country parties shall provide financial resources to assist developing country parties.” COP29’s NCQG expands both quantitatively and qualitatively on the first climate finance goal of $100 billion per year, established at COP15 in 2009. The new goal specifies transparency guidelines and improved access arrangements, in addition to outlining channels for disbursement and different financial instruments that can be used. Despite the expanded financing, many countries and observers have expressed that NCQG is not ambitious enough, as it represents merely a fraction of developing countries’ climate finance needs. According to Carbon Brief, developing countries' climate finance needs are already predicted to reach $200 billion a year by 2030 even without additional efforts, indicating that the latest NCQG is inadequate to address the larger, growing need for climate funding. By some estimates, developing countries need $2.7 trillion annually by 2030 to meet their climate goals.
Global Climate Finance
EESI’s briefing, Congress and International Climate Finance, provides additional background information about the global climate finance landscape.
After COP29, negotiators, experts, and stakeholders gathered in summer 2025 at the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) in Seville, Spain, to address financing challenges related to the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. This event marked the first time the FfD process was meaningfully connected to UNFCCC decisions. The resulting document, the Seville Commitment, called for resources to support the NCQG and other UNFCCC decisions.
Meanwhile, the United States has made dramatic cuts to its climate finance portfolio since COP29. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which had historically provided about one-third of all U.S. climate finance (including $3 billion in 2023), has been shuttered. Though some of its operations have been moved to the State Department, much of them have been canceled. Due to significant budget cuts in 2025, 150 climate and clean energy contracts and grants worth $1.2 billion have been terminated. The United States also withdrew its commitment of $4 billion for the Green Climate Fund, which provides climate-related grants and loans to developing countries. These cuts directly impact the NCQG target of raising $300 billion from developed countries every year.
The U.N. Environmental Programme’s (UNEP’s) Adaptation Gap Report 2025, issued in October 2025, found that the NCQG-–which covers both mitigation and adaptation—will not be achieved unless adaptation financing is dramatically increased. The report underscores the drastic gap in adaptation funding for developing countries, noting that wealthy countries are not upholding their commitments. They promised $40 billion annually by 2025 in adaptation aid but provided only $28 billion in 2022 and $26 billion in 2023 with limited signs of a turnaround. And the $40 billion goal is in any case completely insufficient compared to the $365 billion per year in adaptation funding that developing countries need according to the United Nations. The report does highlight that countries have made progress on closing the planning and implementation gap, with 172 countries now having a national climate adaptation plan.
Ahead of COP30, the COP29 and COP30 presidencies jointly announced the Baku to Belém Roadmap to $1.3 Trillion to support NCQG implementation. In April, the Ministry of Finance of Brazil (the country presiding over COP30) identified five priority areas to support the roadmap: multilateral development bank reform, the expansion of concessional finance and climate funds, improvements to domestic capacity to attract sustainable investments, the development of innovative financial instruments for private capital mobilization, and improved regulatory frameworks for climate finance. The two presidencies issued an initial working plan in May 2025, with June updates highlighting further consultations and engagement opportunities. COP30 will facilitate further discussion on how to implement and ensure accountability and transparency of the NCQG.
Loss and Damage Fund
Stakeholders at COP29 signed key agreements to fully operationalize the Loss and Damage Fund, which was launched at COP27 to address permanent climate change harms in developing countries. At the signing ceremony, COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev declared that funding would flow in 2025. “This is an important win for vulnerable communities,” he said. “It is the result of years of work.”
In April, the U.N. Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage met in Barbados to discuss strategies to roll out funding. The workplan, named the Barbados Implementation Modalities, will provide $250 million between 2025 and 2026 to developing countries to respond to climate losses and damages, with 50% of the Fund’s capital going to small island states and the least developed countries. Participating countries have pledged around $760 million to the Fund, but have only paid $321 million so far. The United States pulled out of the board of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage in March 2025, raising doubts as to whether its pledged $17.5 million will be fulfilled. The Fund’s $760 million commitment is still well shy of the $400 billion needed to fully cover developing countries’ permanent climate costs, according to the Loss and Damage Collaboration.
The UNFCCC and Climate Change Loss and Damage
EESI’s briefing, Climate Change Loss and Damage, provides background and context on how the issue of loss and damage has evolved over time under the UNFCCC.
Article 6 Carbon Markets
COP29 marked progress on the Paris Agreement’s Article 6 as countries agreed on international standards for a centralized carbon market, in addition to a mechanism for updating the standards. Carbon markets are trading systems through which countries may buy or sell units of permitted greenhouse gas emissions (“carbon credits”) in an effort to meet their emission reduction targets. The centralized standards agreed upon at COP29 are intended to direct resources to developing countries, save up to $250 billion per year when implementing national climate plans, and vastly accelerate climate plan implementation.
Since COP29, the European Union has proposed reintroducing international carbon credits to help meet its 2040 climate target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 90% relative to 1990 levels. The proposal would allow the European Union to use these international credits starting in 2036 to meet up to 3% of its 2040 climate target, provided they meet "robust and high integrity" criteria and align with Article 6. Indonesia also announced that it will allow international trade in carbon credits to resume after its 2021 moratorium. Prior to the moratorium, Indonesia was one of the largest suppliers of carbon credits to the international market. This new decree aims to attract foreign investment and advance Indonesia’s 2060 zero-emissions climate target.
The governments in Kenya, Singapore, and the United Kingdom have also launched and expanded plans this year for their respective countries' carbon credit regulations. Looking to COP30, the three countries announced the Coalition to Grow Carbon Markets, a government-led initiative designed to boost voluntary demand for carbon credits.
Global Methane Pledge
Announced at COP26, the Global Methane Pledge aims to reduce anthropogenic methane emissions by at least 30% by 2030 from 2020 levels. The United States, Azerbaijan (the COP29 presidency), and China led a summit at COP29 on reducing global methane and non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions to make further progress toward the pledge’s goal. In 2024, 159 countries, along with the European Union, signed the pledge (however, membership alone does not signal action). According to the International Energy Agency, current methane policies and regulations are projected to reduce emissions by around 25% by 2030, falling short of the goal.
Learn more about the Global Methane Pledge by watching EESI’s briefing, Methane Mitigation on the Global Stage.
The Methane Emissions Reduction Program (MERP) has been a significant part of the U.S. commitment to the Global Methane Pledge goal, providing up to $1.36 billion to reduce U.S. methane emissions through monitoring, detection, measurement, and quantification. However, with the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (P.L.119-21), $150 million dedicated to helping companies and communities cut emissions has been rescinded, and the program’s 2024 Waste Emissions Charge for polluters has been delayed until 2034. MERP’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, which aims to increase transparency and accountability for oil and natural gas facilities, is also being reconsidered as of October 2025.
Meanwhile, a number of other countries have announced plans to reduce their methane emissions. In 2024, the European Union announced its regulation on the reduction of methane emissions in the energy sector, which targets methane emissions from fossil fuel operations. China issued a new air pollution standard, the Coalbed Methane (Coal Mine Gas) Emission Standard, which requires coal mine operators to capture gas with an 8% or higher methane concentration and a flow rate of at least 10 cubic meters per minute. Kazakhstan has also made headway on reducing methane emissions by announcing a commitment at COP29 to develop methane regulations in the fossil fuel sector as well as upholding fines on companies violating flaring regulations. In the private sector, the U.N. Environmental Programme’s International Methane Emissions Observatory reported that over 150 energy companies—representing 42% of global oil and gas production—are improving their methane reporting.
Call out box: Read about methods to monitor methane in EESI’s article, “Out-of-This-World Methane Detection: Using Satellites to Track Super Emitters” and listen to EESI’s podcast episode “Empowering People Around the World with Stellar Satellite Data.”
Other notable updates
COP26 in 2021 saw the launch of the Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs), an initiative by wealthier nations to help fund clean energy transitions in coal-dependent developing nations. Since then, the program has mobilized $50 billion in pledges from the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan (among others) to be directed to energy transitions in South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Senegal. This year, the United States withdrew from JETP, leaving the remaining funder countries to fill in the gaps.
COP27’s Early Warnings for All Action Plan (EW4ALL) called for targeted investments of $3.1 billion between 2023 and 2027 to improve disaster risk knowledge, observations and forecasting, preparedness and response, and communication of early warnings for every person on Earth. EW4All National Consultative Workshops were held in The Gambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Belize, and Guyana in 2025 to advance this goal. The U.N. Development Programme announced a five-year project starting in 2025 to improve multi-hazard early warning systems for the most vulnerable communities in Antigua and Barbuda, Cambodia, Chad, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Fiji, and Somalia.
COP29 marked the first COP that included tourism in its action agenda, with talks culminating in the COP29 Declaration on Enhanced Action in Tourism signed by over 70 countries, including the United States. This declaration builds on momentum from COP26’s Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism. On World Tourism Day in September 2025, global leaders, industry experts, and community leaders met in Malaysia at the World Tourism Conference, which was themed “Tourism and Sustainable Transformation.” The event highlighted talks about driving sustainable tourism forward.
To keep up with EESI’s coverage of COP30, sign up for COP30 Dispatch: What Congress Needs to Know from Brazil and check out our resources page.
Author: Laura Gries
Advancing science-based climate solutions
Top-Rated Climate Nonprofit – 4-Star Charity