From rhetoric to reality: Why COP30 must become a bank of actions

With climate impacts mounting, the summit's final days must deliver a credible finance plan, realistic transition pathways and stronger action-focused alliances

After nearly 10 days of intense negotiations, the message rings clear from the rooms in Belém: We are in the hard part of this Conference of Parties (COP). The opening rhetoric has faded, and the task now is to structure a response commensurate with the climate crisis unfolding outside these halls. The grim drumbeat of climate impacts provides the only true scorecard: Landslides from relentless rain have killed dozens in Indonesia and Vietnam; a powerful tornado has struck Portugal; and a new study in Nature reveals that in Mumbai, rain causes over 8 per cent of the deaths during the monsoon, with the burden falling overwhelmingly on the vulnerable. The first half this year alone saw weather catastrophes cause over $100 billion in damage. This is not future risk; this is the brutal arithmetic of a changing climate now translating into a haemorrhaging balance sheet. 

The Paris Agreement’s (in 2015) framework of blending top-down ambition with bottom-up action helped steer the world from a catastrophic 3-3.5 degrees Celsius trajectory a decade ago to 2.3-2.6 degrees Celsius now. But a decade on, we have rewarded makers of promises over keepers of promises. The process under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) risks becoming a ledger of broken commitments. It is time to transform it into a “bank of actions”. For this to happen, the final days in Belém must deliver on three non-negotiables. 

First, and most urgently, we need a credible finance road map, not more number games. The Baku-to-Belém road map’s aim of $1.3 trillion annually by 2035 acknowledges the scale, but as India’s Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav recently put it, delivery must start with “new, additional, and concessional climate finance at a scale of trillions, not billions”. The immediate, gritty question is: How do we get from the current $100 billion to the first $300 billion? We need a timeline and a clear approach for mobilisation. One of the reasons the old model failed was that it did not leverage private capital; the ratio was one-to-five for private to public finance, when it should have been the reverse. 

Structurally, we must utilise public capital to attract private investment on a large scale. This means tackling the root causes of high capital costs in developing countries, including reforming the role of credit-rating agencies, whose outdated risk assessments stifle investment. 

Second, we must confront the adaptation finance abyss. The Adaptation Gap Report of the United Nations Environment Programme delivered a stunning indictment. It found developing countries needed $310 billion - $365 billion annually by 2035, but received a paltry $26 billion in 2023. Crucially, 58 per cent of this came as debt, exacerbating fiscal crises. We cannot solve the climate crisis by deepening the debt crisis. Discussion on indicators for adaptation should enable countries to pick metrics suited to their national circumstances — and ensure there is a pathway to scaled-up and concessional adaptation finance. We must rebalance international public capital towards adaptation on concessional terms. 

Third, any discussion on the road map for transitioning away from dependence on fossil fuels should be nuanced, not absolutist edicts. While Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva spoke about the need for road maps, he mentioned “dependence”, indicating that this is not a simple binary of “dirty” versus “clean energy”. Dependence encompasses jobs, public finance, and entire regional economies. An abrupt transition risks social dislocation. The challenge for developing countries is a pentathlon, not leapfrog: They are managing five simultaneous transitions — from no access to modern energy; from rural to urban demand patterns; from growth to sustainable growth without deindustrialising; from weak to stronger bargaining power in global markets; and from centralised to decentralised, digitalised grids. Political durability requires co-creating a green economy built on clean energy access, modern grids, lower finance costs, and open intellectual property for hard-to-abate sectors. This is how we ensure the dignity of labour is preserved through economic empowerment, not just voluntary retirement checks. 

Fourth, COP30 (the 30th edition of the COP) must catalyse a new variable geometry of partnerships by formally endorsing and expanding “coalitions of the doing”. The outcome should encourage new, agile alliances that leverage green comparative advantage to build interdependent supply chains, secure critical minerals, and decarbonise heavy industry. It should also champion a new partnership that leverages digital public infrastructure to drive climate investment for energy access or increasing resilience, moving these initiatives from the sidelines to the core of the implementation agenda. Similarly, trade measures that are unilateral should give way to capturing wider opportunities in clean-energy value chains across geographies. India has been a pioneer in this new model of partnership. A recent study by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) finds India is the only country from the Global South to have mobilised countries at par with the COP presidencies — an average of 47 countries per initiative — through platforms like the International Solar Alliance, Global Biofuels Alliance, and Leadership Group for Industry Transition. These are voluntary, focused, and action-oriented. 

The proof of this approach is already visible in India’s experience. We are acting on climate change because it is in our national interest, not because of commitments alone. Our emission intensity has declined by over 36 per cent since 2005 and is on track to decrease by 48-57 per cent by 2030. Market designs, such as reverse auctions, drove down costs, revealing solar-storage tariffs at record lows. CEEW research also calculates that policies already in place will result in four billion tonnes of emission reduction this decade, equivalent to 1.6 times the European Union’s emission in 2023. The result? We attracted nearly $50 billion in energy transition investment last year alone. This is the shift from climate finance to climate investment in action. 

The laws of thermodynamics are indifferent to our geopolitics. COP30 will be a success only if the final gavel marks a threshold. We must cross from a chamber of debates into an era of buildout, where the only diplomacy that counts is the one that connects capital to projects and communities to resilience. By shifting our focus to investment, co-development, institution-building, and action-oriented coalitions, we may reinvigorate the spirit of Paris. The task before us is no longer to fix a broken system but to make consistent deposits of progress before the planet forecloses on our future.

The author is chief executive officer, Council on Energy, Environment and Water, and South Asia’s special envoy to COP30. The views are personal