COP30 Enters Crunch Week As Fights Over Money And Fossil Fuels Intensify

The COP30 climate summit enters its final week in Brazil with ministers heading into closed rooms to fight over climate money, fossil fuels and how to protect people already hit by rising heat, storms and floods. Civil society groups say trust is thin after a decade of broken promises.

One of the biggest flashpoints is a new global checklist for adaptation – a set of measures showing whether countries are helping communities cope with climate impacts.

African, Latin American and Arab negotiators are blocking approval of this 100-point checklist unless rich nations commit between $120 billion and $150 billion a year for adaptation by 2030.

The existing $40 billion pledge ends this year, and wealthy states are delivering only $25 billion.

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Climate Action Network (CAN), a coalition of more than 2,000 organisations, said talks now stand at a crossroads and warned that across all tracks “the implementation gap is a finance gap, and credibility will not be restored until that gap is addressed”.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva opened the summit by warning that climate change “is not a distant threat but a current tragedy”, and called for “a road map for humanity to overcome, in a just and planned way, its dependence on fossil fuels, reverse deforestation, and mobilise the resources needed to do so”.

Ministers now face rising pressure to deliver.

Money gap

A draft text on the Global Goal on Adaptation includes an option to triple adaptation finance by 2030 to at least $120 billion a year.

CAN said this shows recognition of need but not yet agreement on delivery. It said that in talks on national adaptation plans and just transition, developing countries cannot implement their climate plans “without real, predictable, grants-based finance”.

The Loss and Damage Fund has opened its first funding requests, but with only $250 million allocated for 2025-26, critics say it is woefully under-resourced.

The Union of Concerned Scientists, a US-based science advocacy group, said the shortage of climate finance from richer nations “remains a festering source of frustration and distrust for lower-income countries”, especially on adaptation.

Brazil’s flagship Tropical Forest Forever Facility has secured $5.5 billion of its $125 billion target. Norway has pledged $3 billion, but only if Brazil secures another $9.8 billion first.

Fossil fuel showdown

Ministers are under pressure to turn Lula’s roadmap vision into concrete action.

Small island states and several African delegations want stronger phase-out language for oil, gas and coal to keep the 1.5C goal alive.

Brazil is pushing for a formal fossil fuel phase-out plan, building on the 2023 Dubai deal to begin transitioning away from oil, gas and coal.

A coalition including France, Britain, Colombia, Denmark, Germany and Kenya supports the move, but major producers such as Saudi Arabia and Russia are resisting.

More than 70 organisations have issued an open letter urging governments to create fossil-free exclusion zones in high-integrity tropical forests.

New maps show oil and gas blocks overlapping 183 million hectares of tropical forest across the Amazon, Congo Basin and Southeast Asia.

Cities are adding their own pressure.

C40 Cities, a network of almost 100 mayors, says Cop30 needs to move from talk to action with a clear plan for a just and orderly fossil fuel phase-out. C40 member cities have already pledged to halve their fossil fuel use by 2030.

The group says Brazil’s stance is helping push that shift. “Brazil is sending a powerful signal that the world must turn commitments into action and end the fossil fuel era”, said C40's Caterina Sarfatti.

London mayor Sadiq Khan told city leaders that “the climate wreckers want to chain us to the fossil fuels of the past”, but said the alternative is “freedom of lower bills and better health” and “the hope of a fairer, safer, cleaner, brighter, and more prosperous tomorrow”.

Indigenous voices

Belem has seen the largest indigenous presence at any Cop, with 3,000 people including 1,000 accredited leaders. Brazil has created a People’s Circle chaired by Indigenous Minister Sonia Guajajara.

A peaceful march of up to 70,000 people moved through Belem on Saturday, including a staged funeral for coal, oil and gas.

Indigenous leaders are demanding land rights, consent-based decisions and an end to what they call “extractive violence” linked to fossil fuels and transition minerals.

“This was promised to be the indigenous Cop, yet thousands of indigenous peoples are still outside”, said Larissa Baldwin-Roberts, a Widjabul Wia-bal woman and board member of Climate Action Network International.

She said they were promised access to be heard on “what’s happening to their territories – the privatisation of their waters, the illegal mining of their land”.

Aya Khourshid, an Egyptian-Palestinian member of A Wisdom Keepers Delegation – a group of indigenous representatives from around the world – said the Cop so far was a testament that unfortunately “for indigenous peoples to be heard, they actually need to be disruptive”.

The Union of Concerned Scientists said the Amazon setting has pushed the link between biodiversity and climate “to the forefront”.

Senior climate scientist Astrid Caldas said indigenous and local communities “play an integral role in conservation and stewardship of the land” and that closer cooperation between climate, biodiversity and desertification agreements is “a welcome signal”.

Information integrity is also on the agenda for the first time.

The new Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change, the first Cop initiative aimed at securing accurate and reliable climate information, signals what the Union of Concerned Scientists called “unprecedented international collaboration to address pernicious disinformation”.

The group warned that big tech is amplising and monetising disinformation on a range of topics including climate change.

Just transition clash

Just transition has become a major political clash.

CAN said the G77+China push for a Global Mechanism for Just Transition was the standout move of week one, echoing long-running demands from civil society and trade unions for a Belem Action Mechanism.

The European Union has put forward its own proposal.

Trade and carbon markets are adding strain.

Developing countries want unilateral trade measures such as the EU’s border carbon tax examined in climate talks, while rich nations refuse outright, activists warn.

In carbon market talks under Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement, which covers global carbon trading rules, it said some states tried to weaken safeguards – putting environmental integrity and human rights at risk.

Brazil avoided an early agenda fight by moving four sensitive issues into closed presidency consultations – climate finance duties under Article 9.1, EU trade measures, emissions transparency and keeping 1.5C alive.

A Sunday progress report from the presidency is expected to guide ministers this week.

UN climate chief Simon Stiell has urged countries “to give a little to get a lot” as ministers take over.