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Nov 8, 2025, 3:26:44 PM (12 days ago) Nov 8

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UN Climate Change – Global Climate Action

07 November 2025

Climate High-Level Champions'

Newsletter

In this month’s edition: With COP30 just days away, we take a look at the renewed COP 30 Climate Action Agenda, linking 400+ climate initiatives (like forest finance, renewable grids, and more). Plus, how a decade of progress since Paris is shaping the road to Belém

The Countdown to COP30

With less than a week until the UN Climate Conference (COP 30) in Belém, Brazil, the recently released NDC Synthesis Report shows that global climate action is accelerating. The climate plans submitted by countries so far, combined with further analysis of climate plans announced up to publication of the Synthesis report, collectively project around a 10 per cent reduction in emissions, below 2019 levels, by 2035.

These findings landed just as Hurricane Melissa struck Jamaica – leaving widespread destruction, power outages and flooding – a stark illustration of the escalating risks of a warming world. Climate action needs to accelerate to protect lives, livelihood and the prospects of a livable planet.

Critically, the NDC Synthesis report reveals that non-State actors - from business and investors, to cities, regions, and researchers - are playing a bigger role in delivering national climate plans. Reported involvement in implementation has surged by 20 per cent. Non-State actors are participating in the implementation of plans, via innovation, partnerships and investment mobilisation, among others.

Similarly, the recently released National Adaptation Plan (NAP) Synthesis Report revealed that nearly all developing nations are putting in place the foundation for building climate resilience – through coordination mechanisms, financing strategies, and monitoring systems involving women, youth, Indigenous Peoples, and the private sector. But while the direction is clear, the report warns that progress must speed up, with far greater and better-targeted finance needed to turn plans into real protection on the ground.

Bridging Political Ambition and Real-world Delivery

Growing momentum from outside government mirrors a broader shift in the COP process itself. Alongside the negotiations, COP30 is elevating the Action Agenda – a framework that draws in the “whole of society” to deliver climate solutions. Thousands of companies, cities, governments, Indigenous Peoples, and financial institutions will be breaking through bottlenecks to scale ‘real-world’ climate solutions. Think of it as the bridge between political ambition and real-world delivery — both sides working hand in hand. It doesn’t replace negotiations. It makes them stronger by ensuring that what’s promised at the political level actually turns into measurable progress on the ground.

For policymakers asking what modern multilateralism looks like in practice, and journalists seeking evidence that climate action can thrive amid political headwinds, the Action Agenda offers a showcase for collective ambition.

If the Action Agenda mechanism works – if governments, cities, regions, businesses, and investors leave Belém with concrete partnerships, capital flows, and plans for delivery that roll out in the weeks following the conference – then COP 30 will show how these summits can be launchpads for immediate action. Achieving resilient net zero communities is no longer about making new promises, but about delivering existing ones – faster, fairer, and at a far greater scale.

Find out more here.

Understanding the COP 30 Action Agenda: Systems Thinking at Scale

Think of the Action Agenda as the operating system that connects the key actors implementing climate solutions: the CEOs, governments, city planners, and investors moving billions and orchestrating supply chains that will power, feed, and insure the global economy. This collective energy has always existed, but now the Action Agenda is maturing.

The COP 30 Action Agenda includes six axes and 30 measurable objectives spanning energy, forests, agriculture, cities, human development, finance, and more. These weren't chosen arbitrarily: they target gaps identified by the first Global Stocktake, the UN's official assessment of climate progress.

How It Works: The Four-Step Activation Process

Coordinate: Initiatives with similar goals are organized into ‘Activation Groups,’ ensuring they collaborate.
Measure: These initiatives feed into the UNFCCC's Global Climate Action Portal (NAZCA). The portal has significantly scaled-up in size since the COP30 Activation Groups kicked off this year, meaning a boost in tracking and accountability with the coordination of more than 400 major climate initiatives worldwide participating in the Activation Groups.
Showcase: Proven solutions are documented in the ‘Granary of Solutions’ database.
Scale: The most promising solutions are converted into Plans to Accelerate Solutions – concrete roadmaps often led by governments themselves.

Where We Stand, Ten Years After Paris

As the world prepares to gather in Belém, it’s worth taking stock of how far the world has come since the Paris Agreement and why this progress matters for what comes next.

Ten years on, the numbers tell a rare good-news story. Solar power didn’t just outperform expectations – it obliterated them, expanding by more than 1,500% to become the cheapest source of electricity in history. Wind energy kept pace, and together renewables have now overtaken coal in global power generation. Clean electricity makes up more than 40% of the world’s supply.

‘10 Years Post Paris’ analysis by ECIU, October 2025.

The investment story is just as striking. For the first time, clean energy funding now outpaces fossil fuels by two to one. Electric vehicles – once a niche technology – account for one in five new car sales worldwide. Net zero targets now cover 83 per cent of the global economy.

Credit: ECIU, October 2025.

Perhaps most significantly, global CO₂ emissions have barely risen — up just 1.2 per cent since 2015, compared to an 18 per cent increase in the decade before Paris.

This is the backdrop for COP 30: a decade of undeniable progress built on clear policy signals, growing cooperation, and accelerating innovation. None of this means the work is done. Emissions must still fall steeply, and fast.

But the last decade offers an unmistakable lesson: policy signals matter. Cooperation works. The next decade’s challenge is not to prove that change is possible, but to finish the job.

Collaboration Key to 2030 Climate Goals, According to Breakthrough Agenda Report

The 2025 Breakthrough Agenda Report – an annual collaboration between the International Energy Agency and the Climate High-Level Champions – demonstrates why the Action Agenda's focus on coordination matters.

The 2025 edition finds that non-State actors (from countries, to companies, and global initiatives) can achieve far greater impact together by harmonising standards, aggregating demand, enabling trade, and mobilising finance than by acting alone. Examples from around the world highlight how cooperation works in practice: grid interconnections in Central America and Southeast Asia, zero-emission transport corridors in Europe and East Africa, and bilateral iron offtake agreements for steel decarbonisation between Namibia and Germany. These initiatives prove that cross-border coordination can reduce costs, enhance energy security, and de-risk investment in clean technologies.

Dan Ioschpe, COP 30 Climate High-Level Champion, said: “We're in an era of implementation. The Breakthrough Agenda Report 2025 shows that international collaboration is essential to making sustainable technologies the most affordable and accessible option in all sectors and regions by 2030.”

Read the report

Tropical Forest Forever Facility Launches at COP 30 Leaders’ Summit

Credit: Unsplash.

A major milestone in global forest finance was recently reached, as the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) launched yesterday at the COP 30 Leaders’ Summit in Belém. This flagship initiative of the COP 30 Action Agenda seeks to scale effective forest protection and restoration.

The TFFF is a Brazil-led partnership, supported by 11 founding countries, including the DRC, Colombia, France, Germany, Ghana, Indonesia, Malaysia, Norway, UAE, and the UK - and developed in partnership with Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities.

Building on Brazil’s USD 1 billion commitment announced during New York Climate Week, the Facility envisions a USD 125 billion performance-based fund to reward measurable results in forest protection and restoration. Designed to complement existing international efforts, such as REDD+, the Loss and Damage Fund, and Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, the TFFF is a long-term investment model designed to deliver large-scale finance for standing and restored tropical forests.

In recent weeks, the World Bank was confirmed as the trustee and host for the TFFF. “The World Bank’s decision transforms the TFFF from an idea into a fully operational reality,” Brazilian Finance Minister Fernando Haddad said. Once operational, the TFFF could generate around USD 4 billion annually — nearly triple the current volume of forest finance.

With its governance framework now in place, the Facility is ready for countries to follow Brazil’s lead by making their own pledges. Private finance is also being called to the table to help shape this transformative new chapter in global forest investment, alongside philanthropy and civil society partners.

"Halting and reversing deforestation is fundamental to achieving global climate goals,” said COP30 Climate High-Level Champion, Dan Ioschpe. “For too long, the immense value of standing tropical forests has been absent from the world’s balance sheet."

Baku Climate Action Week: A Cornerstone of Azerbaijan’s COP29 Legacy

Led with energy and vision by COP 29 Climate High-Level Champion Nigar Arpadarai, Baku Climate Action Week (BCAW) gathered leaders from across government, business, and civil society to advance the Action Agenda’s mission to mobilize the “whole of society” for climate solutions.

A cornerstone of Azerbaijan’s emerging COP 29 legacy, the week featured 46 events across 30 sectors, with strong engagement from major ministries and COP 29 President Mukhtar Babayev throughout.

A standout session on SMEs and climate resilience built the case for greater small-business engagement, with Jens Nielsen of the World Climate Foundation offering insights on scaling private-sector action.

Nigar Arpadarai commented:

“Small and medium enterprises employ most of the world’s people. They carry ingenuity and resilience, yet too often they struggle for finance and recognition. Recognising this, last year we launched the Climate-Proofing SMEs campaign, which I’m proud to say now brings together partners reaching almost 90 million small businesses worldwide, and why we recently launched the second and third chapters of the SME Finance Sprint calling for major financial institutions to step up their support for SMEs in emerging economies.”

Race to Resilience: Regions Driving Impact Through the Action Agenda

Across the Action Agenda, Race to Resilience partners are demonstrating how climate solutions are being scaled from the ground up - led by Indigenous knowledge, regional innovation, and small-business collaboration.

RegionsAdapt - an initiative by Race to Resilience partner Regions4 - is coordinating collaboration between regional governments in Quebec, Ecuador, Mexico, and Brazil and local Indigenous Peoples to integrate traditional knowledge into modern adaptation planning.

These efforts have so far placed 4,400 hectares under Indigenous co-management, engaged 900 people in co-designing biodiversity reserves, and revived three ancestral agricultural systems, strengthening both ecosystems and community resilience.

Learn more here.

RegionsAdapt is also mobilizing subnational governments and SME, contributing to the Climate Proofing SMEs Campaign, across Latin America, Europe, Africa, and North America to build systemic resilience. To date, it has restored 10,000 hectares, mapped 500,000 for preservation, and unlocked over €100 million in green SME credit - proof that adaptation can also drive economic opportunity.

Learn more here.

Inside the Race to Zero: Companies Driving a Just Transition

A Race to Zero report released this week, Towards a Just Transition, calls for fairness and inclusion to be placed at the centre of the global net zero transition.

Reflecting two years of work within the Race to Zero community, it explores the barriers companies face and how they can overcome them.

The report emphasises that there is no single approach: different sectors, regions, and business models will require different routes. It urges governments, businesses, and investors to align climate action with social protection, skills development, and community-driven solutions — ensuring that the shift to a green economy creates better jobs, shared prosperity, and leaves no one behind.

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Nov 16, 2025, 3:24:01 PM (4 days ago) Nov 16

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UN Climate Change – Global Climate Action

15 November 2025

Top of the COP

Climate High-Level Champions'

Newsletter

COP 30 Advances Climate Finance and Fast Action on Super Pollutants

Finance day at COP: Global Super-Taxonomy aims to standardize sustainable investment across 60+ countries; multilateral development banks work to unlock private capital for nature and climate projects; action on super-pollutants aims to cut fast-warming gases in developing countries.

Saturday 15th November

Welcome to Top of the COP, a daily roundup of the Global Climate Action Agenda highlights, brought to you by the Climate High-Level Champions.

Subscribe here to receive the daily Top of the COP as soon as it’s published.

Driving the Day:

As COP 30 unfolds in Belém, Brazil – at the edge of the world's largest tropical rainforest – UN Secretary-General António Guterres has set the tone: "It's no longer time for negotiations. It's time for implementation, implementation and implementation". The conference runs through November 21st, and the pressure to deliver is acute.

Today the Global Climate Action Agenda is looking at two big problems: the ‘money’ problem and the ‘methane’ problem (along with other ‘super pollutants’).

When it comes to the money problem, the question is what implementation looks like for climate finance. Climate finance sits in cross-cutting Axis 6 of the Global Climate Action Agenda – enabling and empowering everything from adaptation and resilience to nature protection, clean energy transitions, and beyond. Last year at COP 29 in Baku, countries agreed to triple finance to developing countries to USD 300 billion annually by 2035, called on all actors to scale up total public and private finance to developing countries to at least USD 1.3 trillion per year by 2035, and launched the ‘Baku-to-Belém Roadmap’.

But getting that money to flow efficiently requires fixing a number of barriers. For example, investors need a common language – clear standards for what counts as ‘sustainable’ so capital can move across borders without confusion or greenwashing. Second, even the best projects may need guarantees to make them bankable for private lenders who see developing countries as too risky. If you've ever tried to use a credit card abroad and hit currency conversion fees, you understand the translation barrier. If you've needed a co-signer for a loan, you understand the risk barrier. Today's announcements tackle both.

Meanwhile, while carbon dioxide dominates climate headlines, a group of ‘super pollutants’ – methane, black carbon, and similar gases – are quietly creating catastrophic near-term warming. The good news is that unlike CO2, which lingers for centuries, these gases disappear relatively quickly. That means cutting them delivers fast climate benefits.

Which sets the stage for today's announcements…

Common Language for Green Finance Unlocks Private Capital Towards Baku USD 1.3 Trillion Goal

Two linked initiatives today promise to reshape how sustainable finance works worldwide. Together, the Brazilian Sustainable Taxonomy (BST) and a new Global Super-Taxonomy aim to establish a common financial language for what counts as ‘sustainable’ – while allowing countries to keep full control of their own standards.

The BST is Brazil’s first national sustainable finance taxonomy and one of the world’s most comprehensive. It defines which investments qualify as sustainable based on climate mitigation and adaptation finance, as well as incorporating social criteria, including gender and racial equity – offering a robust framework to guide capital flows toward resilient, inclusive development.
The Super-Taxonomy takes the next step: creating a system that allows taxonomies across countries to be compared and translated into one another. Rather than imposing a single global standard, it creates interoperability, enabling investors to assess sustainability claims across borders, all coordinated under a COP 30 Plan to Accelerate Solutions on Super Taxonomy. The plan includes a Taxonomy Roadmap that aims to align more than 60 national taxonomies, helping countries attract private capital and reducing transaction costs – especially critical since fewer than one-third of developing countries currently have taxonomies in place.

Why this matters:

Imagine that an investor in Canada wants to fund solar projects in 'Country A' and wind farms in 'Country B,' but can't compare them. Country A might classify an activity as ‘green’ that Country B considers neutral. Both might accept projects that another country would flag as greenwashing. The investor, uncertain which standards to trust, simply invests elsewhere – in more familiar markets with clearer rules. Without clear definitions, capital that could be funding the energy transition sits idle, or worse, flows into projects falsely marketed as sustainable.

In Brazil alone, more than 400 billion Brazilian reals (roughly USD 80 billion) in ‘sustainable’ securities currently use inconsistent criteria. Multiply that confusion globally, and you have a massive greenwashing risk that scares away legitimate capital. By establishing clear rules on whether projects provide substantial contribution to climate protection or merely ‘do no significant harm’, the system provides a foundation for credible sustainable finance.

MDBs Scale Credit Enhancement to Make Nature and Climate Projects Bankable

A push to unlock private capital for climate and nature also landed today in Belém. Multilateral development banks signaled a coordinated shift toward using credit enhancements at far greater scale to help vulnerable countries access climate finance.

First, the Task Force on Credit Enhancement for Sustainability-linked Financing, previously launched at COP 28, announced a strengthened mandate and a new set of recommendations aimed squarely at one problem: Emerging markets and developing economies are being priced out of the transition just as their financing needs soar past USD 4 trillion. The Task Force will now move to a full implementation platform, aiming to standardize how multilateral development banks deploy guarantees so they can mobilize private capital more quickly and at much larger volumes. Their efforts help support the Baku to Belém Roadmap, which aims to unlock USD 1.3 trillion per year by 2035 across all sources of climate finance for developing countries.

Also announced at COP 30, a group of multilateral development banks published a set of recommended metrics for measuring impact and accelerating investment in nature projects, under the Belem Framework for Nature Finance. The guide tackles a critical problem: over 600 indicators and hundreds of metrics currently exist for nature projects, often tracking activities rather than actual ecological outcomes – creating confusion that scares away investors. The Guide is being used on a pilot basis by the Inter-American Development Bank Group in support of the fourth EcoInvest auction, which expands long-term financing for bioeconomy and nature-based projects with defined biodiversity outcomes. EcoInvest has already raised more than USD 13 billion in its first three auctions.

Why this matters:

Credit-enhanced sustainability-linked financing (SSLF) is already delivering real results for emerging markets and developing economies. To date, two countries have secured credit-enhanced sustainability-linked loans totaling USD 802 million, while seven countries have completed nine debt conversions, enabling the repurchase of USD 6.5 billion in sovereign debt and freeing up an estimated USD 2 billion for investments in nature, resilience, and social development.

For example Ecuador closed the world's largest debt-for-nature swap, buying back roughly USD 1.6 billion of debt for USD 644 million – a nearly 60% discount – saving the country around USD 1 billion in repayments over 17 years. The government committed to spending USD 18 million annually for 20 years on conservation in the Galápagos Islands. In December 2024, Ecuador announced a second conversion raising USD 460 million for Amazon rainforest protection.

A Climate Emergency Brake – Support for 30 Developing Countries to Slash Super Pollutants

The Super Pollutant Country Action Accelerator kicks off at COP 30, part of a Plan to Accelerate Solutions which will help 30 developing countries cut dangerous super pollutant gases by 2030. The Accelerator begins with USD 25 million for seven pioneer countries, including Indonesia, Nigeria, and Mexico, scaling to USD 150 million in its first phase. Each country receives approximately USD 4-5 million over three years, with funding tied to clear national milestones.

The initiative is modelled on the successful Montreal Protocol which halted the use of ozone damaging chemicals. It will improve measurement, end routine flaring of gases by oil and gas producers, cut waste and agricultural emissions, and help countries shift to cleaner technologies.

Why this matters:

Super pollutants, such as black carbon and methane create a perfect storm for people and economies:

Driving lethal near-term warming – contributing over half a degree of warming that can still be avoided by 2050.
Worsening air pollution – that causes nearly 8 million premature deaths a year, costing the world as much as 6.5% of GDP in health impacts and lost productivity.

Cutting these pollutants is one of the fastest ways to simultaneously protect climate stability, public health, and food supplies. Yet despite cost-effective solutions already existing, super pollutant action remains critically underfunded. For instance, methane mitigation received less than 2% of global climate finance between 2021–2022, according to a 2023 report by the Climate Policy Initiative.

News In Brief

The Open Coalition for Compliance Carbon Markets is bringing together countries to improve transparency, alignment, and cooperation across carbon pricing systems. With the carbon pricing market expanding rapidly – generating USD 100 billion in 2024 – the Coalition will strengthen a shared understanding of what “credible” carbon markets look like by aligning measurement practices, accounting rules, and high-integrity approaches to offsets. The Coalition will also explore future interoperability between national schemes, and work alongside existing global efforts – such as the World Bank’s new carbon-market funding tools. By aligning with these efforts, the Coalition can help countries build carbon pricing systems that are more credible, fair, and easy to compare, ultimately making carbon markets stronger and more ambitious.
GAWA Capital announced that the Kuali Fund – its climate adaptation investment vehicle supporting smallholder farmers and small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in emerging markets – is on track to reach EUR 195 million in commitments by year-end, following new investor backing. GAWA Capital is an impact investment firm focused on directing public and private finance toward underserved communities, and this third fundraising round (essentially its final step before full deployment) positions the fund to scale practical, locally driven resilience solutions such as climate-smart agriculture, water-efficient technologies, and risk-reducing financial tools. The surge in investor interest reflects growing recognition that adaptation is both urgent and investable, fully aligned with the COP 30 call to expand access to adaptation finance and strengthen frontline resilience.