Baku-Belém Roadmap Proposes Global Action Plan to Unlock Climate Finance
- COP30
- 5 de novembro de 2025
English VersionThe Baku-Belém Roadmap sends a clear signal to the global financial ecosystem — including ministries of finance, multilateral development banks (MDBs), international financial institutions (IFIs), and private and philanthropic actors — that, with strengthened action and financial reforms, the US$1.3 trillion goal of the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on Climate Finance can be achieved. Delivering on this ambition is now essential to maintaining the credibility of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) process.
Jointly developed by the COP Presidencies of Baku and Belém, the Roadmap — launched on Wednesday, November 5 — is not a binding document. This means it does not impose formal obligations on UNFCCC Parties. Instead, it serves as a guiding action plan, offering a set of strategic recommendations to accelerate global climate finance.
The Roadmap should be supported and carried forward at COP30.
The main political signals go to three groups:
- Governments: It calls for a manyfold scaling of international public climate finance to support developing countries, particularly grants and highly concessional finance that is catalytic and mobilises additional resources. It also encourages the embedding climate of priorities into financial policy and national budgets to facilitate investment, in line with ongoing initiatives such as the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action.
- MDBs and IFIs: It calls on them to make action to lower the cost of capital in developing countries a decisive priority. This includes reforming capital adequacy frameworks and scaling concessional flows, while expanding guarantees, risk-sharing facilities and currency hedging for clean energy, echoing the G20’s Capital Adequacy Framework Review.
- Private and philanthropic actors: It underscores the need for them to engage in blended finance and innovation in adaptation and energy transition instruments to help unlock investment at scale in developing countries.
KEY POINTS FROM THE ROADMAP
- The Roadmap outlines how developed countries can strengthen predictability in climate finance: preparing a delivery plan for the USD 300 billion goal, making new forward public climate finance commitments and sharing them in their next Article 9.5 communications in 2026. It also suggests the secretariat establish a registry for this forward-looking information. These steps are critical to reinforce the core principles of the Paris Agreement, particularly CBDR-RC.
- The Roadmap highlights the urgent need for scaling up finance for adaptation, including through a mindset shift to view adaptation as a strategic economic investment with strong long-term returns. It highlights important opportunities for private finance to support adaptation while emphasising the centrality of public finance, including the opportunity to have a replacement for the expiring Glasgow pledge to double adaptation finance.
- The Roadmap proposes many actions to address the cost of capital, including the immediate step for credit rating agencies to establish a structured dialogue with Ministries of Finance to advance refinements in rating methodologies. This step is crucial to help address the cost of capital in developing countries by addressing mispriced risk, and ensuring that raising climate ambition (such as choosing not to develop new oil and gas fields) does not negatively impact credit ratings.
- On the energy transition, the Roadmap acknowledges the urgent need to reduce energy-related emissions and rightly highlights the cost advantages and central role of scaling renewable energy. Importantly, it also recognizes the challenge posed by fossil fuel subsidies, a welcome reference that opens the door for stronger action. Building on this, Parties now have an opportunity to commit to a clear pathway for phasing out these subsidies, a critical step to accelerate the shift away from fossil dependence and free up valuable public resources. A gradual and well-planned repurposing of fossil fuel subsidies would unlock significant domestic finance for climate action, including clean energy deployment and resilience efforts in developing countries.
- The Roadmap clearly articulates the potential of blended finance as a critical enabler, outlining how international public finance can be deployed more strategically to mobilize private capital rather than serve primarily as direct funding. It notes that over 60% of public finance needs are for interventions that de-risk projects and attract institutional investors, reinforcing that leveraging public resources is essential to closing the global investment gap at scale.
- The Roadmap places significant emphasis on early-stage deployment of nascent technologies such as CCUS through public funding. While acknowledging its potential role in addressing hard-to-abate industrial emissions and supporting low-emissions fuels and carbon removal, this emphasis is concerning given the document offers limited clarity on feasibility, costs, and risks of prolonging fossil-fired assets. There is a risk that this focus could divert resources from proven clean energy solutions with faster, more secure climate impact.
THE WAY FORWARD
Much of the context and opportunities presented are already well known. The real test for the Roadmap is how actionable it proves to be: whether it moves beyond diagnosis to action, providing clear guidance and a credible plan for implementation and follow-up.
The Roadmap does what it can in this regard. It outlines specific and constructive actions for a wide range of actors, including governments, financial institutions, multilateral climate funds, credit rating agencies, creditors, and the private sector. It also highlights, in Section III, specific near-term opportunities (over the next 2–3 years) that could help kick-start progress toward implementation. This is the most significant part of the report, as it presents the greatest opportunity for real action and follow-up.
The authors themselves, the CMA 6 and CMA 7 Presidencies, also make the one explicit commitment to follow-up: saying they will convene an independent expert group and a series of dialogues in 2026 to drive progress on implementation. This is critical, as without ownership from the authors of their product, follow through from others is unlikely.
But neither Brazil nor Azerbaijan can guarantee follow-up themselves. Parties need to step up at COP30 and explicitly endorse the Roadmap and its implementation. This starts with following the Roadmap’s suggestions to integrate its key action areas into assessments of progress under the NCQG and the next GST. And it continues with concrete commitments from Parties, the private sector, and financial actors to act on specific recommendations and integrate them within the Action Agenda.
CONCLUSION
The Roadmap does a good job of synthesising existing research and the latest thinking on scaling up climate finance into developing economies. It is particularly strong on strategies to mobilise private capital and enhance coherence across multilateral development banks and finance institutions. It also appropriately recognises the longstanding adaptation finance gap and the central role that COP30 aims to play in elevating adaptation as a global priority.
However, the document remains weak on some critical issues for the climate agenda. While acknowledging fossil fuel subsidy reform is a step in the right direction, the Roadmap falls short of setting clear expectations for a phase-out timeline and places disproportionate reliance on CCUS as a major investment priority. This is concerning, as public finance must be carefully safeguarded to avoid locking in expensive technologies that prolong fossil fuel use. Multiple submissions emphasized that subsidy phase-out is a necessary condition for aligning climate finance with mitigation goals; without this clarity, the Roadmap risks diluting efforts to accelerate the shift toward clean energy systems.
Notwithstanding these limitations, the Roadmap is an important document that outlines a strong programme of action to achieve the goal of scaling up climate investments in developing countries to US$1.3 trillion per year by 2035. It should be welcomed at COP30 and commitment to follow-up and implementation must be mobilised.
The central challenge for the Roadmap is and was always going to be its follow-up. The limited follow up commitment from the CMA 6 and CMA 7 Presidencies is important but insufficient on its own. Real progress depends on leadership from Parties and other stakeholders both within and beyond the UNFCCC process. The baton must be picked up by the wider international community. If it fails to do so, the Roadmap risks being perceived as yet another empty political signal and potentially increasing turbulence at a moment when stability and unity are critical to securing progress.
COP30 in Belém is more than just another climate summit. It is a test for multilateralism and for the international system’s capacity to transform commitments into real action. In a context of global instability and a crisis of confidence in cooperation mechanisms, the climate agenda can only move forward if it is able to demonstrate concrete results for people’s lives. This, in turn, requires a reinvigoration of efforts to align finance with climate action. The Roadmap offers an opportunity to do this, and Parties must step up at COP30 to endorse and operationalise it.
The US$1.3 trillion target is our destination: it is time for governments, the private sector, and financial institutions to show they are willing to follow through on the action and reforms needed to get there.
