Finance was front and centre during negotiations at COP 30. Following agreement on the new collective quantified goal on climate finance (NCQG) agreed at COP 29, developing country Parties remained frustrated with the lack of predictability regarding the provision of climate finance from developed countries, particularly for adaptation. This led to a concerted push by developing country Parties to establish forward work focused on Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement (the paragraph that establishes the legal responsibility for developed countries to provide climate finance to developing countries) and to set a target of tripling adaptation finance by 2030. This article outlines the COP 30 outcomes on these priorities as well as what to expect for 2026 and beyond.
Tripling adaptation finance
The push for tripling adaptation finance at COP 30 was led by the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Group. In the months preceding COP 30, the LDC Group made a specific call for developed countries to triple their provision of adaptation finance to developing countries from 2025 levels by 2030 – to at least US$ 120 billion per year. Despite being much less than the estimated adaptation finance needs of developing countries, the LDC Group were fighting an uphill battle. Developed countries flatly rejected a new finance target after having agreed the NCQG the year before. The projected increase in finance required to meet the LDC Group’s proposal also appeared to fly in the face of current political realities, with official development assistance (ODA) being reduced rather than increased in many developed countries – and cut entirely in the USA.
The adaptation finance negotiations took place across multiple rooms, including the Global Goal on Adaptation and multiple finance workstreams. The final outcome represented a difficult compromise brokered by the COP 30 Presidency through their consultations and captured in the ‘Mutirão Decision’. During the COP, developing countries finally rallied behind the LDC Group’s ask, while developed countries held their ground regarding the quantum and in opposing the finance as coming solely from developed countries and thereby being at odds with the NCQG’s contributor base. Paragraph 53 of the Mutirão Decision captured the final agreed outcome:
Reaffirms the doubling by 2025 in paragraph 18 of decision 1/CMA.3, calls for efforts to at least triple adaptation finance by 2035 in the context of decision 1/CMA.6, including paragraph 16 thereof, and urges developed country Parties to increase the trajectory of their collective provision of climate finance for adaptation to developing country Parties;
There are three main components to this paragraph that are important to understand and that account for how agreement was reached in Belém:
1. An unclear baseline, and a 2035 target: While the paragraph retained the ‘tripling’ ambition, the timeline was pushed from 2030 in an earlier draft to 2035 to accommodate the political limits in developed countries. However, the actual target number is unclear as no baseline year is stated. This lack of clarity helps reaching diplomatic agreements, but can be unhelpful for real world delivery. The interpretation that should be carried forward is a 2025 baseline year. This is the year the COP 30 decision was adopted and the target year of ‘doubling’ that the decision reaffirms. While 2025 figures will not be available until 2027 at the earliest, they should be higher than the latest figures of US$32.4 billion in 2022. Assuming the ‘doubling’ is met, this would mean 2025 levels of approximately US$ 40 billion and a tripling target of approximately US$120 billion by 2035.
2. A target in line with the NCQG: The paragraph sets the tripling of adaptation finance in the context of decision 1/CMA.6 – the NCQG decision. This has several implications
a. The first is that the contributors responsible for achieving the tripling are based on the NCQG, particularly for the US$300 billion target in paragraph 8 of the decision 1/CMA.6. This means developed country Parties should ‘take the lead’ in achieving the goal in line with their responsibilities under Article 9 of the Paris Agreement, with voluntary contributions from developed countries and South-South cooperation also counted and encouraged. This differs from the previous urge to double adaptation by 2025, which was only for developed country Parties.
b. The second is the acknowledgement that grant-based and highly concessional finance is needed for adaptation, per paragraph 14 of decision 1/CMA.6, and should therefore make up the lion’s share of the tripling of adaptation finance.
c. The third is affirmation that in achieving a balance of mitigation and adaptation finance, that the needs and priorities of small island developing states (SIDS) and LDCs should receive particular attention, per paragraph 17 of decision 1/CMA.6. This means the tripling should also see a greater share of adaptation finance reaching SIDS and LDCs.
d. The fourth is the connection to the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA). Paragraph 18 of decision 1/CMA.6 calls for taking into account the targets of the GGA in the dramatic scaling up of adaptation finance. This means that in achieving the tripling, significant progress should be made towards the GGA targets. The indicators for the GGA targets adopted at COP 30 should provide further direction in this regard.
e. The fifth is that a significant share of the tripling of adaptation finance should come through the multilateral climate funds like the Adaptation Fund, Green Climate Fund, and Global Environment Facility family of funds. This stems from the reference to paragraph 16 of 1.CMA/6, which calls for efforts to triple the outflow of these funds by 2030.
3. The need for developed countries to immediately scale up adaptation finance: The third key part of the paragraph is the second clause, which can easily be overlooked in the shadow of the call for ‘tripling’. While the tripling of adaptation finance and NCQG are only due in 2035, adaptation needs in developing countries are urgent today. This second clause implies that developed country parties should reverse recent cuts in ODA and begin increasing their adaptation finance now. This is important for two reasons. Firstly, most developed countries’ international climate finance commitments expire in 2025 or early 2026 and must be renewed. Secondly, to avoid repeating the US$100bn goal experience where climate finance remained well below the target trajectory until late increase to eventually meet the goal (2 years late).
All considered, the call for tripling adaptation finance is a very consequential part of the Mutirão Decision. Before COP 30, adaptation finance was facing a cliff edge with no firm commitment within the NCQG and the expiration of both the previous ‘doubling’ target and pledges from contributing countries. Paragraph 53 falls far short of meeting total developing country adaptation needs, but as a concrete collective commitment to adaptation finance it is the first step towards an urgent course correction.
US$120 billion by 2035 would be less than half of the US$300 billion goal, but still entails a significant shift from the business-as-usual allocation of climate finance. US$120 billion would be approximately 40% of the US$300 billion goal, which is significantly more than the 28% share of adaptation in 2022 climate finance levels. While this is not ‘new money’ in the sense it remains within the US$300 billion goal, in practice it will require greater fiscal outlays from contributing countries. This is because funding adaptation generally requires more grants and highly concessional finance than funding mitigation.
These real implications are backed up by the second half of the paragraph, urging immediate action to shift adaptation finance onto a trajectory to meet the target. Early analysis has been done by the World Resources Institute showing that while significant efforts will be required, reaching US$120 billion by 2035 is indeed possible. Paragraph 53 has the potential to be looked back on as a turning point for adaptation finance, but only if Parties act immediately to begin delivering on it.
New work programme on climate finance
Another important outcome for adaptation finance at COP 30 came in response to the push by developing country Parties at COP 30 for dedicated work on Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement. This push was resisted by developed country Parties, which insisted that Article 9 should be considered as a whole. The eventual landing zone was a new work programme on climate finance as phrased in paragraph 54 of the Mutirão Decision:
Decides to establish a two-year work programme on climate finance, including on Article 9, paragraph 1, of the Paris Agreement in the context of Article 9 of the Paris Agreement as a whole;
Article 9.1 and the requirement for developed countries to provide climate finance is particularly important for closing the adaptation finance gap. While private finance can play an important role, the majority of adaptation needs in developing countries are public goods requiring grant-based or highly-concessional public finance. Article 9.1 is critical to this because it focuses exactly on this ‘provision’ element of climate finance.
Paragraph 54 of the decision does focus on Article 9.1, but places this in the context of Article 9 as a whole. It is also included as part of an overall work programme on climate finance that may also have a broader scope. While this may dilute focus on Article 9.1, it also creates additional opportunities for promoting adaptation finance. Parties will have to agree the scope for the work programme at SB64 in June 2026, but some opportunities for advancing adaptation finance are as follows:
- Clarifying what a balance of finance provided and mobilised looks like: the NCQG target of US$300 billion per year by 2035 does not distinguish between how much should be provided with public finance versus mobilised private finance. This has implications for adaptation finance, as adaptation requires more provision of public finance.
- Accelerating implementation of the NCQG: The two-year timeline of the work programme aligns with time before the first NCQG progress report by the Standing Committee on Finance on 2028. The work programme can therefore usefully discuss priorities for accelerating the early implementation of the NCQG, which currently lacks a clear space on the negotiation agenda in the absence of the first progress report. This includes responding to the NCQG decision’s recognition of the need to dramatically scale up adaptation finance by securing renewed climate finance commitments from contributors.
- Tackling the question of contributors: the focus on Article 9.1 in the context of Article 9 as whole sets up a conversation (or conflict) on contributors and to what extent Parties are fulfilling climate finance responsibilities in the context of the Paris Agreement and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capacities. For example, how should developed countries’ provision of climate finance under Article 9.1 be assessed, including in the context of the encouragement of other Parties to also provide under Article 9.2 and the ‘global effort’ to mobilise finance in Article 9.3? These questions can appear academic but in fact have significant implications for the provision of climate finance. Parties find it politically much easier to secure domestic budget commitments for climate finance if they see fairness in terms of who else is contributing. These questions will come to the fore as Parties look to respond to the call for tripling adaptation finance. What share of the NCQG and of US$120 billion of adaptation finance should be coming from developed country Parties?
These macro questions will not be fully answered in the two-year work programme. However, they are important to tackle in order to bring the clarity required to build momentum behind scaling up adaptation finance. The new work programme provides an opportunity to dive into these conversations, and others, without waiting for a future NCQG agenda item.
To have productive deliberations, however, Parties will first need to avoid the trap some previous processes have fallen into of failing to agree a scope or modalities. We have seen two years of the UAE Dialogue, which was meant to focus on GST implementation, be largely wasted due to an ongoing stalemate over agreeing its scope. There is a risk that this could happen with the finance work programme if, for example, Parties get stuck over the degree to which the focus will be Article 9.1 versus other paragraphs of Article 9 or related issues.
