UN Climate Change Conference 2025: COP30 in Belém at a glance
Brazil is hosting this year’s UN Climate Change Conference. We answer the key questions about COP30.
When and where will the UN Climate Change Conference 2025 take place?
The next UN Climate Change Conference will be held in Belém, Brazil, from 10 to 21 November 2025. In the previous two years, Azerbaijan and the United Arab Emirates – two authoritarian, oil-producing states – hosted the UN Climate Change Conference. It is now Brazil’s turn, and once again we have a democratic country with ambitious climate policy goals. Expectations in the run-up to the event are correspondingly high, even if the largest per-capita emitter, the United States (US) under President Donald Trump, has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement for the second time. Trump announced the withdrawal immediately after taking office in January 2025, describing climate change as a ‘green energy scam’ before the UN General Assembly a few months later. Many people are hoping all the more that the other states will not be influenced by this, but will show willing and dig deep into their pockets. In Brazil, we will see whether they continue to attach importance to the issue or follow the example of the US and scale back climate change mitigation and adaptation programmes.
Why was Brazil chosen as the host country for COP30?
The venue for the climate summit rotates between five regional groups at the United Nations: Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, Western Europe and Others (including North America and Australia), and Eastern Europe. This time it was the turn of the Latin America and the Caribbean region, and the names of Brazil and Belém were put forward. The proposal was accepted in consensus by the Conference of the Parties in 2023. As a rule, this body decides two years in advance who is to be the next-but-one host.
What are the goals of the UN Climate Change Conference?
The members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meet once a year at the UN Climate Change Conference to drive forward the transition to a climate-neutral world and to further develop and implement the resolutions of the 2015 Paris Agreement. The goals of the Agreement are to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero by the middle of the century (net zero) and to remain below the 1.5°C target. Global warming must not exceed pre-industrial levels, otherwise the consequences would no longer be manageable. Implementing the Paris Agreement also involves helping people and societies adapt to the changing climate. The transformation will be very expensive, with figures estimated at many hundreds of billions of US dollars annually. These sums cannot be borne by developing countries alone.
Why are people talking about a ‘forest’ COP?
In Brazil, the role of forests – especially tropical forests – in mitigating climate change will be very much at the forefront. The backdrop provides the clue – Belém is situated at the edge of the Amazon basin. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian President, has repeatedly emphasised how valuable forests are. He claims to have cut deforestation by half since taking office two years ago, just as he made deforestation an issue during his first presidency from 2003 to 2011. To underscore this, Brazil will present a new fund for the global protection of tropical rainforests at COP30. The Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) aims to mobilise 125 billion US dollars – the largest sum ever for forest protection – from public and private sources. Brazil itself has already committed to providing one billion US dollars for the fund and hopes other states will make further contributions in Belém.
Is input expected from the host country?
Brazil has taken its role as host very seriously from the outset and in various letters to the country representatives has called for action and commitment. Its declared aim at the COP is to revitalise the climate process and accelerate implementation of the Paris Agreement. Social aspects will also play a role. Brazil is working for a just transition to a climate-friendly world in which the poor, Indigenous Peoples and local communities are not unduly burdened, but compensated for hardships and included in decision-making. Apart from the TFFF, the South American country has therefore prepared an Action Agenda for the negotiations, comprising six thematic axes and 30 key objectives. These include forest protection as well as the energy transition, sustainable agriculture and environmentally sound water use. The agenda clearly states, for instance, that fossil fuels are to be phased out in favour of renewable energies. In the negotiations, Brazil is not only aiming to reaffirm and codify this and other objectives, but also to link these to concrete solutions and implementation steps. The host country has thus set itself ambitious goals for the conference.
is aimed to be mobilised from the Tropical Forest Forever Facility for forest protection
above pre-industrial levels is the expected rise in average global temperature by the end of the century without additional efforts
What is the situation regarding global warming?
According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), 2024 was the warmest year on record since the start of temperature measurements 175 years ago: temperatures were 1.55°C on average above pre-industrial levels. This does not yet mean that the world has permanently exceeded the 1.5°C target, but we are certainly heading in that direction according to the WMO. We can be 86 per cent certain that this target will also be exceeded in at least one of the next five years. According to the Climate Action Tracker, without additional efforts average global temperatures will be around 2.7°C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.
Why is it called COP30?
COP stands for ‘Conference of the Parties’. These parties – or countries – are signatories to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, a binding agreement under international law. Each COP is given a number and we have now reached 30. The first UN Climate Change Conference (COP1) was held in Berlin in 1995.
Who will be taking part in the conference?
The 198 Parties to the Convention will be taking part in the conference, including the Palestinian territories and the Holy See. Other participants include ‘observers’, which are mainly international organisations. Several thousand NGOs will also be represented there. The conferences are organised by the UNFCCC Secretariat in cooperation with the host country. The largest COP, with around 100,000 attendees, was held in Dubai in 2023. This year, around half that number are expected, as Brazil made clear in advance that it wanted a smaller and more efficient conference. The lower numbers are also a reflection of sky-rocketing hotel prices in Belém, which have risen beyond all reasonable limits. This makes attendance impossible for many interested parties, especially those from the Global South.
What is the Paris Agreement?
This legally binding document was adopted by the Parties to the Convention at COP21 in the French capital in 2015. It is considered a breakthrough in international climate policy, as agreement was reached on a common climate action target, namely to limit global warming to less than 2oC and, if possible, less than 1.5oC. Since then, the international community has worked with national climate protection targets, referred to as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which each country must set out and submit at regular intervals. These NDCs are expected to become more and more ambitious until emissions of harmful greenhouse gases are low enough to enable climate change to be brought under control. In Belém, the participants will celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Paris Agreement.
What were the outcomes of COP29 in Baku?
Experts did not have high expectations for COP29 in Azerbaijan. The host country and its authoritarian regime were the focus of much criticism. Indeed, looking back, the COP is considered rather insubstantial. Afterwards, some even claimed it had failed because there was a lobby at the negotiations that from the outset was bent on delaying the talks and watering down the wording. This put a damper on proceedings. But even this COP did not conclude without any results or progress. A compromise was reached on climate financing: the target amount was tripled from 100 to 300 billion US dollars a year starting from 2026. Wealthier countries will then be expected to pay developing countries much more to fund climate change mitigation and adaptation measures. An agreement was also reached on methane, a particularly harmful greenhouse gas. This was signed by 30 countries, including Germany. The goal is to reduce methane emissions by 30 per cent by 2030.
What have been the most important UN Climate Change Conferences and decisions?
International climate policy dates back to the Rio Conference (also known as the Earth Summit) in 1992. At this Conference – also in Brazil – delegates adopted the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), regarded ever since as the ‘mother of all climate resolutions’. In it, the international community pledged for the first time to stabilise the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere in order to prevent interference with the climate system. The Convention entered into force in 1994. It was followed in 1997 by the Kyoto Protocol, which laid down specific reduction commitments of 5.2 per cent on average compared to 1990 emissions, initially for industrialised countries. When the Protocol expired, the international community was not able at first to agree on a new model to replace it. A low point in climate negotiations was reached in Copenhagen in 2009. It was not until six years later, in 2015, that delegates reached a consensus in the form of the Paris Agreement. Instead of fixed reduction commitments for certain countries, it provides for Nationally Determined Contributions for all countries. The Paris Agreement continues to be updated and expanded.