Reflections from COP30
In November 2025, the COP30 summit in Belém, Brazil brought together the international climate community, but its outcomes revealed a world still deeply divided. While progress on adaptation frameworks and biodiversity linkages was made, the absence of a clear roadmap for fossil-fuel phase-out, the leadership vacuum left by the U.S., and sharp geopolitical tensions left the summit’s ambition far short of what science demands. These reflections from scholars at Perry World House and the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania examine both the cracks and the glimmers of hope emerging from COP30.
At COP30 in Belém, Brazil, delegates faced a climate-diplomacy moment defined by paradox: a formal agreement was reached, signaling that the multilateral framework remains intact, yet the ambition necessary to hold global warming to 1.5 °C was missing. Scholars from the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House and the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy highlight that the United States’ official absence left a gap in governance and finance, opening space for alternative leadership models - but with weaker norms around transparency and accountability. Meanwhile, the summit advanced notable adaptation-related milestones (including the Global Goal on Adaptation indicators) and brought climate, biodiversity, and desertification agendas closer together. Yet the failure to secure a fossil-fuel phase-out roadmap underscores the fragility of international cooperation in an era of economic turbulence, rising nationalism, and power shifts among oil-and-gas states. Read more at the Perry World House site and the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy blog for detailed perspectives on what COP30 accomplished, what it didn’t, and where the climate regime must go from here.