BELÉM, Brazil — United Nations climate summits have for years ended with bold promises to stave off global warming. But those commitments often fade when nations go home. Three years ago, in a resort city on the Red Sea, delegates from nearly 200 countries approved what they hailed as a historic fund to help poorer nations pay for climate damages — but it’s at risk of running dry. A year later, negotiations a few miles from Dubai’s gleaming waterfront achieved the first-ever worldwide pledge to turn away from fossil fuels — but production of oil and natural gas is still rising, a trend championed by the new administration in Washington. That legacy is casting a shadow over this year’s conference near the mouth of the Amazon River, which the host, Brazil, has dubbed a summit of truth. Days after the gathering started last week, nations were still sorting out what to do with contentious issues that have typically held up the annual negotiations. As the talks opened, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said the world must “fight” efforts to deny the reality of climate change — decades after scientists concluded that people are making the Earth hotter. That led one official to offer a grim assessment of global efforts to tackle climate change, 10 years after an earlier summit produced the sweeping Paris Agreement. “We have miserably failed to accomplish the objective of this convention, which is the stabilization of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” said Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez, Panama’s climate envoy and lead negotiator, during an interview at the conference site in Belém, Brazil. “Additional promises mean nothing if you didn’t achieve or fulfill your previous promises,” he added. It hasn’t helped that the U.S. is skipping the summit for the first time, or that President Donald Trump dismisses climate change as a hoax and urged the world to abandon efforts to fix it. But Trump isn’t the only reason for stalled action. Economic uncertainty, infighting and political backsliding have stymied green measures in both North America and Europe. In other parts of the world, countries are embracing the economic opportunities that the green transition offers. Many officials in Belém point to signs that progress is underway, including the rapid growth of renewables and electric vehicles and a broader understanding of both the world’s challenges and the means to address them. “Now we talk about solar panels, electric cars, regenerative agriculture, stopping deforestation, as if we have always talked about those things,” said Ana Toni, the summit’s executive director. “Just in one decade, the topic changed totally. But we still need to speed up the process.” Still, analysts say it’s become inevitable that the world’s warming will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius since the dawn of the industrial era, breaching the target at the heart of the Paris Agreement. With that in mind, countries are huddling at this month’s summit, known as COP30, with the hope of finding greater alignment on how to slow rising temperatures. But how credible would any promises reached in Brazil be? Here are five pledges achieved at past climate summits — and where they stand now: MOVING AWAY FROM FOSSIL FUELS The historic 2023 agreement to “transition away” from fossil fuels, made at the COP28 talks in Dubai, was the first time that nearly 200 countries agreed to wind down their use of oil, natural gas and coal. Though nonbinding, that commitment was even more striking because the talks were overseen by the chief executive of the United Arab Emirates’ state-owned oil company. Just two years later, fossil fuel consumption is on the rise, despite rapid growth of wind and solar, and many of the world’s largest oil and gas producers plan to drill even more. The United States — the world’s biggest economy, top oil and gas producer and second-largest climate polluter — is pursuing a fossil fuel renaissance while forsaking plans to shift toward renewables. The president of the Dubai summit, Sultan al-Jaber, said at a recent energy conference that while wind and solar would expand, so too would oil and gas, in part to meet soaring demand for data centers. Liquefied natural gas would grow 65 percent by 2050, and oil will continue to be used as a feedstock for plastic, he said. “The exponential growth of AI is also creating a power surge that no one anticipated 18 months ago,” he said in a press release from the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., where he remains managing director and group CEO. The developed world is continuing to move in the wrong direction on fossil fuels, climate activists say. “We know that the world’s richest countries are continuing to invest in oil and gas development,” said Bill Hare, a climate scientist who founded Climate Analytics, a policy group. “This simply should not be happening.” The Paris-based International Energy Agency said last week that oil and gas demand could grow for decades to come. That statement marked a reversal from the group’s previous forecast that oil use would peak in 2030 as clean energy takes hold. Trump’s policies are one reason for the pivot. Still, renewables such as wind and solar power are soaring in many countries, leading analysts to believe that nations will continue to shift away from fossil fuels. How quickly that will happen is unknown. “The transition is underway but not yet at the pace or scale required,” said a U.N. report on global climate action released last week. It pointed to large gaps in efforts to reduce fossil fuel subsidies and abate methane pollution. Lula opened this year’s climate conference by calling for a “road map” to cut fossil fuels globally. It has earned support from countries such as Colombia, Germany, Kenya and the United Kingdom. But it’s not part of the official agenda at these talks, and many poorer countries say what they really need is funding and support to make the shift. TRIPLE RENEWABLE ENERGY, DOUBLE ENERGY EFFICIENCY This call also emerged from the 2023 summit, and was considered a tangible measure of countries’ progress toward achieving the Paris Agreement’s temperature targets. Countries are on track to meet the pledge to triple their renewable energy capacity by 2030, thanks largely to a record surge in solar power, according to energy think tank Ember. It estimates that the world is set to add around 793 gigawatts of new renewable capacity in 2025, up from 717 gigawatts in 2024, driven mainly by China. “If this pace continues, annual additions now only need to grow by around 12 percent a year from 2026 to 2030 to reach tripling, compared with 21 percent originally needed,” said Dave Jones, Ember’s chief analyst. “But governments will need to strengthen commitments to lock this in.” The pledge to double the world’s energy efficiency by 2030, by contrast, is a long way behind. While efficiency improvements would need to grow by 4 percent a year to reach that target, they hit only 1 percent in 2024. ‘LOSS AND DAMAGE’ FUND When the landmark fund for victims of climate disasters was established at the 2022 talks in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, it offered promise that billions of dollars would someday flow to nations slammed by hurricanes, droughts or rising seas. Three years later, it has less than $800 million — only a little more than it had in 2023. Mia Mottley, prime minister of Barbados, excoriated leaders this month for not providing more. Her rebuke came little more than a week after Hurricane Melissa, one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever seen in the Atlantic, swept across the Caribbean. “All of us should hold our heads down in shame, because having established this fund a few years ago in Sharm El-Sheikh, its capital base is still under $800 million while Jamaica reels from damage in excess of $7 billion, not to mention Cuba or the Bahamas,” she said. Last week, the fund announced it was allocating $250 million for financial requests to help less-wealthy nations grapple with “damage from slow onset and extreme climate-induced events.” The fund’s executive director, Ibrahima Cheikh Diong, said the call for contributions was significant but also a reminder that the fund needs much more money. Richard Muyungi, chair for the African Group of Negotiators and Tanzania’s climate envoy, said he expects additional funds will come from this summit, though not the billions needed. “There is a chance that the fund will run out of money by next year, year after next, before it even is given a chance to replenish itself,” said Michai Robertson, a senior finance adviser for the Alliance of Small Island States. GLOBAL METHANE PLEDGE Backed by the U.S. and European Union, this pledge to cut global methane emissions 30 percent by 2030 was launched four years ago at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, sparking a wave of talk about the benefits of cutting methane, a greenhouse gas with a relatively short shelf life but much greater warming potential than carbon dioxide. “The Global Methane Pledge has been instrumental in catalyzing attention to the issue of methane, because it has moved from a niche issue to one of the critical elements of the climate planning discussions,” said Giulia Ferrini, head of the U.N. Environment Program’s International Methane Emissions Observatory. “All the tools are there,” she added. “It’s just a question of political will.” Methane emissions from the oil and gas sector remain stubbornly high, despite the economic benefits of bringing them down, according to the IEA. The group’s latest methane tracker shows that energy-based methane pollution was around 120 million tons in 2024, roughly the same as a year earlier. Despite more than 150 nations joining the Global Methane Pledge, few countries or companies have devised plans to meet their commitments, “and even fewer have demonstrated verifiable emissions reductions,” the IEA said. The European Union’s methane regulation requires all oil and gas operators to measure, report and verify their emissions, including importers. And countries and companies are becoming more diligent about complying with an international satellite program that notifies companies and countries of methane leaks so they can repair them. Responses went from just 1 percent of alerts last year to 12 percent so far in 2025. More work is needed to achieve the 2030 goal, the U.N. says. Meanwhile, U.S. officials have pressured the EU to rethink its methane curbs. Barbados and several other countries are calling for a binding methane pact similar to the Montreal Protocol, the 1987 agreement that’s widely credited with saving the ozone layer by phasing out the use of harmful pollutants. That’s something Paris Agreement architect Laurence Tubiana hopes could happen. “I’m just in favor of tackling this very seriously, because the pledge doesn’t work [well] enough,” she said. CLIMATE FINANCE In 2009, wealthy countries agreed to provide $100 billion annually until 2025 to help poorer nations deal with rising temperatures. At last year’s climate talks in Azerbaijan, they upped the ante to $300 billion per year by 2035. But those countries delivered the $100 billion two years late, and many nations viewed the new $300 billion commitment with disappointment. India, which expressed particular ire about last year’s outcome, is pushing for new discussions in Brazil to get that money flowing. “Finance really is at the core of everything that we do,” Ali Mohamed, Kenya’s climate envoy, told POLITICO’s E&E News. But he also recognizes that governments alone are not the answer. “We cannot say finance must only come from the public sector.” Last year’s pledge included a call for companies and multilateral development banks to contribute a sum exceeding $1 trillion by 2035, but much of that would be juiced by donor nations — and more countries would need to contribute. That is more important now, said Jake Werksman, the EU’s lead negotiator. “As you know, one of the larger contributors to this process, the U.S., has essentially shut down all development flows from the U.S. budget, and no other party, including the EU, can make up for that gap,” he said during a press conference. Zack Colman and Zia Weise contributed to this report from Belém, Brazil.

The spirit of mutirão — communities joining forces to get something done — runs deep in Brazil’s culture. Here at COP30 it is inescapable. The phrase is on the lips of negotiators from nearly 200 countries and it has become the defining ethos of this conference: global climate cooperation built on shared effort and mutual accountability.  National governments and cities, campaigners and businesses must now come together in that same spirit to move from the age of negotiation to the decade of delivery. Here in Belém it is impossible to forget why this matters. Every country has its story of floods, heatwaves, wildfires or supercharged storms that strike hardest in the places least able to cope. At both the Brazilian Ministry of Cities and C40 Cities we see every day that adapting to current challenges and turning the tide on the climate crisis are not separate challenges but part of one mission: to protect the people and places we love now and for generations to come. We are becoming a planet of urbanites, even here in the Amazon rainforest there are nearly 22 million people living in cities like Belém, so it’s crucial to combine preservation with sustainable and inclusive development for those communities. Across Brazil and around the world, cities are already facing up to this challenge. They are greening streets, serving sustainable and nutritious lunches to school children, keeping the most vulnerable safe from heat and floods, designing urban areas that meet the needs of people — not cars — and creating good green jobs for all.  > Every country has its story of floods, heatwaves, wildfires or supercharged > storms that strike hardest in the places least able to cope. Last week we both joined mayors, governors and regional leaders representing more than 14,000 cities, towns, states and provinces at the Bloomberg COP30 Local Leaders Forum in Rio de Janeiro. It was the largest and most diverse gathering of subnational climate leaders in history, and it sent an unmistakable message to national governments: local leadership is already delivering and it is ready to go further.  Via C40/Caroline Teo – GLA Following this historic moment and boosted by the COP30 presidency’s willingness to put urban climate action to the fore, cities came to COP30 with three clear offers: 1. Partner with us to implement national climate plans and turn strategies into results that improve lives. 2. Invest in the local project pipeline. More than 2,500 projects seek support and thousands more can follow if the political will is forthcoming. 3. Make COP a place of action and accountability where progress is measured not in pledges but in cleaner air, reduced health risks and green jobs created.  If countries accept these offers the COP process itself can evolve from negotiation to delivery, from promises to proof that the Paris Agreement goals can be not just agreed but also delivered.  This is not just a theory. It is already happening here. Under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s leadership Brazil has embedded ‘climate federalism’ into national policy, linking the federal government, states and municipalities in coordinated delivery for the good of all Brazilians and the planet.   Research shows that, in countries that are part of the Coalition for High Ambition Multilevel Partnerships for Climate Action (CHAMP), collaboration between national and subnational governments could close 37 percent of the global emissions gap needed to stay on a Paris-aligned pathway. Launched at COP28, CHAMP already includes 77 nations and continues to grow. Brazil is showing what this looks like in practice and is inspiring more countries to take action.  Via 10 Billion Solutions, Mariana Castaño Cano On the city side of the equation the evidence is unequivocal. Per-capita emissions in C40 Cities are falling five times faster than the global average and more than 70 percent of C40 cities have already peaked emissions and are now delivering significant emissions reductions. Many C40 cities are also committing to a Yearly Offer of Action, demonstrating how to translate global ambition into measurable progress by announcing every year what they will do in the next 12 months to accelerate climate action.  To unlock that progress the financial system must evolve too. The world’s development and climate finance architecture was designed for national ministries not city halls. Yet cities control or influence most of the decisions that shape emissions from transport, waste, buildings and land use. This means they can enhance and accelerate the implementation of National Climate Plans. Much more could be achieved if urban climate finance is increased and local governments have direct access to the capital they need. The Baku to Belém Roadmap is calling for $1.3 trillion of annual climate investment to support developing countries. This could help scale-up finance and make it more reliable and accessible while prioritizing a just and resilient transition. Cities have the projects, partners and are the closest level of government to people’s daily needs — enhanced collaboration, preparation and direct access to finance can help bring their ambitious visions to life.     > To unlock that progress the financial system must evolve too. The world’s > development and climate finance architecture was designed for national > ministries not city halls. We have both witnessed here in Brazil how quickly change accelerates when local and national leaders come together. When buses run on clean power, when families in flood-prone neighborhoods move into resilient homes, when air is cleaner and streets are safer, climate policy stops being abstract. It becomes tangible progress that citizens can see and support.  If COP30 becomes the moment the world embraces climate federalism and genuine national and sub-national collaboration, then Brazil will have set a new global standard for collective climate delivery and a real just transition.  The decade of delivery begins here in Belém. Let us build it together, in mutirão.