Progress Without Real Acceleration

When the gavel finally came down at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, the symbolism was unmistakable. Negotiators met in the heart of the Amazon — a landscape that embodies both the planet’s resilience and its fragility — at a moment when global emissions, temperatures and extreme weather events are reaching record highs. Expectations were correspondingly high: a decisive fossil-fuel phase-out timetable, a credible deforestation roadmap, and substantial climate finance for developing countries. What emerged instead was a package of important but partial gains overshadowed by a lack of binding commitments on the core drivers of global warming.

The Belém Package, as the final outcome is called, offers incremental progress: expanded adaptation finance, a sharpened focus on climate justice, and greater engagement of sub-national actors. Yet it also reveals the widening gap between what climate science urges and what geopolitics permits. For India — a nation both vulnerable to climate impacts and central to the global energy transition — the outcomes of COP30 present a renewed challenge: to push harder on diplomacy abroad, and to accelerate climate action at home.

A Welcome Step, but Too Slow for the Moment

Perhaps the most welcomed outcome of COP30 was the decision to triple the global adaptation finance by 2035. For countries like India, where heatwaves, flooding, erratic monsoons and coastal risks already endanger millions, enhanced financing for resilience measures is not a luxury but a necessity. Adaptation projects — from climate-resilient agriculture to early warning systems and urban cooling plans — require long-term, predictable funding streams.

Yet the commitment is back-loaded. Scaling adaptation finance up to 2035 means that the most urgent decade — 2025 to 2035 — risks being lost to slow disbursement, bureaucratic bottlenecks and donor fatigue. There is also a persistent lack of clarity on who will pay how much, and through what instruments. Highly indebted developing economies can ill afford adaptation finance that is loan-heavy or tied to onerous conditionalities.

In India’s case, the harsh reality is that climate impacts are accelerating faster than global finance systems can respond. The country must therefore prioritise domestic investment in climate-resilient infrastructure and state-level disaster preparedness even as it continues to advocate for predictable, grant-based climate finance internationally.

No Fossil-Fuel Phase-Out

The most striking failure of COP30 was its inability to secure a binding commitment on phasing out fossil fuels. Despite support from a broad coalition of countries and civil society groups, the final text offered only voluntary, non-binding pathways. This omission is deeply consequential: without a rapid decline in coal, oil and gas use, no amount of adaptation or forestry pledges can keep the world within a 1.5°C trajectory.

Science makes this clear. Global greenhouse gas emissions must decline nearly 55 per cent by 2035 to keep 1.5°C within reach. Yet even after COP30, the combined updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) cover only a fraction of the required reductions. By some estimates, the new pledges amount to well under 15 per cent of the emission cuts needed by 2035.

The political reasons are familiar. Major fossil-fuel producers resisted any language that might constrain their long-term markets. The result is a diplomatic compromise that fails to match the scientific urgency. For India, which remains heavily dependent on coal even as it aggressively expands renewable energy, this gap has direct implications. The absence of a global phase-out roadmap risks prolonging the world’s fossil-fuel dependence and leaving India facing more intense climate impacts and higher adaptation costs.

A Roadmap Without Teeth

Given the Amazonian setting, expectations were strong that COP30 would deliver a robust, enforceable deforestation and forest-protection mechanism. Instead, the forest roadmap too was relegated to voluntary initiatives outside the core text. This is troubling not only for South America but for South Asia, where forest degradation and loss of biodiversity are undermining ecological stability.

For India, which has pledged to increase forest and tree cover and expand nature-based solutions, the lack of global ambition on forests is a setback. Forest loss contributes to both greenhouse emissions and local ecological collapse, and global cooperation is essential to fund restoration, carbon sequestration, and community-based forestry programmes.

India Cannot Wait for Consensus

India’s future climate strategy must now confront an uncomfortable truth: global climate governance is moving slower than climate change itself. While equity and historical responsibility remain central to India’s diplomatic position, the country cannot allow global inaction to dictate its own pace of transition.

Several data-driven realities underline this urgency:

* India’s emissions are still rising. While its per-capita emissions remain far below Western levels, India recorded one of the world’s highest percentage increases in total emissions in recent years, driven largely by power, industry and transport.

* Renewable energy targets require structural transformation. India’s goal of 500 GW of non-fossil capacity by 2030 is achievable only with rapid upgrades to grid infrastructure, large-scale battery storage, improved load balancing, and electrification across transport and industry.

* Adaptation cannot be postponed. The increasing frequency of heatwaves, urban floods, drought-like conditions, glacier melt and cyclones demands immediate investment in climate-resilient cities, green infrastructure, early warning systems, and resilient farming systems.

* A just transition must be planned today. Millions of workers in coal mining, thermal power and polluting industries will require social protection, reskilling and opportunities in clean industries. COP30’s emphasis on climate justice provides a framework, but the detailed work must be done domestically.

What India Must Push for at COP31

As the world moves towards COP31, India should sharpen its international agenda:

* Demand clear, time-bound milestones for fossil-fuel phase-down within the formal UNFCCC process.

* Advocate for predictable, grant-based adaptation finance, with simplified access procedures for developing nations.

* Support robust rules for technology transfer and just-transition financing, especially for coal-dependent economies.

* Insist on accountability mechanisms so that voluntary pledges translate into measurable action.

COP30 Is Not a Failure — But It Is Far from a Victory

The Belém Package offers useful steps — more adaptation finance, stronger local participation, and recognition of justice-based transitions. Yet it falls short of the decisive pledges needed to cut emissions this decade. The most urgent tasks — phasing out fossil fuels, protecting forests, and delivering near-term emission cuts — remain mostly aspirational. For India, COP30 should be understood not as a win or loss but as a warning. Global climate action will continue to be slow and uneven; India’s cannot.

Views expressed are personal. Praveen Garg is the President of Mobius Foundation, Sudheer Kumar Shukla leads the Think Tank at Mobius Foundation, New Delhi