Amid record heat and worsening climate impacts on people’s lives, 2025 is a turning point for global climate action, as countries renew their climate commitments — known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) — under the international Paris Agreement. This process reveals whether global ambition to tackle climate change is rising fast enough to meet the crisis head on.

Over the past decade, the Paris Agreement has delivered meaningful progress. Prior to the agreement, the world was hurtling toward 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming by the end of the century. Ten years after the agreement’s adoption, the latest NDCs and current policies bring us closer to a 2.3-2.8 degrees C (4.1-5.0 degrees F) trajectory — modestly better than the previously projected 2.6-3.1 degrees C (4.7-5.6 degrees F) path.

Yet even with this shift, we remain far above the 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) guardrail set by the Paris Agreement that can prevent some of the most serious damage from a warming planet. And while some sectors are showing real momentum — including the renewable energy, transport and land-use action reflected in many countries’ NDCs — overall progress is still dangerously slow.

Every fraction of a degree of warming the planet avoids helps secure a safer, greener future. And the investment required to achieve this is far less than the costs of the alternative path, which would bring increased floods, wildfires, insecure food supplies and destroyed lives.

At the annual UN Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belém, Brazil, nations must confront the gap between current climate pledges and what is needed to unlock a new economy that’s better for both people and the planet.

Here, we propose five key actions that countries can rally behind for a credible response:

  1. Reaffirm 1.5 degrees C and commission a global roadmap for ambition and implementation.
  2. Accelerate near-term sectoral action to deliver 2030 global goals.
  3. Mobilize long-term strategies for equitable, resilient transitions to net zero.
  4. Strengthen intergovernmental initiatives for greater impact.
  5. Deliver a credible finance package to back ambitious climate goals.

With countries gathered under one roof, a clear political response will be needed that faces up to the shortfall in ambition and seizes the economic, social and other opportunities that assertive action can provide.

A sign advertising COP30.
During the 2025 UN Climate Change Conference, countries will need to reaffirm their commitments and create climate plans that will bring the world closer to the Paris Agreement's 1.5 degree C goal. Photo by Luis War. 

1) Reaffirm 1.5 Degrees C and Commission a Global Roadmap for Ambition and Implementation

Acknowledging both the progress underway and the remaining gaps will be essential for sustaining global cooperation for deeper, faster action. As a starting point, COP30 should reaffirm that 1.5 degrees C remains the guiding star for global climate action. By doing so, it can send a clear political signal that the goal continues to be the benchmark for assessing progress toward achieving a healthy, livable and resilient world.

But underscoring those objectives alone will not be enough; COP30 will also need to spur implementation and drive ambition toward 1.5 degrees C in ways that ensure a just and inclusive transition. At COP30, countries could agree to develop a “Global Roadmap for Accelerated Implementation”— a forward-looking gameplan that identifies the pathways, policies and enabling conditions needed to achieve the Paris Agreement goals.

The roadmap can draw on findings from the Global Stocktake and insights from the NDC Synthesis Report to identify specific near-term and transformational opportunities for accelerating emissions reductions across key sectors such as energy, forests, transport and methane, while scaling up adaptation, resilience and just transition efforts — with a particular emphasis on the tremendous economic, social and other benefits that can be seized from taking climate action.

To underpin this process, the COP30 and COP31 presidencies could convene a high-level dialogue, anchored by technical analysis, to examine how different pathways, timelines and investment conditions can shape an equitable, systemwide transformation. The process could culminate next year at COP31 with the publication of a clear, actionable roadmap that identifies opportunities for urgent action, the sectors with the greatest potential for impact and the actors best placed to drive it forward.

2) Accelerate Near-Term Sectoral Action to Deliver 2030 Global Goals 

Building on the roadmap for accelerated implementation, COP30 will also need to encourage countries to achieve near-term sectoral delivery by 2030. The task will involve translating collective signals from the Global Stocktake and the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience — along with the direction provided by the proposed global ambition and implementation roadmap mentioned above — into concrete economic planning, national policies and investments that can accelerate on-the-ground progress and deliver on the benefits of taking action.

At COP30, countries could be called upon to voluntarily develop near-term sectoral strategies and progress updates that translate and build upon their existing NDCs, turning national climate goals into concrete pathways for implementation. These strategies and updates could be submitted on a voluntary basis by countries to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to inform the second Global Stocktake, which begins at the end of 2026 and concludes in 2028.

For the greatest impact, these strategies should be focused on the priority areas highlighted in the Global Stocktake for 2030 (e.g., tripling renewable energy capacity, doubling energy efficiency, transitioning away from fossil fuels, driving down transport emissions, and halting and reversing deforestation, among others), as well as the thematic areas of the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience (e.g., water, health, ecosystems and biodiversity, and infrastructure).

While these global priorities are shared, their emphasis will naturally vary by country. Sectoral strategies can be used to set each country’s own specific plans, policies, investment priorities, support needs and enabling reforms needed to strengthen near-term actions. Most importantly, these strategies are a key opportunity to describe the actions that can seize the substantial benefits for the economy and people’s lives.

3) Mobilize Long-Term Strategies for Equitable, Resilient Transitions to Net Zero

Long-term climate strategies — or long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategies (LT-LEDS or LTS) — are a critical bridge between NDCs and the collective objective to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C. Countries have already established 2030 targets and this round of NDCs sets emission-reduction targets through 2035, a key waypoint on the path to mid-century and the net zero goals set by many countries, most notably all of the Group of 20 major economies (G20). As countries move toward net zero, LT-LEDS allow them to outline key sectoral transformations and show how these steps can drive economic growth in the decades ahead, informing and spurring the policy decisions that governments take now.

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Now more than ever, these strategies are essential for helping countries focus on the sectors that have a domino effect across the wider economy such as energy, food and agriculture, and transport. So far, nearly 80 countries have developed and submitted long-term strategies — but fewer than 10 have updated their initial plans, and more than 100 have yet to produce one.

COP30 can be a turning point, calling on all countries to submit or update LT-LEDS by COP31, treating the strategies not just as paperwork but as catalysts for real sectoral transformation, fully integrated into economic policies, development strategies and finance plans. G20 countries, in particular, should lead by example by developing implementation pathways that align their near-term goals (e.g., 2030 and 2035) with just transition toward their national net-zero and resilience goals. These pathways should also be integrated into national development objectives and processes.

4) Strengthen Intergovernmental Initiatives for Greater Impact

Throughout the year, the COP30 presidency has brought renewed attention and momentum to the Action Agenda of initiatives outside the UNFCCC negotiations. Most important, it has sought to connect climate action initiatives and coalitions — including those involving national governments — to the formal COP process by aligning them with the themes of the first Global Stocktake on energy, forests, and more.

At COP30, there’s an important opportunity to place greater attention on the role of intergovernmental cooperative initiatives and coalitions and integrate them more fully into the Action Agenda, which has previously focused on initiatives by non-state actors. The number of these initiatives and coalitions has grown rapidly in recent years, and governments should now explore their impact and lessons.    

COP30 can also play an important role in fostering transparency for these intergovernmental initiatives and coalitions, encouraging and driving regular reporting, including through the UNFCCC Global Climate Action Portal.  During future COPs, dedicated events can allow these initiatives to share their successes, experiences, lessons and best practices.

5) Deliver a Credible Finance Package to Back Ambitious Climate Goals

Delivering a strong package of finance outcomes at COP30 will signal that the support needed to turn ambition into action is within reach. This includes progress on the Baku-to-Belém Roadmap — a collective pathway for scaling climate finance for developing countries from all sources through 2035 — which can spur action on key issues such as the cost of capital. Such progress would send a powerful signal that international public and private finance will flow to countries that step up ambition and translate this into strong domestic finance and public policy signals.

A key signal at COP30 would be the creation and further strengthening of country platforms as a way to align domestic and international finance, facilitate an enabling policy environment for investment across key sectors, develop investible pipelines, engage a broad spectrum of stakeholders and optimize the use of concessional finance to de-risk projects and unlock capital flows. This way, countries can integrate proposed climate plans into broader economic frameworks and promote an enabling environment for all finance flows to support progress towards climate commitments while strengthening countries’ development pathways.

Building an Actionable Future

The gaps are clear, but so is the opportunity for getting closer to the goals of the Paris Agreement. COP30 gathers the world’s leaders armed with the tools to close the emissions and ambition gaps. What’s needed now is bold political action and a strong response to the NDCs to restore confidence in multilateralism, set the world more firmly on course to achieve climate goals and ensure shared prosperity from taking that action. The legacy of the Belém COP will rest in large measure on doing so.