COP30: A pivotal moment for climate adaptation?

According to the 2025 Adaptation Gap Report, in a historic opportunity to promote climate adaptation, the COP30 negotiations, in Belém, Brazil (10-21 November 2025), are witnessing political momentum to support adaptation with an improvement in the process of bridging the planning and implementation gap by integrating adaptation into the countries’ national development plans. This is confirmed by:

• The COP30 Presidency affirmed that operationalizing the Global Adaptation Goal (GGA) framework is  one of the key objectives of the Conference (IISD, 2025), to move to a concrete and actionable plan with clear goals and indicators, making adaptation efforts more measurable and effective.
• Embedding adaptation finance at the heart of the five fronts of action of the Baku-Belém Roadmap, so its operationalization at COP30 increases the chances of ensuring that adaptation receives a fair share of climate finance (ODI, 2025).
• COP30 focuses on promoting access to adaptation finance for vulnerable communities and coordinating efforts between different financing entities to ensure that support efficiently reaches the frontlines most affected by climate change (IISD2, 2025).

Despite the challenging negotiations, COP30 represents a pivotal test of the international community’s commitment to translating adaptation discourse into tangible action. A key expected outcome is the adoption of clear adaptation financing pledges and implementation roadmaps to ensure these resources are effectively operationalized.