What COP30 reveals about the next phase of multilateralism

Belém revealed a shifting balance of power and the challenges shaping multilateralism’s future

COP30 did not collapse. This may feel like a win in a year when climate diplomacy has seen a major churning. The process survived extreme weather, fire scares, and the COP30 presidency’s strategy to mainly focus on closed-door negotiations. But just surviving is far from enough. Two weeks after the Belém COP, the focus can’t be on whether COP30 held the line on multilateralism. It should be about whether it gave the process enough to move past that line and face the challenges that are yet to come.

The final Mutirão package was sold as proof that multilateralism can still deliver something meaningful under pressure. “In a year where climate multilateralism has been challenged, getting a good deal was better than failing to get any deal in pursuit of the best deal,” said Dr Arunabha Ghosh, Special Envoy to COP30 representing South Asia, and CEO of the think-tank CEEW. In other words, the bar had been lowered to not failing.

COP30 “managed to keep the ball rolling, which can be called a win of sorts”, according to Manjeev Puri, a retired diplomat and India’s former lead negotiator. “Climate change and action is a process that cannot go on without global level cooperation and collaboration. Thank the US for not being inside the room and disrupting things,” he said, referring to the Trump-led US’s decision to withdraw from the world’s biggest climate talks.

Yet several countries objected to the process right until the end. “The adoption of the final package despite objections from various countries creates further dents in the fragile state of multilateralism,” said Rudrath Avinashi, Programme Officer, CSE.

A win built on thin ice

The tension was obvious in the outcomes. Everything that really mattered — finance, responsibility, fossil fuels — arrived half-baked or pushed into side documents. The New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) remained an argument about numbers without a path to actually mobilise them. The tripling of adaptation finance was pushed to 2035. The Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) finally got its indicators, but without the predictable money those indicators are supposed to help track.

The Loss and Damage fund gained a replenishment cycle, but no guarantee of money flowing into the fund. And when it came to fossil fuels, the fight was so toxic that the Presidency had to announce a transition-away roadmap outside the formal text, much to the disappointment of the Global North, which was pushing for its inclusion in the final text.

So, what does that say about the state of cooperation? On the one hand, COP30 showed that the multilateral structure can still absorb pressure despite the world’s largest economy, the US, not being in the room. But the compromises also reveal exactly how thin that cooperation has become. Countries protected national positions to the point where the Presidency had to construct a parallel, non-binding architecture just to avoid a breakdown in the form of the roadmaps to end deforestation and to transition away from fossil fuels.

“It is clearly a fragmented, inward-looking nationalistic world. National interests do not necessarily incentivise climate action. As a global common, it needs collective action. For most countries, national interests would dominate currently,” said a sustainable development consultant, on condition of anonymity.

A more assertive Global South

Yet something else shifted, and this is what may define the next phase of global climate politics. The Global South was more coordinated, more strategic, and more willing to draw red lines. G77 plus China, Like Minded Developing Countries (LMDCs), and especially India steered the conversation back to equity, finance, and trade barriers rather than accepting ambition without means.

They landed the Just Transition Mechanism and pushed Article 9.1, which is the legal obligation for developed countries to provide finance, back onto centre stage. “The Global South countries led by the strong unity of G77 and China pushed for the discussion on Article 9.1 of the Paris agreement, the core of climate finance as well as the issue of unilateral trade measures such as the EU’s CBAM. This reflects their clear priorities in the climate debate right now, which are: means of implementation and avoiding the shouldering of decarbonisation costs,” said CSE’s Avinashi.

They also pushed for transparency provisions like Article 9.5 to be linked to the NCQG even when the main text sidestepped it. For the first time since the Paris Agreement’s inception, developed nations will now have to provide detailed, future-focused plans on climate finance every two years. This could help improve transparency and build trust in the increasingly tenuous COP negotiations and could help vulnerable nations better prepare for climate impacts.

But there was no concrete delivery platform for public finance. “Unless qualitative or quantitative data on who and in what form is supporting financing from the Global North, there cannot be a clear understanding of what will be counted as climate finance contributed and mobilised,” said Shantanu Srivastava, Research Lead, Sustainable Finance and Climate Risk at IEEFA.

This was also the first time that the issue of trade protectionism linked to climate policy has been formally placed on the UNFCCC agenda. India, along with the LMDC group, stressed that this outcome was vital to ensuring the multilateral process addressed barriers that limit developing economies’s ability to pursue ambitious climate action and growth simultaneously. “Climate-aligned trade policy that could support developing countries is a good step as long as developing countries have the ability to do so. At the end of the day, you need political commitment from both developed and developing countries for this to happen,” said Labanya Jena, Director of Climate and Sustainability Initiative (CSI).

There is a new model of multilateralism that seems to be emerging. It is not relying on the priorities of wealthier countries to build consensus. Rather, it is the developing countries that seem to be shaping what ambition can realistically look like.

At COP30, there was unison among Global South countries around adaptation and climate finance. It is expected that this convergence will carry forward to COP31 in Turkey, especially with a renewed focus on adaptation, according to a source familiar with the Indian delegation’s COP30 strategy.

This shift is uncomfortable for the Global North, but it’s also the first time in years that equity has been embedded into the machinery of the COP in a way that can’t be easily ignored. “BRICS+ may emerge as the most rational voice coming across. It is a potential alternative,” said the development expert. The BRICS+ bloc includes major emerging economies such as Brazil, India, China, and South Africa.

A new balance of power?

The forward-thinking question isn’t whether COP30 saved multilateralism. It’s whether stronger Global South coordination can push for real leverage.

“The narrative of climate leadership until now has been very mitigation centric. The Global North have been thought leaders, but haven’t really been involved in climate action, unlike the Global South,” said the source.

The question that arises is whether the Global South should take up Global North’s role in aiding other countries? The answer is not so black-and-white.

“Most investment in mitigation action has been coming from their [developing countries] own budgets. Today, China is peaking its fossil fuel usage and can take up a leadership role, but that can raise transparency concerns. India also has space to fill those boots. If it has the robust financial capacity, it can be a leader in the future” said the source.

According to Puri, geopolitically, if things remain as they are — the US distancing itself and not being an active disruptor, and the Europeans unable to fill that void — opportunities for an alternative leadership do emerge.

“The obvious leader is China. But as the Global South is literally facing the heat, I want to see BRICS+ turn into the dominant players at future COPs,” he said.