COP30 in Belem saw thunder, fire and flooding accompany an equally bumpy negotiation process. Global North countries continued to block progress on an outcome that could deliver climate justice, by evading their finance responsibilities under the Paris Agreement. These countries, responsible for creating the crisis and with the resources to fix it, are failing to pay up — despite the growing and deadly impacts of climate breakdown, including the multiple typhoons that pounded the Philippines while the talks took place. Adding insult to injury, the inadequate sums of finance currently provided by developed countries are largely delivered as loans, exacerbating the worst ever debt crisis, where many Global South countries are forced to spend more on debt repayments than on health, education or climate action.
Questions over climate finance - still funding fossils
Despite a lower profile at COP30, the role of Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) in climate finance remained implicit. MDBs reiterated their COP29 announcement to triple climate finance. The final COP30 mutirão decision described the ‘critical role MDBs play in supporting the implementation of the Paris Agreement’, a role that MDBs have been championed for by the Global North, as a way to dodge their own responsibilities to pay up. Yet their transparency and accountability remains in question: 73% of MDB climate finance is in the form of loans and they continue to invest directly and indirectly in fossil fuels and promote gas as a transition fuel. Despite an overall decline in direct fossil financing from 2023 to 2024, some MDBs have recently shown an increase in fossil finance creating uncertainty about their future course.
Towards a just transition
COP30 saw the creation of a new mechanism to coordinate just transition which opens the door for crucial discussions on the provision of quality public finance to support urgent transitions to clean, green economies. This decision signals important changes needed from MDBs, whose loan-heavy, market-driven model prioritises large, centralised and high-risk projects while neglecting community-led solutions and robust safeguards. . Many of the most-needed elements of a just transition - energy access, 100% renewable-ready grids, community-owned projects, support for fossil fuel workers and local people - require grants or highly concessional finance that MDBs are not currently set up for. This would require MDBs to break from their private-sector-first approach, which aims to unlock large sums of private finance through much smaller sums of public finance. Thus far, this approach has failed to deliver on its promises and brought instead a host of injustices.
For MDBs to effectively support a just energy transition, they must stop funding oil, coal and gas. Continued fossil finance contradicts MDB Paris alignment commitments. All MDB energy projects must include just transition objectives that contribute to supporting a non-extractive energy model which emphasises quality jobs and community-centric renewable energy. A model embedded in broader social justice that should be evaluated not only on its emissions reductions, but also on its contribution to gender equity, climate justice, and the right to development.
Shifting the rules
The COP30 decision also mentions the importance of international financial architecture reform: this reform must focus on quality as well as quantity. Reform must ensure an end to finance for fossil fuels, a more democratic governance process and a fairer architecture on tax and debt. Solutions must value people over profit and must not place developing countries in a position where they are paying the price for a climate crisis they did not cause. Global North countries can’t hide behind MDBs to evade their responsibility to pay their fair share on fair terms for climate action. Public money is not scarce: rich country leaders can unlock USD $6.6 trillion annually through taxing the super rich, making big polluters pay and ending fossil fuel handouts.
Big Shift Global Coalition members’ reactions to the COP30 outcome:
Shereen Talaat, MenaFem Movement for Economic, Development And Ecological Justice: “COP30 shows that powerful countries continue to avoid paying for the crisis they caused while communities in the Global South face debt, austerity and rising climate impacts. MDBs cannot claim credibility when they still finance fossil fuels and rely on loans instead of real public finance. A just transition needs grants, fair terms and structural reform of the financial system. Anything less keeps the world on the same unequal path.”
Karabo Mokgonyana, Campaigns and Energy Advisor, Power Shift Africa “Whats clear from the outcomes of COP30, is that MDBs have an important role to play in contributing to the acceleration of a just and equitable transition and scaling meaningful climate adaptation and mitigation action. For Africa, this calls for MDBs to adopt fossil fuel exclusion policies to avoid locking us into fossil stranded assets, push for time-bound commitments to expand accessible grant-based and low-cost climate finance, reform risk and accountability frameworks, ensure that all their policies are Paris Agreement aligned and make sure that projects like Mission 300 purely focus on renewable energy that reflect least cost and social and environmental safety. This means no fossil fuels (including gas), no false solutions and no projects that don’t reflect the rights-based formulation of just transitions as reflected in the COP30 outcome.”
Mariana Paoli, Global Advocacy Lead, Christian Aid “COP30’s limited outcomes are a direct result of the lack of finance that developed countries should be providing as established by the Paris Agreement. The biggest elephant in the room will not be addressed properly unless it goes hand in hand with a reform of the international financial system to increase the fiscal space in the global south. Public finance at scale from developed countries is not charity but a matter of reparations for developing countries.”
Ellenor Bartolome, Policy, Campaigns, and Communications Lead of the Philippine Movement for Climate Justice: “We are no longer shocked with the outcomes of COP30 and that is exactly the problem. Global North’s hypocrisy has become a routine: champion big climate promises while refusing to fund them and doubling down on fossil fuels in the Global South. How can there be a meaningful roadmap when those who caused this disaster won’t even commit real and scaled-up money to fix it?
“Worse, MDBs are treated as gap-fillers despite their own legacy of fueling debt and fossil fuel expansion. Climate justice will only remain out of reach if we expect them to solve what rich countries refuse to do. Let’s call the final text for what it is: a performative ambition, not a survival blueprint. More than these failures, it shows why that resistance must continue at home, in our communities, in our streets, and in every space where power must be held accountable.”
Friederike Strub, Finance Campaigner, Recourse: “The decision to develop a just transition mechanism is a crucial win for workers and communities and shows the power of civil society organising. But to make the just transition happen we need public finance backing, systemic economic reform, and a clear roadmap to end fossil fuels.
“Rich countries at COP30 have done everything in their power to dilute their financial obligations, refuse to pay their climate debts, and undermine the necessary deep structural changes to a climate and development finance architecture that has thus far failed to deliver justice.
“Global South countries cannot act on climate within a system of debt, tax and trade governance that is stacked against them and traps them in cycles of debt, dependency, austerity and extractivism. In response, rich countries have been peddling false finance solutions – from debt swaps to private finance for adaptation – and pushing unaccountable, undemocratic international financial institutions like MDBs to the centre. Multilateral development banks’ failed “billions to trillions” agenda and community-bulldozing “green” infrastructure projects, together with the IMF forcing debt-burdened countries into climate denying pathways and greenwashed austerity, will not deliver a just transition.
“We need rights-based, gender-responsive, people-centred climate and development action, and a global finance architecture that enables this.”
Fiza Qureshi, Gas Campaigner, Big Shift Global: “The most significant victories from COP30 in the Amazon came not from the negotiation halls, but from communities and indigenous peoples standing up for their survival and the future of their next generations. Yet major gaps remain: both framing of Brazil’s diverse energy mix and the Mutirao document largely sidestep fossil gas, which continues to be treated globally as a ‘transition fuel’ despite locking in carbon emissions and deepening debt in the Global South. The agreement calls on countries to “ voluntarily” accelerate their climate action to transition away from fossil fuels, which poses a major gap. Multilateral development banks are still financing new gas infrastructure, directly and indirectly, which undermines climate goals. By leaving gas unaddressed, COP30 risks legitimizing its continued expansion under the guise of climate cooperation and ‘development of Global South’, weakening the case for a truly just energy transition. Civil society needs a continued and more stronger push to MDBs and governments to stop funding gas and prioritize renewable energy solutions that protect people and the planet.”