COP30 reporters' notebook: Day 10

Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025 Belém, Brazil — Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva flies back into Belém today, and the COP30 presidency really wants to impress him. With three official days to go, the presidency already has texts published and promises circulating. We expect a bunch of new texts today, including a new version of the mutirão decision, a draft on the Global Goal on Adaptation, and maybe even the big umbrella political package. Brazil is pushing hard — and the fact that parties already had a text on Tuesday is encouraging to experts. “The COP President is wheeling out the big guns to get a deal over the line today,” said Mariana Paoli, global advocacy lead at development charity Christian Aid. “Often COP hosts say they want to finish the summit on time but they rarely manage it. This year at least it feels like they really mean it.” But within the negotiating rooms, delegates told us that there is still quite a lot of skepticism. One source tells Devex that they are far from an agreement on adaptation finance — largely seen as the headline topic this year — and a proposal for a fossil fuel phaseout is highly controversial. Meanwhile, Australia and Turkey are holed up in a room somewhere in this venue, still in a deadlock over who’s hosting next year’s COP31. If they don’t come to an agreement by the end of COP30, we could all end up in Bonn next year — where the UNFCCC headquarters are based. The question then will be: Who is the president? Nature finance By Jesse Chase-Lubitz Asia’s development banks are rolling out new nature studies — and they say the real target audience isn’t officials focused on the environment, but those responsible for finance. At the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Chief Economist Erik Berglöf described their new “Nature as Infrastructure” report as an effort to reframe ecosystems as core economic assets. The study lays out “a framework for thinking about nature as the most important infrastructure for sustaining life on Earth, but also all economic activity,” he told Devex. The bank is now piloting valuation tools that treat wetlands and forests like traditional assets. The Asian Development Bank, meanwhile, launched its own major report on nature just before COP30, arguing that natural capital should sit squarely within the mandate of economic decision-makers. “Investing in nature is not just a concern for environmental ministers. It really should be a concern to ministers of finance and leaders, economic managers,” Alfred Park, ADB’s chief economist, said. The economic case, he argued, is already clear: “The economic and social returns to invest in nature are so high right now.” He also stressed that the push for nature finance is directly tied to countries’ growing adaptation needs. “Adaptation needs MDBs more,” he said, noting that climate impacts are driving up public spending and making it harder for countries to manage the fiscal pressures alone. Finance ministers, he added, “would be irresponsible if they weren’t thinking hard about how climate change is affecting the likely expenditure needs in their countries.” Flashbacks to Sevilla By Jesse Chase-Lubitz Five months after the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development, in Sevilla, Spain, U.N. Development Programme’s Tom Beloe said he now feels like the agendas emerging from both processes — the meetings in Sevilla and the Belém road map — focus on the same things: the “measures that unlock finance for developing economies,” he told Devex. Sevilla centered on concessional finance and domestic resource mobilization, while Belém added reforms to “alleviate debt distress and strengthen the financials in line with climate.” For Beloe, that overlap is good news: it signals global processes are finally aligning rather than multiplying. That alignment is also reshaping who sits at the table, he said. COPs remain dominated by environment ministries, he said, but Sevilla and FfD bring the finance ministries — and the two worlds are beginning to merge through initiatives such as the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action. “The more that these international processes come together and bring with them their constituency … the more that we can bring them together.” Sit down, be humble By Ayenat Mersie What kind of role should philanthropy play in food systems transformation? In a packed action room — a U-shaped table filled to the brim, with the rest of us sitting awkwardly on steep, tiered seating behind it — panelists made the case for one grounded in humility. “Philanthropies should not be arrogant and assume they know the answer,” said Roy Steiner, senior vice president for the food initiative at The Rockefeller Foundation. Laura Delamonica from Brazil's Ministry of Foreign Affairs echoed the point, arguing that funders should not take on responsibilities that belong to states. As she put it, “governments should be the one that's defining its own priorities.” Delamonica also outlined Brazil’s focus on hunger at this COP and through the Group of 20 leading economies, which Brazil led last year. She described plans to elevate hunger and poverty on the global agenda, reduce silos across different areas of action, and highlighted that only 3% of climate finance goes to food systems transformation — a figure she said must increase. For her, climate action cannot be separated from social goals. It is “highly connected with the fight against hunger and poverty,” she said, adding that climate efforts cannot advance without addressing inequalities. Health workers bring the heat By Cheena Kapoor On Monday, a group of Canadian health workers brought some unexpected energy to the blue zone — literally. They broke into a hip-hop routine to call for a global phase-out of fossil fuels. In a press conference that followed, doctors, nurses, and medical students from the International Federation of Medical Students Associations spelled it out plainly: coal, gas, and oil aren’t just warming the planet — they’re driving premature deaths, respiratory disease, reproductive health problems, and even cancer. Several speakers pointed out that while the new Belém Health Action Plan offers strong guidance, even high-income countries won’t be able to fully implement it if their supply chains remain tied to fossil fuels. “We need to immediately bring down emissions,” Dr. Courtney Howard of the Global Climate and Health Alliance said. “This is the first COP where we’ve really accepted we’re going past 1.5°C. We’re at a tipping point, and honestly, it’s scary.” The group also reminded everyone that air pollution kills over 7 million people every year, heat waves are becoming a deadly routine, and climate disasters are pushing health systems to their limits. Canada ended up being the unexpected case study of the day. Its coal phase-outs, led in part by health workers, helped Ontario and Alberta cut 15% of the national total emissions. And yet, coal barely features in the COP30 conversations. “Health is the path forward to get rid of these dirty fuels,” Dr. Joe Vipond of the University of Calgary said. “But coal is underdiscussed at COP30,” he added. The grid bottleneck By Cheena Kapoor Governments and development banks made a big push on Tuesday to tackle one of the less glamorous — but urgent — challenges of the clean-energy transition: grids and storage. They called it a “critical enabler” of the global shift to renewables, and the money they announced suggests they mean it. One of the strongest signals came from the Utilities for Net Zero Alliance, which said its members plan to spend $148 billion every year on the energy transition. That level of investment could unlock a $1 trillion pipeline for new grid and storage projects. Meanwhile, the Global Grid Catalyst — a philanthropy-backed initiative launched earlier this year — highlighted its initial $50 million commitment and its goal of mobilizing $200 million annually to upgrade and expand modern grids. Stakeholders, including the German government and the Global Renewables Alliance, along with government representatives of Azerbaijan, Korea, the United Kingdom, and Australia, revealed that grids are the biggest bottleneck to rapid emissions cuts, and there is a dire need to modernize them for the rapidly growing renewable energy sector. The Inter-American Development Bank also launched a Power Transmission Acceleration Platform for Latin America and the Caribbean, backed by €15 million from Germany, to modernize and expand regional grid infrastructure. Editor’s note: This entry was produced as part of the 2025 Climate Change Media Partnership, a journalism fellowship organized by Internews' Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security. Devex retains full editorial independence. Bits and bobs By Jesse Chase-Lubitz Some odd observations: • The keys needed to lock the bathroom stalls keep disappearing — which is strange, seeing as I can’t imagine they work in any other door. A souvenir perhaps? The staff seems to be getting frustrated about this. Today I saw them taping up a sign asking attendees not to pocket the keys. • In the middle of a panel discussion today, the moderator stopped the talk to take a “group photo” of all the speakers. Pic or it didn’t happen, I guess? • We learned yesterday that the venue is situated across a former airport and landing strip, which explains why it’s just one long hallway. So, if it pleases you, just imagine tens of thousands of people walking up and down a landing strip all day. For two weeks.