One year ago, U.S. President Donald Trump came into office and almost immediately slashed the country’s involvement in international climate diplomacy. The global climate community spent the last 12 months figuring out how to maintain momentum while keeping out of Trump’s way.
Countries ultimately showed a willingness to continue working multilaterally, as shown at the 80th United Nations General Assembly in New York and the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Belém, Brazil. But as the European Union and the United Kingdom deprioritized climate to focus on their own military might, it emboldened low- and middle-income countries such as Colombia to demand more definitive action on phasing out fossil fuels.
As we yawn into 2026, experts are looking back at the year wondering what progress was made in 2025 on climate finance commitments from the previous year, and how promises made in 2025 will be carried on in 2026. They are also skeptical about how the year’s biggest and most consequential conference — the 31st meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, aka COP31 — will be run effectively by two countries on two different continents.