As the world grapples with the rising tide of climate emergencies, the recent COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, has thrown a spotlight on both the global struggle for meaningful action and the deeply personal stakes for those living on the frontlines of the crisis. From the bustling negotiating halls to the cocoa groves of the Amazon, the conference’s outcomes—and its shortcomings—are reverberating in communities thousands of miles apart.
On December 24, 2025, in Islamabad, Pakistan, the Climate Action Forum (CAF), in partnership with the Institute of Regional Studies (IRS) and the Institute of Rural Management (IRM), convened a post-COP30 panel discussion. The event, attended by over 100 participants spanning government, academia, and civil society, was a microcosm of the wider global effort to translate lofty climate commitments into real-world solutions. Khalida Bashir, Joint Secretary of the Climate Finance Wing at Pakistan’s Ministry of Climate Change & Environmental Coordination (MOCC&EC), underscored the urgency of leveraging the newly established loss and damage fund. "The Ministry is working on ideas to leverage this fund. NDRMF & NDMA is working in this regard & Ministry is also seeking provincial support to strengthen the institutional capacity to channelize these funding streams," she explained, according to APP.
The Islamabad forum echoed the sense of both hope and frustration that characterized COP30 itself. Dr. Roomi S. Hayat, Chair of CAF and CEO of IRM, called for stronger coordination and the integration of scientific research, technical data, and indigenous knowledge. "Strengthening coordination can significantly improve climate action in Pakistan," he said, emphasizing the need to engage civil society to magnify the impact of climate initiatives. Meanwhile, Arif Goheer, Executive Director of the Global Change Impact Studies Centre (GCISC), pointed out a positive step: "Last 2 NDCs were delayed, they were submitted one year delayed from their deadline, however, this time we tried our best to meet the deadline which was 2025 and submitted them right in time before the COP30 this year."
Yet, as Aisha Khan, CEO of the Civil Society Coalition for Climate Change (CSCCC), warned, promises alone are not enough: "We do not have limited resources for climate action, what we need to do is to translate those promises to protection and ground for the communities that are the badly hit by the climate change." Dr. Khalid Waleed, Research Fellow at SDPI, added another layer, referencing the Belem Political Package at COP30, which was based on the concept of ‘Mutirão’—collective action. "In terms of Pakistan, Institutional Mutirão should be given priority," he said, urging for a collective, institutional approach to climate resilience.
While policymakers and experts debated next steps in Islamabad, thousands of miles away in Brazil, the consequences of climate inaction were all too real. On November 7, 2025, a tornado ripped through the city of Rio Bonito do Iguaçu in southern Paraná, killing seven people. The same day, global leaders gathered in Belém for the Climate Summit—a preparatory event for COP30—highlighting the stark juxtaposition between urgent need and diplomatic deliberation. According to BdF, Brazil faced a year marked by climate disasters: in July, 40 out of 62 municipalities in Amazonas declared a state of emergency due to flooding, while storms in São Paulo repeatedly left thousands without power.
Climate researcher Humberto Barbosa, founder of the Satellite Image Analysis and Processing Laboratory at the Federal University of Alagoas, put it bluntly: "Since the Paris Agreement in 2015, these events have become increasingly extreme due to rising temperatures and global warming." The data supports his warning. The global average temperature anomaly has now surpassed 1.5°C since the pre-industrial era—a threshold once seen as a red line for climate safety. "We have already surpassed a 1.5°C anomaly in average global temperature since the pre-industrial era, which shows how much additional heat we are adding to the atmosphere. And that’s where extreme events come from," Barbosa explained, as quoted by BdF.
Despite the mounting evidence, COP30 ended with a mix of modest advances and significant disappointments. Governments failed to reach consensus on phasing out fossil fuels—a critical step, given that roughly 80% of global emissions come from their combustion. Greenpeace Brazil’s Anna Cárcamo cautioned, "We urgently need to move forward with this energy transition." A much-anticipated roadmap for transitioning away from fossil fuels was ultimately blocked by oil-dependent economies like Saudi Arabia, leaving the final text without concrete strategies.
On adaptation, the conference approved only 59 out of 100 proposed voluntary global indicators for the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA), many of which are not yet measurable. Cárcamo explained, "Over the next two years, methodologies and policies will be aligned so that we can actually track global progress on adaptation." The final document did include a new mechanism to support "just transitions"—a step toward providing financial, technical, and capacity-building support for developing countries embarking on low-carbon economic pathways. Still, as Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement coordinator Bárbara Loureiro observed, "The world remains on a trajectory toward nearly three degrees of warming, while the measures needed to limit warming to 1.5°C remain blocked."
Yet, if the official negotiations disappointed, the surge in grassroots and Indigenous participation at COP30 offered a glimmer of hope. More than 3,000 Indigenous people attended the conference, including 400 from Brazil and 500 from other countries. Toya Manchineri, general coordinator of the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (Coiab), celebrated the recognition of Indigenous land demarcation as climate policy: "For us, it was very important what we brought as the Indigenous movement of the Amazon Basin and the Brazilian Amazon, the idea that countries should view the demarcation and titling of Indigenous territories as climate policy." Minister of Indigenous Peoples Sônia Guajajara ratified four Indigenous lands and announced the demarcation of ten more, including four million hectares of quilombola territories.
For people like Izete dos Santos Costa—better known as Dona Nena—the outcomes of COP30 are more than abstract policy. For nearly 20 years, Dona Nena has run Filha do Combu, a chocolate factory and tourism hub on Combu Island near Belém. During the conference, her factory welcomed hundreds of visitors eager to learn about organic chocolate production in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. But the joy of sharing her craft is tinged with anxiety. "I am noticing declining yields of cocoa, and fruits are becoming smaller," she observed, echoing scientific projections that climate change will shrink suitable habitat for cocoa in the Amazon by 2050 if precipitation decreases and temperatures rise. "It’s not only cocoa; other fruits here, in general, are all decreasing."
Dona Nena’s story is emblematic of the wider struggle facing communities across the globe. As she and her team continue to inspire tourists and support local livelihoods, the future of their work—and the Amazon’s ecological health—hangs in the balance. The outcomes of climate negotiations, for them, are not just words on paper but determinants of survival and prosperity.
As the dust settles from COP30, the world is left with a familiar mix of progress and unfinished business. The challenge now is to ensure that the spirit of collective action—so vital in Islamabad, Belém, and Combu Island—translates into concrete steps that protect both people and planet from the ravages of a changing climate.
