OP30 in Belém was meant to be a make-or-break summit. With emissions still rising and current policies locking in a 2.6 degree Celsius of warming, science says that the last chance to hold it at 1.5 degree Celsius closes in 2026—unless fossil fuels are rapidly phased out and deforestation ends, now.

COP30 delivered neither.

Oil-producers led by Saudi Arabia, with support from Russia and other Arab nations, blocked any strong language on fossil fuels at Belém. The summit only repeats last year’s vague promise to “transition away” from oil, gas and coal, but “sets no deadlines, no firm targets and no way to enforce it.”

Malik Amin Aslam, the former climate change minister, says that the 1.5-degree Celsius goal is already beyond reach now. He says the challenge is to keep the emissions pathway as low and close as possible to 1.5 degree Celsius in the future. “Failing to deal with this core issue is like ignoring the elephant in the room. This is truly disappointing,” he tells The News on Sunday.

“Without tough action, warming could exceed 2.5 degree Celsius—a level that would cause severe and permanent damage across the planet. The only way to stop temperatures from rising further and to keep the climate safe is to phase out fossil fuels completely.”

Like many other parts of the world where climate change is fuelling deadly floods, in Pakistan, people are dying and losing everything they have to floods bigger and more ferocious than any in living memory. Glaciers that feed the Indus are melting at terrifying speed, threatening both catastrophic floods today and deadly water shortages tomorrow. Rise in sea-level is already eating away at Karachi and Thatta. It is swallowing farmland, houses and the mangroves that once protected us.

“COP30’s modest deal reflected a broad paralysis: the world can talk endlessly about the climate crisis but refuse to make tough changes that are needed,” says Hammad Naqi, the WWF-Pakistan director general.

“This matters more than ever because tropical rainforests are vanishing faster than before and their destruction is a major driver of climate change, biodiversity loss and the displacement of indigenous communities.”

Negotiators also scrapped plans for a clear roadmap to honour the 2030 pledge to end deforestation and failed to give any formal recognition to Indigenous peoples and local communities for protecting their lands.

On the financial side, there was better news.

Germany handed Brazil €1 billion for its new Tropical Forests Forever fund, pushing total pledges to nearly $7 billion. Europe also committed $2.5 billion to safeguard the Congo Basin rainforest, while Brazil expects more soon from China and the UAE, with a target of $10 billion by the end of the year. The extra money is helpful, but COP30 has left the world with cash in hand yet no real rules to stop the chainsaws.

“COP30’s modest deal reflected a broad paralysis: the world can talk endlessly about the climate crisis but still refuse to make tough changes that are needed,” says Hammad Naqi, the WWF-Pakistan director general.

At Belém, hosted at the edge of the Amazon, a binding deforestation roadmap was excluded from the final COP30 deal because, despite strong backing from more than 90 countries, the wider political will simply wasn’t there. Major economies resisted turning broad support into a formal, enforceable agreement.

Naqi says without a credible, agreed-upon implementation plan, countries remain off-track, especially in a year, all of which the world has already spent above 1.5 degree Celsius.

“The lack of binding action leaves tropical forests, central to climate stability and biodiversity, dependent on voluntary pledges instead of accountable commitments. It also weakens the momentum set by the Global Stocktake in 2023, which called for exactly these kinds of clear, time-bound pathways,” he says.

“The absence of enforceable commitments not only slows global progress but also risks making the 2030 target unattainable.”

With no hopes of international help coming in a substantive way, Naqi says, Pakistan must urgently reverse ongoing forest loss through large-scale, native-species restoration, community-managed protected areas and real-time satellite monitoring.

“Pakistan is losing thousands of hectares of forest every year. We need an Emergency Forest Protection Order with tough anti-logging patrols, satellite geo-fencing and a public real-time forest-loss dashboard,” says Naqi.

Another key fight unfolded at the summit. A draft text released on Friday at COP30 called for countries to triple the amount spent on “adaptation”—helping nations cope with climate impacts—by 2030 compared with 2025 levels. Last year, COP29 promised $300 billion a year by 2035 for emissions cuts and adaptation, but many vulnerable countries say they need $360 billion annually for adaptation alone. Rich nations have offered only $120 billion by 2035—less than a third of what’s required—and the final COP30 text merely “urges” countries to try tripling adaptation funds, with no firm numbers, deadlines or penalties.

“Each COP comes up with new enhanced promises but without taking stock of the existing promises,” laments Aslam. “The tripling figure is good but only if the money flows in. Otherwise, it’s like increasing the figure on a cheque while the cheque remains in the mail.”

“The means of implementing this new ‘lollipop’ to developing countries has not been specified. The procedures for accessing it haven’t been laid out. Without that, it’s just another pie in the sky.”

“As chair of G77, Pakistan played an instrumental role in the creation of the Loss and Damage Fund. However, after that effort, two years on, it has still not been able to access a single penny from the fund owing to both a lack of funding and the rules for access to those funds.”

The challenge for Pakistan remains two-fold: adapting to immediate needs and simultaneously, engaging globally to access the adaptation funds, if and when they become available.

At the moment it remains stressed on both fronts.

“We must do much more to attract and use climate money,” says Naqi. He argues that there is an urgent need to issue more green bonds, use blended finance tools and set up a single, transparent national climate-finance facility with clear performance reports. He suggests “a stronger central climate commission to oversee spending, check results and publish regular updates so that global investors and funds can trust the system.”

On a brighter note, Aslam points out that the global push for renewable energy is already delivering results. Even though multilateral talks avoid directly attacking fossil fuels, the rapid worldwide growth of clean energy is quietly moving towards the goal. This, he says, can be called a success. To hit its 60 percent renewables-by-2030 goal, Pakistan must fast-track solar, wind and hydro projects; phase-out coal and fossil subsidies; and deliver a just-transition plan with retraining and new green jobs.

Hamad argues that the country must prioritise restoring forests and watersheds, tougher early-warning systems, climate-smart farming and resilient infrastructure in high-risk areas to avoid repetition of the losses in the 2022 and 2025 floods.

Pakistan received nothing substantial from COP30: no fossil-fuel phase-out, no forest safeguards and no real money. The climate summit appears to be running on fumes. Real progress will only come from countries like Pakistan that refuse to wait. For millions battling super-floods, dying glaciers and rising seas, survival depends on action—starting today.

The writer is a senior The News staffer in Karachi.