COP30 closed with a sharp contrast between political ambition and the refusal of states to meet their obligations. What we saw during are negotiations that moved fast on language, slow on accountability, and silent on finance. The result is a COP that delivers one historic mechanism for justice, but many weak outcomes that leave vulnerable communities exposed. And so, the gap between rights and resources remains wide.
The Belém Action Mechanism (BAM) is the achievement that movements fought for. Workers, Indigenous Peoples, feminists, youth groups, and frontline communities pushed Just Transition into the center of the negotiations. It was the pressure they consistently applied that transformed what was once just a concept into a formal mechanism. BAM treats Just Transition as structural transformation. It defines transition not as a job program or a political message, but as a full shift in economic, social, and environmental systems.
BAM is not a finance instrument. It will not collect funds, distribute grants, or fill the finance gap created by wealthy countries’ refusal to meet their obligations. Its power is different. BAM creates a political and institutional space where governments can be measured. Through indicators and mandates, it introduces accountability into spaces where rights were previously treated as optional. You understand BAM as a tool that movements can use to demand implementation. It is a mandate built from struggle, not a gift from governments.
This victory stands in sharp contrast to the failures across the finance agenda. Finance was the battlefield of COP30. It was also the burial ground of ambition. States that demanded binding obligations under Article 9.1 left with a text that centers “collective efforts” and “voluntary pathways.” Transparency under Article 9.5, which shows who pays and who hides, was weakened. The New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) was defined as a number without a delivery plan. It became a vision without implementation, and responsibility without commitment.
Adaptation remains unfunded. The decision diluted the responsibility of developed countries to provide finance, and timelines for tripling adaptation finance were pushed to 2035—far beyond what vulnerable countries can withstand. There was also no reference to the Global Goal on Adaptation. The outcome leaves frontline communities in the Global South facing rising climate risks with no resources to respond.
Loss and Damage remains a fund without contributors. Many communities entered COP30 with the hope that governments would scale up public finance, but that hope was met with a wall of resistance. The political message is clear: states acknowledge the harm yet refuse to pay for it. This contradicts the recent International Court of Justice opinion, which affirmed the right to reparations for climate harm. COP30 ignored that legal reality.
The transition away from fossil fuels remains named but not required. There is no mandate, no timeline, and no commitment to public finance. This is a deep failure. Fossil fuels remain the root cause of climate breakdown, and without finance for a shift to renewable energy, justice stays out of reach. The adoption of BAM gives workers and communities a tool to shape the transition, but without finance, structural transformation cannot begin.
COP30 also confirmed a worrying trend: MDBs continue to play an influential role in climate finance without transparency or accountability. They repeated their COP29 announcement to triple climate finance, and the final text described the “critical role MDBs play.” Yet 73 percent of their climate finance is loans, and many MDBs continue to invest in fossil fuels directly or indirectly. Gas is still described as a transition fuel, and some MDBs have even increased fossil financing in recent years. This creates uncertainty about their direction and undermines their claims of Paris alignment.
Global North countries continue to hide behind MDBs to avoid paying their fair share. Public money is not scarce. Rich countries could raise USD 6.6 trillion every year by taxing the ultra-rich, ending fossil fuel subsidies, and making polluters pay. Instead, they promote loans, blended finance, and private finance—tools that push climate costs onto countries already facing heavy debt burdens. What this does is widen inequality and reinforce extraction.
This pattern is visible across the MENA region, where countries are warming at twice the global average while struggling under debt burdens so heavy, that more is spent on repayments than on health, education, or climate resilience. Austerity budgets and reliance on expensive loans leave governments with little space to invest in a just transition, entrenching fossil dependency simply because the public finance required to move away from it does not exist. As a result, communities face escalating climate impacts without protection and bear the cost of a crisis they did not create. Without reform of the international financial architecture, no country in the region can deliver climate justice.
A Just Transition in the MENA region requires grants — long-term public finance for renewable energy, social protection, worker support, and community-owned systems. MDBs are not designed to deliver this: their tools rely on debt, their governance reflects unequal power, and their policy influence often reinforces austerity and restricts public spending. For MDBs to genuinely support a Just Transition, they would need to end fossil finance entirely, democratize their governance, and adopt rights-based policies that protect communities. This includes abandoning the promotion of gas as a transition fuel and stopping the design of projects that cause displacement and harm.
The BAM provides a framework to push this shift by embedding rights-based objectives into climate policy and centering the needs of workers, Indigenous Peoples, and frontline communities. It can reinforce gender equality and support a model of transition judged not only on emissions reductions but also on its contributions to equity, justice, and the right to development. But to realize this potential, civil society must ensure that BAM does not become another closed space controlled by the same actors who resisted its creation.
We witnessed powerful moments at COP30. We saw workers take real risks when the venue caught fire, and we saw communities march through Belém. We saw feminists, youth, and Indigenous leaders push justice to the center of the agenda. These actions carried more ambition than many negotiators, showing how movements lead when governments stall.
MENAFem enters its next phase with a clear direction.
We will push for public finance on fair terms.
We will push for an end to fossil fuel finance.
We will defend those on the front lines.
We will demand accountability from polluters.
And we will press for financial architecture reform that centers equity and rights.
COP30 delivered a mechanism; it did not deliver justice. The struggle for justice continues. BAM creates a political space that movements can use — and the next chapter will be defined by who shapes it, who benefits, who pays, and who is held accountable.
Justice is now a mandate. Our work is to make it real.