Why COP30’s trade turn matters, despite CBAM

It's easy to miss the paragraphs on trade, buried as they are in the procedural thicket of the UNFCCC's COP30 decision text.

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But paragraphs 55 and 56 of the Mutirão outcome have quietly shifted the institutional architecture of global climate governance. COP30 has, for the first time, intertwined trade and climate cooperation in a way that makes their connection formally visible - and politically contestable - within the UN system. For developing countries this is a strategic inflection point.

The European Union (EU)'s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which will enter full effect in January 2026, is the clearest signal of the shifting terrain. Presented as a climate measure to prevent carbon leakage, CBAM imposes costs on imports of carbon-intensive goods - steel, aluminum, fertilisersfrom countries with weaker climate regulations. What it really does, however, is shift the costs of Europe's green transition onto other countries - without offering the finance, support, or flexibility they were promised. And this comes at a time when developed countries still haven't delivered on their climate finance commitments under Article 9 of the Paris Agreement.