Five threats to progress that dogged the summit

Cop30 in Belém wrapped up on Saturday night more than 24 hours later than planned, and with an Amazonian rainstorm thundering down on the conference centre.

- Jonathan Watts

The structure just about held, as it has done these past three weeks despite fire, savage tropical heat and blistering political attacks on the multilateral system of global environmental governance.

Dozens of agreements were gavelled through on the final day, as the most collective form of humanity worked to resolve the most complex and dangerous challenge that our species has ever faced. It was chaotic. The process very nearly collapsed and had to be rescued by last-ditch talks that went on into the early morning.

Veteran observers told me the Paris agreement was on life-support. But it survived.

For now at least. The outcome was not nearly enough to limit global heating to 1.5C. There was a considerable shortfall in the finance needed for adaptation by the countries worst affected by extreme weather. The importance of rainforest protection barely got a mention even though this was the first climate summit in the Amazon. And the power balance in the world is still so skewed towards gas, oil and coal interests that there was not even a single mention of "fossil fuels" in the main agreement.

Yet, for all these flaws, Belém opened up new avenues of discussion on how to reduce dependency on petrochemicals, and it increased the scope of participation by Indigenous groups and scientists. It made strides towards stronger policies on a just transition to a clean energy future, and crowbarred the wallets of wealthy nations a little further open. A debate is now raging as to whether Cop30 was a success, a failure or a fudge.

But any judgment needs to take into account the geopolitical minefield in which these talks took place. Here are five threats that will have to be avoided at next year's summit in Turkey.

1. Global leadership vacuum