In a year crowded with climate summits, it wasn’t COP30 in Belém that reshaped the game. It was the G20 in Johannesburg.
While negotiators in Brazil debated language, the G20 delivered structure. South Africa continued on the groundwork laid by India and Brazil in the past two years to ensure that the Global South — not the G7 — was driving that shift. This is not about the Global North vs South. It’s about leverage: who has it, who’s using it, and how the financial architecture of climate is finally, even if slowly, being rewritten.
The 2025 G20 Leaders’ Declaration carried on the momentum from India’s presidency in 2023 and that of Brazil’s in 2024 by anchoring climate finance in macroeconomic terms. It reaffirmed the US$5.8–5.9 trillion needed by developing countries to meet their NDCs before 2030—a figure first codified under India—and also launched tangible delivery mechanisms: the Africa Engagement Framework 2025–2030 and Mission 300, a World Bank–AfDB initiative to connect 300 million Africans to electricity by 2030.
They are institutional pipelines that MDBs have begun responding to. Since 2023, the World Bank’s Evolution Roadmap and follow‑up papers refer to the G20 Capital Adequacy Framework review and MDB reform agenda when justifying changes to the Bank’s financial model, including expanded concessionality and blended finance.. And in 2025, both the World Bank and AfDB issued hybrid capital bonds tied to climate-linked development outcomes—direct implementation of G20 signal
Compared to this, at the COP30, parties in Belém committed to tripling adaptation finance by 2035, but stopped short of setting a quantified global climate finance target beyond reaffirming the $100 billion baseline negotiated years ago. There is no binding roadmap on fossil phase-out. The language was progress, but lacked political commitment. Meanwhile, the G20 had finance ministers and MDBs writing their to-do lists.
U.S. absence at the G20 should have been a crisis but it wasn’t. South Africa didn’t blink when Washington walked. A G20 summit proceeded without U.S. participation for the first time ever and still adopted a Leaders’ Declaration. That’s a profound assertion of the Global South’s agency. India and Brazil stood firm with South Africa, and the message was clear: climate finance can move forward without the G7.
In fact, what passed for Global North leadership was diluted by domestic distractions. The EU backed off its 2040 climate target, allowing foreign credits and delaying core legislation like the deforestation-free products rule. The political bandwidth simply wasn’t there and the Global South stepped into that vacuum with financing frameworks.
There’s a continuity here that matters. India’s Delhi G20 presidency quantified needs; Brazil’s Rio presidency kept “billions to trillions” alive; and South Africa turned it into pipelines and platforms. The Global South troika, including India, Brazil and South Africa, have been seemingly building a finance-first narrative.
Even China’s and India’s lines at COP30 align with this. Both pushed for massive scale-up in public finance, defended development space, and called out inequity in transition timelines. G77+China’s submission reiterated the demand for trillion-scale flows. In both fora, they were playing for system redesign, not just rhetorical wins.
Having said that, none of this can be interpreted as COP irrelevance.
COP30, for all its frustrations, still moved forward on adaptation and forest financing mechanisms. Brazil’s leadership on the inclusion of Indigenous people and the Tropical Forests Forever initiative showed real political intent. But the centre of operational delivery has shifted to include the G20 and MDB space.
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