COP30 in Belém: What It Really Means for Food, Forests and Land

Most climate investors and sustainability teams focus on clean energy first. Yet roughly a quarter of global emissions come from food, forests, land and nature – the core topics that defined COP30 in Belém, on the edge of the Amazon.

Here’s the thing about COP30: you can’t read it as just another UN summit. For anyone working in green technology, sustainable finance or corporate climate strategy, Belém quietly redrew the map for where capital, policy risk and innovation are heading next.

This matters because land, food and forests are no longer “nice to have” add‑ons to an energy transition story. They’re becoming hard requirements – tracked, financed and, increasingly, regulated.

Below is a clear breakdown of what COP30 actually changed, where it fell short, and how companies and investors can respond now rather than scramble in 2026–2030.

---

1. The ‘Global Mutirão’: Nature In, Food Out

The global mutirão decision is now the political backdrop for every land‑related climate move this decade.

Countries signed off on a Belém “global mutirão” decision that:

• Calls for tripling adaptation finance by 2035
• Re‑states the need to halt and reverse deforestation and forest degradation by 2030
• Frames climate, biodiversity and land degradation as linked crises

It also does something subtle but important: it explicitly anchors deforestation action in Article 5 of the Paris Agreement, which is all about conserving carbon sinks like forests.

However, the mutirão text never uses the word “food”. Agriculture and food systems – arguably the biggest land‑use driver on the planet – were effectively sidelined in the final decision.

That tension is the story:

• Forests and nature now sit firmly inside the core climate agreement.
• Food systems are still treated as a side conversation.

What this signals for practitioners

If you’re building or funding green tech, you can read this like a policy term sheet:

• Nature‑based solutions and forest conservation will see increasing political backing and, gradually, more finance.
• Food system transformation will advance through side initiatives, voluntary coalitions, and domestic policy rather than a strong UNFCCC mandate – at least for now.

For corporate climate leads, the implication is blunt: if your net‑zero plan talks about “sourcing deforestation‑free commodities by 2030”, regulators and investors can now point to the mutirão, the Glasgow forest pledge and the Global Stocktake as a combined political baseline.

---

2. Adaptation Gets Measurable: New Indicators for Food, Land and Ecosystems

For the first time, countries agreed on a common set of indicators to track climate adaptation – including climate‑resilient food systems.

Under the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA), governments adopted 59 Belém Adaptation Indicators, whittled down from more than 10,000 options proposed by experts.

For food and agriculture, the indicators look at:

• Share of farmland using climate‑relevant practices and technologies
• Strength of knowledge, R&D and extension systems supporting adaptation
• Area of degraded land under active management for food production
• Changes in yields in areas managed for food and agriculture
• Proportion of the population with equitable access to adequate food and nutrition

For ecosystems, indicators include:

• Proportion of ecosystems providing critical services to dependent populations
• Implementation of nature‑based solutions
• Threat status of ecosystems and species

The catch: these indicators are voluntary, non‑binding and non‑punitive. Countries pushed hard to protect national sovereignty and avoid turning them into de‑facto conditionalities for finance.

Why this still matters for business and investors

Even if voluntary at the UN level, indicators have a habit of leaking into:

• National adaptation plans and NDCs
• Development bank project requirements
• ESG and impact frameworks

For example, a development bank financing irrigation or landscape restoration in 2028 will be under pressure to show progress against the Belém indicators. If you build tools for farm resilience analytics, MRV (measurement, reporting, verification) or ecosystem monitoring, this is your signal: the world just agreed on what “good data” needs to look like.

Practical angles:

• Climate‑smart ag platforms should map their data outputs to these indicators now.
• Nature and adaptation funds can use the Belém list as a ready‑made logframe.
• Corporate reporters can voluntarily align some adaptation KPIs with Belém indicators to stay ahead of disclosure norms.

---

3. Forest Finance: Big Pledges, Big Questions

Brazil used home turf advantage to push forest finance to the front – but the architecture is still contested.

Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF)

Brazil launched the Tropical Forest Forever Fund, which:

• Has raised $6.6 billion so far
• Ultimately aims to mobilize $125 billion for up to 74 tropical forest countries
• Mixes public, philanthropic and private capital invested in global bond markets
• Reserves 20% of funds for Indigenous peoples and local communities

Supporters call it the largest forest‑finance mechanism ever created. Critics see three big problems:

1. Fragmentation – it sits outside the UN climate finance architecture.
2. Accountability and benefit‑sharing – concern that investors may capture more value than forest communities.
3. Insufficient Indigenous prioritisation – many Indigenous groups say 20% isn’t remotely aligned with their role as de facto guardians of most remaining intact forests.

Civil society coalitions of more than 150 groups went as far as to reject the TFFF outright, arguing it doesn’t address the root drivers of deforestation, notably industrial agriculture and fossil extraction.

Other forest and land-rights moves

Beyond the TFFF, COP30 delivered:

• A $2.5+ billion call to action for Congo Basin forests over five years
• $1.8 billion pledged to secure Indigenous and local community land rights
• A collective target to legally secure 160 million hectares of Indigenous and Afro‑descendant lands by 2030
• Brazil’s development bank allocating funds to restore 19,000 hectares in the Amazon and Atlantic Forest regions

This is where green finance intersects with justice: land‑rights investments are now being framed as core climate solutions, not niche social projects.

What smart capital does next

If you deploy capital in this space, you’ll want to:

• Prioritize jurisdictional and rights‑based approaches over isolated offset projects
• Require transparent governance in any forest facility you back – particularly how benefits reach communities
• Treat Indigenous land tenure as risk mitigation and impact multiplier, not a CSR add‑on

In plain language: deals that lock in forest protection without locking in rights are going to age badly.

---

4. Food, Agriculture and Methane: Big Emissions, Weak Outcomes

Agriculture is now the second‑largest emitting sector after fossil fuels – and COP30 basically punted the hard decisions to 2026.

Agriculture negotiations stalled

Formal talks under the Sharm el‑Sheikh Joint Work on Agriculture and Food Security (SJWA) ended without a substantive decision. Countries will resume negotiations in June 2026, right before the mandate expires at COP31.

Draft texts briefly entertained:

• Scaling up grant‑based adaptation finance for agriculture
• Recognising agroecology alongside precision farming and AI
• Rewarding farmers via high‑integrity carbon markets

Then the whole thing was parked. Many observers blamed a flood of “corporate‑friendly” language around precision agriculture and carbon markets, which made agreement impossible.

The result: no clear UN signal on what a “just transition in agriculture” actually looks like.

Methane: the emergency brake nobody wants to pull

UNEP’s latest assessment shows:

• Methane is responsible for a huge chunk of near‑term warming.
• Current policies only deliver about an 8% cut by 2030, far short of the 30% Global Methane Pledge.
• Technically feasible measures could reach 32% reductions by 2030.

Agriculture – especially livestock and rice – is now the largest methane source. A pre‑COP analysis found 52 of the world’s biggest meat, dairy and rice companies emit about 22 million tonnes of methane per year, yet only one has a specific methane target.

At COP30 we saw some progress:

• A new global initiative (FIRST) to help farmers share low‑cost practices that reduce methane and nitrous oxide
• A methane action accelerator for developing countries, initially funded with $25 million
• Philanthropic commitments, including $100 million from Mike Bloomberg focused on methane reductions

But there was no binding global deal on agricultural methane. Some governments even shelved national livestock‑methane targets at the last minute.

Why this is a strategic blind spot

This gap creates three very concrete risks and opportunities:

1. Policy whiplash – expect a wave of national and regional methane policies, many coming fast and unevenly.
2. Reputational risk – major food companies can’t credibly talk climate while treating methane as an accounting detail.
3. Product opportunity – technologies and practices that cut enteric fermentation, manure emissions, rice methane and fertiliser nitrous oxide will move from niche to mainstream within this decade.

If you’re in green tech, I’d prioritise:

• On‑farm methane measurement tools
• Feed additives, breeding and management that lower livestock methane
• Alternate wetting and drying and other rice‑paddy interventions
• Fertiliser efficiency and alternatives that cut both nitrous oxide and input costs

The political signal from Belém is: no one wants to fight farmers on camera, but the methane math doesn’t add up without agriculture. That tension will break somewhere – likely through targeted policies rather than one big UN deal.

---

5. Trade, Biofuels and Greenwashing: The New Risk Landscape

While negotiators argued over commas, three cross‑cutting fault lines emerged that every sustainability team should track closely.

5.1 Trade and deforestation regulations

For the first time, a COP “cover” decision explicitly referenced unilateral trade measures. The mutirão text:

• Reaffirms that climate measures, including unilateral ones, must not be arbitrary or discriminatory trade barriers
• Creates three annual dialogues on trade and climate from 2026 to 2028, involving trade bodies and climate negotiators

Translated: the clash between measures like deforestation‑free import rules and exporters’ concerns is now officially on the UN climate agenda, not just a Brussels–Brasília spat.

If your business depends on global commodity flows (soy, beef, palm, cocoa, timber), expect:

• More scrutiny of your supply‑chain traceability claims
• Growing pressure to align with both trade rules and climate obligations

5.2 Biofuels and “sustainable fuels”

Brazil pushed the Belém 4x pledge to quadruple “sustainable fuels” use by 2035. Many NGOs, and frankly many scientists, are uneasy with the framing because it bundles genuinely low‑carbon options (like some waste‑based fuels) with land‑intensive bioenergy from crops and wood.

Their core argument is simple: if you burn forests and cropland for energy, you:

• Erode carbon sinks precisely when we need them most
• Compete with food production and water resources
• Hide near‑term emissions behind “carbon neutrality” accounting tricks

Brazil didn’t get biofuels written into the final mutirão or just‑transition texts. But in side events and pavilions, bioenergy was everywhere.

For project developers and financiers, the bar is rising fast:

• Feedstock must be demonstrably additional and sustainable – waste, residues, non‑food crops on genuinely marginal land.
• Forest biomass for energy is increasingly seen as high‑risk, high‑controversy, even if technically “renewable” on paper.

5.3 Agricultural greenwashing

Belém was also a case study in how not to approach stakeholder trust.

More than 300 agribusiness lobbyists reportedly attended COP30. A separate “AgriZone” pavilion, sponsored by companies with links to deforestation and intensive livestock, ran parallel to official events.

The message from civil society was blunt:

• Talking about “regenerative” or “climate‑smart” agriculture while expanding forest‑risk commodities doesn’t fly anymore.
• Offsetting emissions by planting trees, while continuing to drive deforestation elsewhere, looks increasingly like reputation risk, not climate action.

For brands and investors, the safest path is boring but effective:

• Independent verification of land‑use claims
• Clear time‑bound commitments on deforestation and methane
• Transparent reporting on how much of your climate strategy depends on offsets vs absolute cuts

---

6. Indigenous Rights: From Side Event to Structuring Principle

COP30 made one thing crystal clear: you can’t have credible forest or land‑use climate strategies without Indigenous peoples at the centre.

Key outcomes:

• The mutirão preamble commits countries to respect and consider Indigenous rights, land rights and traditional knowledge in climate action.
• Governments and philanthropies pledged $1.8 billion to support Indigenous and Afro‑descendant land tenure from 2026–2030.
• Fifteen countries agreed to recognise and secure 160 million hectares of Indigenous and Afro‑descendant lands by 2030.
• Brazil announced 10 new Indigenous territories, acknowledging that 59 million hectares still need to be secured.

At the same time, frustration was real:

• Over 3,000 Indigenous representatives were in Belém, but only about 14% of Brazilian Indigenous attendees had access to the official negotiation zone.
• Direct access to climate finance for Indigenous peoples did not make it into the final mutirão decision.

For anyone structuring green investments, this isn’t a side note. It’s a design rule:

• Rights‑based approaches to forests and land are now widely recognised as one of the most effective climate strategies available.
• Funds that bypass Indigenous governance or treat communities as project beneficiaries, not rights‑holders, will face growing backlash and risk of failure.

If you’re serious about nature and climate outcomes, build in:

• Free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) as a baseline
• Shared governance with Indigenous organisations
• Budget lines for direct access mechanisms, not just government‑channeled flows

---

Where This Leaves You in 2026 and Beyond

COP30 in Belém didn’t deliver a grand bargain on food systems, forests and land. It did something more incremental but still important: it set directional markers for where policy, finance and scrutiny are heading.

If you’re running climate strategy, investing in green tech, or designing sustainability products, three moves make sense right now:

1. Anchor land and food in your climate plan. Treat deforestation, land restoration and agricultural methane as core pillars, not offsets or footnotes.
2. Align with emerging metrics. Map your projects to the Belém adaption indicators and to deforestation‑free and rights‑based standards before they become hard requirements.
3. Co‑design with frontline communities. Indigenous and local communities aren’t stakeholders to “consult”; they’re partners and often the actual implementers of nature‑based climate solutions.

The reality? The energy transition without a land‑use transition doesn’t hold. COP30 made that contradiction impossible to ignore. The organisations that act on that now – with real numbers, real safeguards and real partnerships – will be the ones still credible when the next round of climate rules lands.