Simon Stiell, the UN Climate Change Executive Secretary, acknowledged that the world still faces significant challenges in aligning climate finance efforts.
He made these remarks during the third High-Level Ministerial Dialogue on climate finance under the CMA at COP30, held in Belém, Brazil, on Saturday, 15 November 2025.
The dialogue aimed to foster trust by offering clear and predictable information about the funding developing countries can depend on to carry out their national climate and adaptation strategies.
Stiell emphasized that trust is crucial in climate finance because without it, progress slows, ambition diminishes, and overall advancement becomes much harder. However, he also pointed out that since the Paris Agreement, cooperation on climate issues has been advancing.
Both public and private climate finance flows are growing, new partnerships are forming, and billions of dollars are being invested globally in clean energy, resilience, and just transitions. Despite this progress, he stressed that climate finance remains insufficient, unreliable, and unevenly distributed.
He highlighted the scale of the challenge: climate impacts are intensifying, yet the gap in adaptation funding is still too large. Meanwhile, debt levels are increasing, and many of the most vulnerable countries continue to struggle to access even the funds that have already been promised.
Stiell called on developed countries to have at least doubled their collective adaptation finance compared to 2019 levels by this year. According to agreements made in Baku last year, a practical way to achieve this goal is to triple the disbursements from UNFCCC climate funds by 2030.
He underscored the importance of the Adaptation Fund, the Least Developed Countries Fund, and the Special Climate Fund, as they play a vital role in increasing financing for the least developed countries and small island developing states.
The commitments made will determine whether small island nations can safeguard their coastlines, whether least developed countries can adjust their agriculture to withstand droughts, and whether emerging economies can shift away from fossil fuels without creating new inequalities.
The focus remains on boosting public finance through grants, concessional funding, and instruments that do not increase debt. This strategy aims to simplify access and lower transaction costs, ensuring that funds reach those who need them most.
Stiell stressed that parties should commit not only to increasing the amount of finance but also to making it more accessible, predictable, and better aligned with national priorities. He emphasized that climate finance should be viewed not as charity but as sound economic policy.
