We’re now a few days into the first week of COP30. The initial texts - with plenty of square brackets and alternative phrasings - have been released and the negotiations are kicking off. Here are some of the recent developments: 

• Agenda Setting: With the COP agenda being adopted after the opening plenary, we now have a more precise idea of what the parties will focus on at COP. As expected, the big ticket items are adaptation (including National Adaptation Plans and reviewing the progress of the Adaptation Committee) and finance (with expected reports on the work of the Green Climate Fund, the Global Environmental Facility and the Loss and Damage Fund). Details of the agenda can be found here: Provisional agenda and annotations. Note by the Executive Secretary.
• Opening statements: Similarly, listening to the opening statements of various negotiating groups, climate finance was the clear theme: the G77 + China group called for the timely delivery of the New Collective Quantified Goal (from COP29) and the Like Minded Developing Countries called on developed countries to meet their Paris Agreement obligation to provide climate finance (background on these aspects can be found here: COP29 Outcomes | Australia | Global law firm | Norton Rose Fulbright.
• GGA Indicators: The text with the indicators for measuring progress on the Global Goal on Adaptation seems to be in a good place, however there is ongoing discussion about how these can be better aligned with the Paris Agreement and whether indicators should track domestic budgets (as this may distract from promised flows of international climate finance). There is also talk about holding off progressing work on the indicators until progress is made on an ambitious adaptation finance agreement.
• Is 1.5 alive? The often repeated motto of COP is that we must keep the ‘1.5 alive’ in reference to the Paris Agreement temperature warming target. Despite 2024 being the first year to have an average temperature above 1.5 degrees in relation to pre-industrial levels, the Paris Agreement temperature warming targets technically work on the basis of 20-year averages. This means that, despite the 2024 record temperature and with some ambitious progress, there is still a (very slim) chance we might just keep 1.5 alive.  Implementation of Parties NDCs is also a key theme coming through this year’s COP.
• Venue Protest: Whilst it is not unusual to see protests at COPs, a demonstration on Tuesday night got heated and temporarily caused a lockdown of the venue with delegates unable to enter or leave. The action was apparently led by indigenous groups who are frustrated with their exclusion from both the COP process and policies being decided in relation to the Amazon.
• COP32 Host: Whilst Australia and Türkiye continue to battle to host COP31 (which is creating a substantial risk of the next COP being held in Bonn, which Germany is not happy about), it was announced that COP32 in 2027 will be held in Ethiopia in its capital Addis Ababa, after it managed to fend off a rival bid from Nigeria.