Cultural Heritage Included in the COP30's Action Agenda for the First Time

COP30 was held in Belém, Brazil, on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, making it the first UN climate conference to be held in a major forest location during November 10-21, 2025. The choice of location was deliberate and symbolic, intended to highlight the Amazon as a critical part of climate solutions and bring participants, including voices of and from the Amazon, closer to the realities of deforestation and its impact. This setting influenced the discussions and emphasized the role of nature-based solutions, focusing on accelerating implementation, particularly in agriculture, transport, and water management, while making progress on finance and adaptation.  

Key outcomes included the launch of the Tropical Forests Forever Facility, advancements in regenerative agriculture with over $9 billion in new investments,  a ministerial declaration on water security to integrate it into global climate policy, and integration of cultural heritage in COP’s action agenda.  

Andrew Potts, the founder of Climate Heritage Network and Director of Policy and Practice of Heritage Adapts to Climate Alliance (HACA), explained,

Two years ago, we began our journey together as the Heritage Adapts to Climate Alliance. For decades, culture and heritage have been excluded from climate adaptation policy and finance, undermining our collective work to scale up efforts to protect them from climate risks. The Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) Framework, adopted in December 2023 at COP28, offered a breakthrough by recognizing heritage sites and cultural practices as a core adaptation thematic.

We felt that, with work, this unprecedented valorization of culture in adaptation policy could be leveraged to open pathways to climate finance and access to climate decision-making for those leading efforts to adapt culture and heritage at local level. HACA was launched to do that work; to turn this potential into reality through strong engagement in GGA implementation, including the UN’s two-year UAE–Belém Work Program on adaptation indicators.

On Saturday afternoon BST, 21 November 2025, COP30 in Belém fulfilled the expectations set at COP 28 by adopting the CMA6 Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) decision, including indicators to measure progress on adapting heritage sites and cultural practices.

The decision was contentious. The night before, the COP30 Presidency cut the indicator package from 100 to 59, deleting and rewriting many expert recommendations; cultural heritage indicators fell from 8 to 5. New indicator texts were released only at 3 a.m., leaving no time to address flaws and weakening the package’s coherence.

Several delegations, including the EU, said the rewritten indicators were unclear and unusable. Despite objections and a suspended closing plenary, the Presidency pushed the package through and asked SBSTA and SBI to “work further” on these issues at their Bonn SB64 sessions in June 2026 (and thereafter at COP31 in Antalya, Turkey) — it remains unclear whether that review will extend beyond metadata and methodologies to revising indicator text.

Special thanks are owed to HACA members on the ground in Belem who advocated on behalf of culture and heritage, including Darius Ankamah (Climate Heritage Network), Scott Heron (UNESCO Chair on Climate Change Vulnerability of Natural and Cultural Heritage), Ave Paulus (ICOMOS), and Meredith Wiggins (World Monuments Fund). We also acknowledge the leadership of CHN Special Envoy HRH Princess Dana Firas of Jordan, Chair of the Petra National Trust. 

While imperfect, the COP30 outcome represents an unprecedented operationalization of culture and heritage in international climate policy and reflects five years of sustained work by culture and heritage colleagues going back to COP26. It also marks a turning point in our shared HACA journey. 

To seize this momentum, the Heritage Adapts! Coalition Steering Group announced at COP30 the launch in 2026 of the Heritage Adapts! 3000 x 2030 Campaign — a bold global effort to ensure at least 3,000 heritage sites and cultural practices implement adaptive strategies by 2030. Backed by a first-of-its-kind online Community of Action, the campaign will democratize adaptation knowledge, expand access to climate data, and connect custodians across borders in a shared fight for resilience.

The message from Belém is clear: protecting heritage is not just about preserving the past — it is about securing our collective future. But in many ways the work is only beginning.  You can read the entire HACA and Heritage Adapts! Media Release on COP30 as well as our regular COP30 updates on the HACA Circle Platform. With thanks and gratitude.”

The final COP30 agreement, reached after intense negotiations, established financial targets and highlighted the importance of forests setting a "Forest and Climate Roadmap," but it lacks a specific, explicit commitment to phase out fossil fuels, instead referring back to the previous "transitioning away from fossil fuels" language from COP28. The outcomes of the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) assessment were also adopted,  as was the focus on the intersection of art and science to communicate climate issues to a broad public.  

"Artivists" including Shaq Koyok, who designed and painted two of the murals for COP30, used murals and various art forms to advocate for climate justice and demand fossil fuel phase-outs during and around the recent COP30 UN Climate Change Conference held in the Amazon region, the epicenter of a critical tropical forest ecosystem and the climate crisis for the first time. These artistic expressions served to amplify voices of and from the forest to bridge the gap between community struggles and official negotiations  and to mark the Historic Turning Point of Culture & Heritage Claiming their place in Global Climate Adaptation Policy at COP30.

Special thanks to  Climate Heritage Network, the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University scientists and artists, the Havre de Grace Maritime Museum, which joined COP30 with a series on Amazon’s Discuss Fish by artist Selva Ozelli and artist of the Amazon Hunt Slonem, who supported the intentional focus of the COP30 by using science and art as a key communication tools. Our work will continue, see you all at COP31 in Antalya, Turkiye, next year!