COP30: A Call for Partnership in the Era of Uncertainty

Today we reflect on the outcome of COP30, where governments, businesses, non-governmental and community organisations, and financial institutions gathered to accelerate climate action and strengthen global collaboration. This year’s COP30 summit, hosted by Brazil, was framed around three core ambitions:

(i) Strengthening multilateralism

(ii) Connecting climate multilateralism to people

(iii) Accelerating the implementation of the Paris Agreement

The geopolitical backdrop was challenging. China, the United States and India, the world’s largest emitters, were either absent or represented in only a minimal capacity, and global momentum behind climate ambition has noticeably weakened. 

Yet beneath this noise, a more encouraging narrative is emerging: one centred on partnership, innovation and systemic progress. While negotiations at the top may slow, real-world collaboration is expanding at pace.

At Pineapple, we believe that partnerships are essential to enabling a just, sustainable and resilient future. Sustainability challenges are systemic, and systemic problems demand collective, coordinated responses, not just on the geo-political stage. Across sectors, we are seeing organisations come together to articulate bold visions, unlock new commercial models and test solutions that show sustainability can drive financial value as well as environmental impact.

Partnerships Driving Positive Change at COP30 & Beyond:

Global Standards for Sustainable Buildings

Cities and built-environment actors have featured prominently at COP30, reflecting their central role in both mitigation and adaptation. One of the standout developments is the launch of the world’s first shared standards and consensus for Near-Zero and Resilient Buildings in October 2025, published in an interim report by the Buildings Breakthrough Initiative, led by the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction (GlobalABC). The Buildings Breakthrough launched at COP28 in 2023 as a global effort to transform the buildings and construction sector, aiming to make net-zero-emission, resilient buildings the norm by 2030. The newly published introductory report provides guidelines and common reference points for emissions, resilience and risk, helping countries, developers and financiers align around a unified vision of what sustainable buildings should deliver. The next steps following this initial report are to identify indicators and measurement frameworks and deliver policy recommendations to governments. 

At Pineapple, this direction of travel echoes the work underway across Pineapple CoRE and Pineapple Homes, where we are helping commercial real estate and social housing associations decarbonise through partnerships that offer best-in-class technology and finance solutions that enable affordable, future-fit upgrades.

Nature: A New Era of Forest Partnerships

It was positive to see nature taking centre stage at the conference, underscored by its location in Belém, in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. On the opening day, Brazil announced its flagship COP30 initiative: the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF). Backed initially by Norway’s pledge of $3bn over the next decade and with support signalled by China, the initiative aims to mobilise $25bn from governments and a further $100bn from the bond market and private financial institutions. This will be invested with annual returns that will be used to reward tropical forest nations for conserving their forests. The model is designed to function like a long-term endowment: if fully capitalised, the fund could generate around $800m annually for forest nations that meet conservation requirements. Brazil and Indonesia have already signalled their participation, and the World Bank has agreed to host the facility.

In line with this increasing attention towards nature recovery, Pineapple is working with a series of partners, including major landowners, utilities and high street banks, to shape commercially viable partnership models for landscape-scale restoration and explore how cross-sector partnerships can turn nature recovery into an investable opportunity.

Entering the Partnership Era

COP30 is undoubtedly a critical checkpoint for global policy, but beyond the formal negotiations, its real significance lies in the partnerships forming around and outside it. The most effective climate action today is emerging, from coordinated efforts that span value chains, sectors and geographies, not from isolated policy pledges. 

As outlined in our papers The Partnership Era and Making Partnerships Work, five key conditions are required to address complex, interconnected sustainability challenges: 

• A common purpose uniting diverse actors

• Proven and emerging solutions that work

• Adequate resources (money, skills, time)

• Innovative ways to work together through shared business models; and 

• Supportive system leaders fostering an enabling environment. 

These conditions create the foundation for the ambitious Partnerships for Sustainability needed today.

However, partnerships don’t wait for perfect conditions (such as unanimous agreement from all parties attending COP30); they create them. They align long-term vision with near-term action, and they turn ambition into systems change. While the global stage may appear divided, the movement toward a sustainable future is being built one partnership at a time.

Pineapple Partnerships CEO and Founder, Andy Dewis sees COP as weary but determined:

”We have frameworks and commitments most significantly at COP21, with the launch of the Paris Agreement, and COP26’s Glasgow Climate Pact, with countries agreeing to accelerate action to limit global warming and phase down coal power. Despite the majority of countries agreeing to a just transition to a fossil-free economy and small positive steps we are still not seeing action. With the headwinds of the heaviest emitters not showing up, organisations need to find new narratives and ways to transition outside of the political arena - realising that it makes business as well as people and planet sense to just get on with it. At Pineapple, we are bringing together organisations to work in partnership, rather than competitively, siloed and alone, to create system wide change that also promotes growth”.

While many are growing weary of the COP process, COP30 still delivered a handful of notable outcomes:

• Fossil fuel phase-out: A coalition of more than 80 developed and developing countries pushed for a clear fossil-fuel phase-out mandate, but strong opposition from Saudi Arabia, its allies, and Russia prevented binding language. The final text includes only a voluntary commitment to begin discussions on a roadmap toward an eventual phase-out.

• Tripling of adaptation finance: Adaptation finance from rich countries to developing countries was tripled to $120bn (£92bn) a year. However, this target is set for 2035, which is later than the 2030 deadline demanded by developing nations.

• Support for implementing national climate plans: COP30 launched the Global Implementation Accelerator, a voluntary initiative intended to speed up delivery of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) by providing technical support and helping countries stay aligned with the 1.5 °C goal.

Yet these developments also underscore the scale of the challenges ahead. Pineapple’s mission to harness the power of partnership to accelerate the transition to a sustainable future is more vital than ever. 

At Pineapple, we’re proud to help organisations Imagine, Build and Run the partnerships that bring systemic impact to life. By showing that large organisations can come together to collaborate on complex challenges, we are proving that change at scale is not only achievable, it can be commercially rewarding. 

Our belief is simple: the problems ahead are too interconnected for any one actor to solve alone, and the leaders of the future will be those who can navigate this complexity through solutions that work, financing that enables scale and delivery models that make it happen. That’s the mission we’re pursuing at Pineapple, and we’re always keen to connect with those who share this sense of urgency and possibility. 

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If you’re interested in exploring how partnership-led approaches can drive real-world impact, we’d love to hear from you.

Get in touch: chat@pineapplepartnerships.com