Governmental, international governmental, and nongovernmental organizations scramble to issue reports with the latest data and policy papers before the start of a major Conference of the Parties, or COP, to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Convening in Brazil, in the heart of the Amazon rain forest, on the 10th anniversary of the Paris Climate Agreement, COP30 is considered very important. Preliminary meetings began on Thursday, Nov. 6; the formal sessions, which started on Monday, Nov. 10, will run until Friday, November 21. Everyone is wondering whether the absence of the United States will hamper or ease negotiations on the critical questions of emissions, adaptation, and finance.
This bookshelf provides descriptions and links for the most important reports released thus far. The list begins with five reports from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), including the three “gap” reports on how far delivered results fall short of agreed benchmarks for adaptation financing, limits on fossil-fuel production, and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
The fifth edition of the State of Climate Action, a collective effort by five organizations working together as Systems Change Lab, complements the UNEP reports. The next three reports, by World Inequality Lab, ActionAid, and Oxfam, throw sharper elbows in their efforts to highlight climate inequalities and injustices.
The bookshelf ends with three academic titles: Former Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern’s personal account of 2015 Paris climate negotiations; political scientist Jessica Green’s attempt to explain “why global climate institutions are failing”; and a global assessment of “climate obstruction” by nearly 100 researchers who document, economic sector by economic sector, how industry leaders and compliant politicians have repeatedly blocked effective action on climate change.
As always, the descriptions of the titles are adapted from copy provided by the organizations or publishers that released them.
The 2025 Adaptation Gap Report: Running on Empty by H. Neufeldt et al (UNEP 2025, 98 pages, free download)
The report updates the cost of adaptation finance needed in developing countries, putting it at US$365 billion per year in 2035, when based on extrapolated needs. But international public adaptation finance flows to developing countries were US$26 billion in 2023: down from US$28 billion the previous year. This makes adaptation financing needs in developing countries 12-14 times as much as current flows.
If current finance trends continue, the Glasgow Climate Pact goal of doubling international public adaptation finance from 2019 levels by 2025 will not be achieved.
Both public and private finance must step up to increase adaptation, taking care not to increase the proportion of debt instruments used by vulnerable nations.
The 2025 Production Gap Report edited by D. Broekhof & E. Ghosh (Climate Analytics, Stockholm Environment Institute, UNEP 2025, 88 pages, free download)
The production gap is the difference between governments’ planned fossil fuel production and global production levels consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5ºC or 2ºC. This assessment updates the one conducted in the 2023 Production Gap Report, which profiled the plans and projections of 20 major fossil-fuel-producing countries, representing a mix of the world’s largest producers. Projected 2030 production exceeds levels aligned with limiting warming to 1.5ºC by more than 120%. To be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5ºC and reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions, as the Paris Agreement calls for, global coal, oil, and gas supply and demand must decline rapidly and substantially between now and mid-century.
Emissions Gap Report 2025: Off Target by A. Othoff et al (UNEP 2025, 76 pages, free download)
The 16th Emissions Gap Report finds that global warming projections over this century, based on full implementation of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), are now 2.3-2.5°C, while those based on current policies are 2.8°C. Since the adoption of the Paris Agreement 10 years ago, temperature predictions have fallen from 3-3.5°C. The low-carbon technologies to deliver big emission cuts are available. This means the international community can accelerate climate action, should they choose to do so. But delivering faster cuts would require navigating a challenging geopolitical environment, delivering a massive increase in support to developing countries, and redesigning international financial architecture.
An Eye on Methane: From Measurement to Momentum by T. Abichou et al (UNEP 2025, 52 pages, free download)
Human-caused methane emissions are responsible for roughly a third of the planet’s current warming. Reducing these emissions is the fastest, most cost-effective way to slow global warming in the near-term — and is essential to avert climate tipping points. The 5th ed. of An Eye on Methane by the International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO) takes stock of progress toward accelerating methane reductions at a global scale. IMEO provides actionable data to governments and companies. Sources include industry reporting via the Oil and Gas Methane Partnership 2.0, satellite detections via the Methane Alert and Response System, and IMEO’s series of global methane studies and national emissions inventories.
Financing the Responsible Supply of Energy Transition Minerals for Sustainable Development (UNEP 2025, pages, free download)
Supplying the energy transition minerals at the scale envisaged will require a substantial increase in investment in the mining and processing industries. However, if this growth in mining is implemented according to current mainstream practices, it will result in considerable social and environmental damage. This assessment report surveys the problems that must be solved for the low-carbon energy transition to be supplied with the minerals it needs in a timely and responsible manner. It focuses on how the financing of the extraction of these minerals must be reformed to promote their environmentally and socially responsible production and the equitable sharing of benefits. It incorporates circular economy approaches and resource efficiency policies.
The State of Climate Action 2025 by C. Schumer et al. (Systems Change Lab 2025, free download)
State of Climate Action 2025 translates the Paris Agreement temperature goal into actionable targets for 2030, 2035, and 2050 across the world’s highest-emitting sectors — power, buildings, industry, transport, forests and land, food and agriculture — and specifies how quickly technology and climate finance must scale up. It then assesses recent progress made towards these global benchmarks, highlighting where — and by how much — efforts must accelerate this decade. This report card, the fifth in the series, finds that, while the 10 years following the adoption of the Paris Agreement have seen the transition to net-zero emissions take off, there’s still a long way to go. None of the 45 indicators assessed are on track to reach their 1.5°C-aligned targets by 2030.
Climate Inequality Report 2025: Why Climate Policy Must Tackle Ownership edited by L. Chancel & C. Mohren (World Inequality Lab 2025, free download)
The Climate Inequality Report 2025 reveals how wealth drives the climate crisis and proposes new policy options to address it. It builds on the 2023 edition and two years of pioneering research conducted by the World Inequality Lab and universities worldwide. Wealthy individuals fuel the climate crisis through their investments, even more than their consumption and lifestyles. At the world level, the top 1% represent 15% of global consumption-based emissions, while they account for 41% of global emissions associated with private capital ownership. Climate change can deepen wealth inequality, while well-designed policies can help reduce it. The top 1% could see their share of world wealth jump from 38% to 46% by 2050 if they own tomorrow’s low-carbon assets.
Climate Finance for the Just Transition: How the Finance Flows by T. Anderson et al (ActionAid 2025, 55 pages, free download)
Barely any climate finance is going to support workers and communities to undertake just transitions. It is time for climate policy makers to make sure that people’s priorities are front and center of every climate response. An approach to climate action known as “just transition,” which addresses the needs of workers, women, and communities, must form the basis of climate action. It’s time for just transition to form the basis of “Climate Action 2.0” to unlock, unleash and accelerate climate transformations. A shockingly low 2.8% of multilateral climate finance for mitigation has gone towards supporting just transitions – just US$630 million over more than a decade. Just one dollar in every 35 has been spent supporting just transitions.
See also Indigenous Peoples’ Territories and Local Communities on the Frontlines: Mapping the Threats and Solutions Across the World’s Largest Tropical Forests by Earth Insight and Global Alliance of Territorial Communities (Earth Insight 2025, 108 pages, free download)
Climate Plunder: How a Powerful Few Are Locking the World Into Disaster by N. Dabi et al (Oxfam 2025, free download)
Ahead of COP30 in Belem, Brazil, new Oxfam research finds that the high-carbon lifestyles of the super-rich are blowing through the world’s remaining carbon budget — the amount of CO2 that can be emitted while avoiding climate disaster. The research also details how billionaires are using their political and economic influence to keep humanity hooked on fossil fuels to maximize their private profit. The report, Climate Plunder: How a powerful few are locking the world into disaster, presents extensive updated data and an analysis that finds that a person from the richest 0.1% produces more carbon pollution in a day than the poorest 50% emit all year. If everyone emitted like the richest 0.1%, the carbon budget would be used up in less than three weeks.
Landing the Paris Climate Agreement: How It Happened, Why It Matters, and What Comes Next by Todd Stern (The MIT Press 2024, 280 pages, $32.95)
The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change was one of the most difficult and hopeful achievements of the 21st century: 195 nations finally agreed, after 20 years of trying, to establish an ambitious, operational regime to address one of the greatest civilizational challenges of our time. In Landing the Paris Climate Agreement, Todd Stern, the chief U.S. negotiator on climate change, provides an engaging account from inside the rooms where it happened: the full, charged, seven-year story of how the Paris Agreement came to be, following an arc from Copenhagen, to Durban, to the secret U.S.-China climate deal in 2014, to Paris itself. Landing the Paris Climate Agreement is a vital read for anyone who cares about the future of our shared home.
Existential Politics: Why Global Climate Institutions Are Failing and How to Fix Them by Jessica F. Green (Princeton University Press 2025, 224 pages, $29.95 paperback)
Governments have spent decades crafting international rules to manage the climate crisis yet have made little progress on decarbonization. In Existential Politics, Jessica Green explains why this is unsurprising: they misdiagnosed the political problem of climate change, focusing relentlessly on measuring, reporting, and trading emissions. Climate politics, Green contends, should be understood as existential. Fossil asset owners stand to lose trillions in the energy transition, so they fight to slow decarbonization. Green asset owners, the basis of the decarbonized economy, are fewer in number and weak politically. Green argues that domestic investments in green assets, facilitated by global trade rules, can build the political power of green asset owners.
Climate Obstruction: A Global Assessment edited by JT Roberts et al. (Oxford University Press 2025, 433 pages, $34.99 paperback but also available as open-access download)
Climate Obstruction brings together nearly one hundred scholars and experts to advance our understanding of efforts by organized interests to slow or block policies on climate change. It includes sector-by-sector documentation of obstruction efforts, including by the fossil fuel industries, utilities, agribusiness, transportation, public relations, and organizations on the political far right. And it analyzes the surge in regulatory and litigation efforts and civil society movements around the world to curb climate obstruction, which can guide more effective action in the future. This is an open-access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.