COP30 made one truth unmistakably clear: the climate crisis is no longer a problem of awareness, nor a problem of data, it is a problem of implementation.
Countries know what needs to be done. Cities understand their vulnerabilities. Institutions have diagnostics, reports and tools. What is missing, everywhere, is the ability to transform climate information into projects that can be financed, executed and measured.
From high level panels to informal conversations, the same message emerged from policymakers, development banks, philanthropy networks and city practitioners:
“Data is necessary, but it does not define impact, impact comes from the capacity to turn that data into feasible, fundable projects.”, Martín Wainstein, CEO of OpenEarth Foundation, at COP30.
This is the new climate mandate, and the future of climate action depends on who can build the systems that make implementation possible.
Across delegations, one concern overshadowed all others: the massive global shortage of technical capacity in cities and sub-national governments.
Most municipalities, especially in the Global South, lack:
As Martín summarized:
“The biggest problem in the sector is the capacity of cities and local governments to design, execute or coordinate actions, and no one has a clear solution.”
This capacity gap creates a bottleneck that blocks every other part of the climate system. Cities cannot design projects, funders cannot allocate money, national goals stall, climate vulnerability worsens.
This is the silent crisis of climate governance and it defines the next decade.
Much of the climate ecosystem has matured around data collection, emissions inventories, adaptation diagnostics and risk assessments. This progress is essential, but insufficient.
As Carlos Graffi, Product Designer Manager at OpenEarth Foundation, observed throughout COP30, the challenge today is not generating data, it is bridging the gap between diagnostics and finance.
“Everyone has data. What almost nobody has is a compelling narrative to turn that data into actions, and those actions into finance-ready project pipelines.”
Cities everywhere repeat the same story:
“We have a climate plan, but we don’t know how to implement it.”
“We know our risks, but we don’t know how to build a project funders can support.”
“We have priorities, but not the technical capacity to move them forward.”
The result is that thousands of climate plans remain frozen in PDF documents, never translated into real world action.
COP30 made it clear that the climate finance community, from development banks to impact investors, is searching for something very specific: early stage, well structured, technically credible project pipelines.
Not concepts. Not diagnostics. Not high level visions. Projects.
Cities need support to produce:
But most cities cannot produce these inputs at scale. This is where national governments, networks and technology partners must step in, not with fragmented consultancy models, but with infrastructure.
In Belém, information integrity emerged as a central theme. Rising denialism, misinformation and fatalistic narratives among youth were highlighted across sessions as existential risks to climate progress.
To counter this, countries and cities need:
This is not optional. It is foundational. Climate data must be verifiable, comparable and trustworthy, especially in a world where political narratives can shift overnight.
COP30 was, as President Lula said, the “COP of truth.”
