From Ambition to Implementation: Reflections on COP30

Belém, Brazil / London, UK – December 2025 – Mina Hasman, Vice-President, Europe for the Commonwealth Association of Architects (CAA) and Sustainability Director at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), has returned from the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belém, Brazil with a clear message: the time for voluntary climate action has ended, and the era of mandatory implementation must begin.

Held in the gateway to the Amazon from 10-21 November 2025, COP30 brought together over 50,000 delegates from 195 countries to address the climate crisis. For Hasman and the built environment sector, the conference underscored an urgent reality—the solutions, frameworks, and knowledge needed to transform our cities and buildings already exist. What remains is the political will, regulatory mandates, and financial architecture to deploy them at scale.

Mina’s involvement and participation across several high-level sessions yielded insights that directly inform CAA’s mission to support climate action across Commonwealth nations:

1. Cities as Carbon Removal Engines: Beyond simply reducing emissions, cities must now move toward net-negative pathways. From natural and technological carbon removal to the integration of carbon-storing materials and building-level carbon sinks, urban areas can transform from emission sources into engines of removal. At the launch of the ‘Pathways to Carbon Sink Cities’ report by the City CDR Initiative, Hasman joined city decision-makers to explore how urban design, governance, and partnerships can make carbon removal a municipal-scale reality. For Commonwealth cities—from Lagos to Dhaka to Kingston—this represents both an opportunity and an imperative.
2. Urban Heat: The most pervasive climate risk heat is deepening inequalities globally and demands immediate action through passive design, nature-based solutions, microclimate modelling, and performance-driven planning. The CAA is advancing climate-risk design guidance and capacity-building through its CPD Programme to ensure passive cooling and thermal equity become standard practice across every climate context in the Commonwealth.
3. Nature-Positive Design as Financial Strategy: In discussions bridging design, finance, and policy, Hasman emphasised that when regenerative materials, circularity, and ecosystem services are valued within a building’s financial model, environmental return becomes economic return. By 2030, buildings must give back more—energy, ecosystem value, resilience, health—than they take. The CAA is sharpening this finance-nature connection through Commonwealth knowledge exchange and professional guidance across diverse markets.
4. Bridging Critical Research Gaps: The global built environment no longer lacks knowledge of what to do—what’s missing is the evidence base that proves climate solutions pay back at scale. From whole-life carbon and retrofit scalability to post-occupancy performance and climate-risk mapping, bridging research, policy, and practice through networks like CAA and UNEP’s GlobalABC is essential. The CAA is elevating these gaps as shared Commonwealth priorities, backing cross-regional partnerships that can translate into policy and practice quickly.
5. Harmonised Climate Literacy Across the Value Chain: Hasman presented CAA’s work on building global capacity for near-zero emission and resilient built environments, highlighting the Climate Framework and climate literacy ambitions. She introduced the global Climate Literacy Memorandum of Understanding, developed with leading UK institutes and expanding across the Commonwealth, alongside the Knowledge-Sharing Partnership. These initiatives aim to align education, professional practice, and governance, equipping governments, educators, and practitioners with consistent, high-quality knowledge to accelerate the transition toward zero-emission resilient buildings (ZERBs).
6. From Voluntary to Mandatory: The Regulatory Imperative As Hasman argued in her opinion piece published during COP30, the conference must mark the end of voluntary climate action. Reflecting on her work developing the UK’s Net Zero Carbon Building Standard, she noted that strong voluntary standards exist, with solid evidence that passive cooling, low-carbon materials, and net-zero approaches work—but without mandatory embodied-carbon regulation, adoption remains slow and inconsistent. Los Angeles County’s ambitious climate regulations, described at COP30, demonstrate how jurisdictions can implement enforceable climate policy despite political volatility, reframing climate action as a public health and economic resilience mandate.

COP30 concluded with the Belém Political Package, which included significant commitments to triple adaptation finance by 2035 and operationalize loss and damage funding. Brazil launched the Tropical Forests Forever Facility with $5.5 billion raised, ensuring at least 20 percent of resources go directly to Indigenous Peoples and local communities. The Global Implementation Accelerator was established to close ambition gaps.

However, the conference’s most contentious issue—a binding roadmap to phase out fossil fuels—remained unresolved, with oil-producing nations blocking explicit language. This omission highlighted the continued gap between scientific necessity and political compromise.

“COP30 made one thing unmistakably clear: the tools and technologies to transform our built environment already exist,” Hasman reflected. “What we need now is alignment—across policy, finance, education, and design—to scale them with the urgency the moment demands.”

The lessons from the most recent COP provides opportunities for immediate action by professionals from across the Commonwealth:

• Apply whole-life carbon assessment as standard practice and consider design for reuse and low-carbon materials.
• Integrate ecosystems, regenerative landscapes, and nature-based solutions from the outset.
• Centre community benefits, inclusivity, affordability, and climate justice at the heart of design solutions.
• Prioritise climate literacy across all roles and stages of work and delivery pathways in projects.
• Work collaboratively to co-deliver projects alongside engineers, ecologists, local authorities, and communities

With 56 diverse nations spanning every continent and climate zone, the Commonwealth represents both the vulnerability to climate impacts and the potential for leadership in climate solutions. The CAA is constantly working to position Commonwealth cities and environments as resilient and low-carbon delivery platforms, supporting municipal leadership with practical frameworks and cross-country collaboration.

“If we design with nature, measure what matters, and invest in the skills of the next generation,” Hasman concluded, “our buildings and cities can shift from being drivers of crisis to catalysts of regeneration. The Commonwealth has a unique opportunity to lead this transformation.”

About the Commonwealth Association of Architects
The Commonwealth Association of Architects (CAA) is a network of architectural institutes across the Commonwealth, promoting excellence in architecture and supporting the profession in addressing global challenges including climate change, sustainable development, and resilient communities.

About Mina Hasman
Mina Hasman is Vice-President, Europe for the Commonwealth Association of Architects and Sustainability Director at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). She is a leading voice in sustainable architecture and climate-resilient design, with extensive experience in developing frameworks for net-zero buildings and climate literacy programs.