New Delhi, Nov. 25 -- This year's United Nations climate summit in Belem, Brazil, ended last week. Countries made promises on paper and avoided hard decisions. Having gathered nearly 200 nations to chart out climate action, CoP-30 produced a 'Belem Political Package' that deferred questions rather than answer them. We should not pretend that this is progress.

The core issue is simple. Countries could not agree on how or when to phase out fossil fuels that are primarily responsible for the climate crisis. They pledged to triple adaptation finance to $120 billion each year by 2035, but offered no timeline for delivery and no one to hold accountable for it. On trade and finance, the mechanisms that actually move capital, the summit produced...