By Lucas Guaraldo*
The Leaders’ Summit and pre-COP alignments will be key to defining the ambition needed to advance key issues and discussions at COP30, which will take place in Belém between November 10 and 21. Speaking at the opening of the Summit, André Guimarães, executive director of IPAM (Amazon Environmental Research Institute) and Special Civil Society Envoy for COP30, said that Brazil’s application and successful examples should make the country a natural leader at the meeting and encourage agreements in the coming weeks.
“Either everyone is on board or we will continue to have this problem. Brazil has enormous legitimacy on this issue. We are the only country, of the 10 largest emitters on the planet, that is going into this COP with a proven reduction, due to the drop in deforestation in the Amazon; it gives us legitimacy to lead this conversation.”
The Leaders’ Summit is a meeting of heads of state, ministers and envoys that takes place before COP30, on the 6th and 7th in Belém, which previews the central debates of the conference. Decision-makers are expected to align their positions on issues such as climate finance, fossil fuels and climate commitments, guiding the work of negotiators and diplomats during the next two weeks of the COP in Belém.
On the part of the Brazilian government, the main topics will be support for the TFFF (Tropical Forests Forever Fund), integrated fire management, renewable fuels, climate justice, the carbon market and people-centered climate action. In addition, the thematic axes established by the Brazilian COP30 presidency define resilient and sustainable agriculture, cities resilient to climate change and forest management as priorities.
“The COP in Belém has to work. The greatest expectation of this Summit is to increase the ambition of the leaders. We need to be very committed to the NDCs – Nationally Determined Contributions -, allocate resources to make the transition, and value standing forests,” says André.
At the moment, 72 countries have published their NDCs for the next 5 years, following the rules of the Paris Agreement. Although these publications account for 62% of all global emissions, according to a Climate Watch survey, the targets presented would represent a reduction of only 3.2 gigatonnes by 2030, while what is needed to keep the global average temperature rise below 1.5°C would require a reduction 9 times greater.
IPAM journalist, lucas.itaborahy@ipam.org.br*