Presentation of the concept of compensated reduction of deforestation at the COP in Milan in 2003 (IPAM Collection)
The history of global climate conferences can be traced back to Eco-92, which took place in the city of Rio de Janeiro, and marked the first collective international effort to debate the climate change that scientists had already identified at the time.
Brazil will once again host a United Nations global climate meeting in 2025, the year in which IPAM (Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia) celebrates its third anniversary.
The COP30 in Belém, the Institute’s hometown, symbolically extends the solemnities of IPAM’s 30 years in a trajectory intertwined by the mission to put forests and their peoples on the climate agenda.
In 1995, the same year the Institute was founded, the first conference of the signatory parties to the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), ratified that year, was held. COP1, in Berlin, was not attended by developing countries.
Two years later, IPAM entered headlong into the debate around the Kyoto Protocol, the result of COP3. The agreement disregarded greenhouse gas emissions from the deforestation of tropical forests and this was the point that researchers wanted to include in the conversation.
Paulo Moutinho, co-founder and senior scientist at IPAM, went on to question: “If 70%~80% of global emissions come from burning fossil fuels, there’s another 20% from land use and deforestation, so if deforestation is part of the problem, why can’t it be part of the solution?”.
The work of science, coordinated by civil society, brought together indigenous people, extractivists, riverside dwellers, farmers and local communities to explore the issue. In 2000, the “Belém Charter for the Tropical Forests” was published as a result of this process.
The document brought together the scientific bases, published by IPAM researchers and partners in periodicals at the time, for the presentation of the Clean Development Mechanism at COP6 in The Hague and Bonn in 2000 and 2001.
“This upset a lot of people, because the focus was on the burning of fossil fuels and the obligation of major emitting countries to take action to reduce them. We made a series of interventions both with the Brazilian government and with most of the major countries, as well as national and international NGOs,” recalls Moutinho.
The proposal included a mechanism in the Kyoto Protocol to compensate developing countries for carbon sequestration through the recovery of degraded forest areas. Other applications included reducing emissions from landfill sites by burning methane and releasing carbon dioxide – less warming for the atmosphere.
The Hague marked the first time that the Institute took representatives of indigenous peoples, extractivists and small farmers from the Amazon to the COP. The tradition would be strengthened at all subsequent conferences, with the guarantee of the participation of Amazonian peoples in these spaces as part of the IPAM delegation or indirectly, through technical and/or financial support.
IPAM delegation with the participation of Sonia Guajajara, now Minister for Indigenous Peoples, at COP21 in Paris in 2015 (IPAM Collection)
The CDM, as it has come to be known, was established in Article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol as the only one of the agreement’s three mechanisms to involve developing countries. The lack of adherence was highlighted when the United States withdrew from the commitment in 2001.
IPAM’s scientific output has continued to drive progress in climate negotiations, with a focus on reducing emissions and deforestation in the Amazon.
At COP9 in Milan in 2003, the Institute’s work, added to the internal coordination with the government over the previous two years, resulted in the first side event in which Brazil sat at the table to talk about emissions from deforestation.
The event presented the international community with the RED concept for the compensated reduction of emissions from deforestation, drawn up by IPAM and partners.
In 2005, the publication of the book “Tropical Deforestation and Climate Change” broke myths surrounding the discussion of tropical forests and carbon emissions. The launch, at COP11 in Montreal, was attended by the first female Environment Minister Marina Silva.
The debate in favor of tropical forests had thickened that year: a coalition of countries led by Papua New Guinea and Costa Rica began to advocate incentives to reduce deforestation in these forests, in line with the proposal presented and defended by the scientists in Milan.
As a result of the debates and years of negotiation, another level of consensus was reached. The Brazilian government accepted REDD as the basis for the Amazon Fund, a mechanism proposed by the country at COP12 in Nairobi in 2006, which was formally created in 2008 to finance socio-environmental projects in the biome. The concept gained another letter “D” to include the reduction of emissions due to degradation.
In 2009, at COP15 in Copenhagen, REDD+ was consolidated and adopted by the UNFCCC as a United Nations climate mechanism. The plus sign at the end of the acronym would come to cover conservation, sustainable management and forest enhancement activities in developing countries.
The contributions of IPAM and civil society would lead to the drafting of the National Policy on Climate Change, sanctioned that same year.
IPAM event at COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009, with the presence of Marina Silva, then senator for Acre and former Minister for the Environment (IPAM Collection)
The following year, at COP16 in Cancún, IPAM took part in discussions on financing, as did the other negotiating bodies on REDD+ at subsequent conferences.
In 2015, at COP21 in Paris, the Institute once again reinforced the role of tropical forests in the feasibility of limiting the increase in average global temperature to 1.5°C compared to the period before industrialization.
“We worked hard on this story to show how much reducing deforestation contributed to maintaining 1.5°C. We even launched models to predict future deforestation,” says Moutinho.
The participation of indigenous peoples also gained ground at the conferences, with the establishment of the CIMC (Indigenous Committee on Climate Change), supported by IPAM.
The highlight of the time was the presence of leaders at the Paris edition, as well as COP22 in Marrakech and COP23 in Bonn in 2017. The latter recognized indigenous peoples and traditional communities as climate agents for the first time.
The high rates of deforestation in 2019 would be exposed at COP25 in Madrid, the year that would mark the inauguration of the “Brazil Climate Action Hub” as a space for civil society at the COPs – a realization of IPAM, ICS (Instituto Clima e Sociedade) and Climainfo.
In 2019, the Legal Amazon Consortium would also take part in the conferences, as a sub-national entity representing the Amazon states. IPAM has been providing subsidies to the Consortium ever since.
Solutions devised by IPAM have increasingly connected production and conservation, whether it’s revealing the climate risk of crops in scientific articles or presenting CONSERV at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021. The mechanism offers answers for reducing legal deforestation on rural properties. Two years later, the Institute launched a new research project in Dubai focused on regenerative agriculture.
In 2022, at the COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, the agreement on the Funds and Losses and Damages took the negotiations to a new level, in that it recognized the responsibility of developed countries for global overheating and the damage caused to developing countries – those with a smaller historical contribution to worsening the climate.
IPAM’s proposal in Egypt was summarized in a five-prongedclimate equation: reducing deforestation; allocating public lands in the Amazon to combat land grabbing; increasing rural productivity with incentives for conservation; promoting socio-biodiversity economies; and restructuring Brazilian governance and its financial instruments.
The following year, at COP28 in Dubai, IPAM’s contribution joined the efforts of scientists around the world to assess global tipping points. Limit situations were identified, such as the melting of ice and the disappearance of corals.
Side event organized by IPAM at COP28 in Dubai in 2023 (Marcelo Freitas/IPAM)
The Cerrado, which has been higher on the Institute’s agenda in the last decade, was highlighted by researchers as a biome vulnerable to changes in land use in Brazil. In 2023, the area cut down in the Brazilian savannah surpassed deforestation in the Amazon for the first time, even though the Cerrado is more than twice as small.
Scientific research, technical support for public policies and actions with people and their territories make IPAM a unique institution: capable of thinking up solutions, testing them and taking them forward for large-scale application.
In its 30 years of existence, the Institute has collected achievements and networked learning, providing more public knowledge about the Amazon and the Cerrado, as well as valuing nature as a response.
