Brazil says governments must ‘completely change’ the way they deal with climate change. The country, the host of last year’s United Nations climate conference, is ending its year-long presidency of the UN climate process and has set out the world’s first global ‘roadmap’ for phasing out fossil fuels.
It shows that countries can boost their economies and lift people out of poverty while breaking the link with coal, oil, and gas. Shifting away from fossil fuels and reducing deforestation are considered essential to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, a goal set at the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015.
‘We need action’
COP30 President Andre Correa do Lago told Reuters: “We don’t need more negotiations. What we need is for governments to start taking action. We need to completely change the way governments deal with climate change. To implement this, we need finance, infrastructure, and transportation ministers at the table.”
Limited effect
But Joeri Rogelj, a professor of climate science and policy at Imperial College London, says the Brazilian roadmaps are a step forward, but limited. “The roadmaps are valuable but fall short of clearly indicating the pace of change needed by including no timeline or key benchmarks,” he said.
“Because of this omission, they still leave much to be imagined about what is needed to achieve the Paris Agreement’s ultimate goal: limiting global warming to well below 2°C, and preferably to 1.5°C, to avoid dangerous climate harm.”
Two roadmaps
Brazil hosted the UN Cop30 summit last November in Belém, where a bitter dispute broke out over whether the final set of resolutions should include pledges on fossil fuels.
As a compromise, the presidency agreed to produce two roadmaps: one on “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly, and equitable manner” and the other on halting and reversing deforestation.
These roadmaps are separate from similarly named plans from governments that met after Cop30 at a conference in Santa Marta, Colombia, in April, to discuss the transition away from fossil fuels.
Deforestation roadmap
The roadmaps produced by governments under the Santa Marta initiative are much more specific and prescriptive than Brazil’s, since each is written by the national government responsible for implementing the recommended policies.
The Brazilian roadmaps only set out possible steps. They are not binding; they include no deadlines or milestones, and they leave countries to ‘diagnose’ their dependence on fossil fuels and choose steps to reduce it.
Among the steps Brazil suggests is for oil and gas producers to urgently cut the flaring and venting of gas from extraction sites. Methane is a greenhouse gas 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, so this would have an immediate impact.
The deforestation roadmap notes the large sums expected to be needed to help poor countries with heavily forested areas such as the Amazon, the Congo rainforests, and Southeast Asian tropical forests. The deforestation roadmap also notes the importance of regulating trade between forested countries and consumer countries.
COP31
Brazil published the roadmaps after its president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, won a fourth election term just over a week ago. In the last four years under Lula, deforestation rates have fallen by about 70%.
His defeated opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro, son of jailed ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, was expected, if elected, to return to his father’s policies of rampant exploitation of the Amazon rainforest.
This year’s climate summit, COP31, is due to begin in Antalya, southern Turkey, on November 9. The agenda will also focus on implementation rather than new pledges.
