By Lisandra Paraguassu
BRASILIA, Nov 3 (Reuters) – Brazil is ending its year-long presidency of the UN climate process with roadmaps aimed at curbing deforestation and accelerating a shift away from fossil fuels to help governments deliver on past climate agreements.
COP30 President Andre Correa do Lago, who led last November’s UN climate summit in Belem, said governments must integrate climate goals into policymaking.
“We don’t need more negotiations. What we need is for governments to start taking action,” Correa do Lago told Reuters. “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.”
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 talks in 2015.
But oil-producing nations have been reluctant to embrace measures that could undermine a key source of revenue while efforts to curb deforestation face a chronic lack of funding. A UN report last month showed 1.5C was increasingly out of reach.
This year’s climate summit, COP31, is due to get underway in Antalya in southern Turkey on November 9. Murat Kurum, the summit president and Turkish environment, urbanisation and climate change minister, told the UN in September the agenda would also focus on implementation rather than new pledges and was based on “dialogue, consensus and action.”
REPLACING FOSSIL FUELS
In Belem, Brazil sought to formalise an energy transition roadmap, after more than 100 countries agreed at COP28 in Dubai in 2023 to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030. But while the plan had European support it failed to secure a consensus after opposition from major oil-producing countries.
Under the roadmap, countries would spend the period to 2028 assessing their energy systems, strengthening regulations and institutions, and developing national transition plans ahead of the second Global Stocktake, an evaluation of whether the world is heading in the right direction to contain global warming.
By 2030, infrastructure upgrades and renewable energy investments should be underway. A final phase between 2031 and 2033 would focus on accelerating renewable energy deployment, replacing fossil fuels and consolidating cleaner energy systems.
Global renewable energy capacity reached a record 5,149 gigawatts at the end of 2025, up 692 GW from the previous year, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency.
Brazil’s roadmap notes that most recent growth in renewable energy has gone toward meeting new demand rather than replacing fossil fuel use.
“My opinion is that it doesn’t need to be negotiated again because that negotiation has already taken place,” said Correa do Lago. “It needs to be implemented.”
PROTECTING FORESTS
A lack of consensus also kept Brazil’s proposed deforestation roadmap out of the final COP30 agreement, reflecting persistent disagreements over how to finance forest protection.
According to the United Nations Environment Programme, annual funding for forests must rise from $84.5 billion in 2023 to more than $300 billion by 2030.
Most current funding comes from national governments, which account for 88.3% of forest finance, with international public funding at only 3.4%, placing much of the burden on the developing countries where most of the world’s tropical forests are located.
Brazil has proposed a Tropical Forests Forever Facility that would use returns from a sovereign fund to provide ongoing payments to countries that preserve their forests.
The initiative had secured $7.6 billion by the end of COP30, against a target of $10 billion, according to Corrêa do Lago.
The roadmap also calls for expanding other funding initiatives including strengthening carbon markets, improving direct access to finance for Indigenous peoples and local communities, and using debt-relief instruments.
“Public financing from developed countries is absolutely essential,” Corrêa do Lago said. “But we have a much more sophisticated and diversified way of financing the various activities that would reduce deforestation.”
He said the roadmap’s main value was in highlighting the complexity of tackling forest loss.
“It is not an easy task, and it is not just about financing. But financing is a central part of this process.”
(Reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu; Editing by Kate Mayberry)
