Brazil’s Hosting Of COP30 Points To BRICS-led Climate Future

On May 26th, it was confirmed Brazil will host COP30 in 2025. The global climate talks will be convened in Belém, a city adjacent to the Amazon.

The location could hardly be more symbolic. The Amazon, which is currently at severe risk of degradation due to carbon emissions and deforestation, produces a surface-cooling effect throughout Latin America, and moisture which strongly influences local rainfall cycles.

Further destruction would raise regional temperatures several degrees, and produce ravaging environmental effects felt the world over. As such, the rainforest’s preservation and protection looms large in considerations of international bodies concerned with climate change, such as COP. Moreover though, Brazil actively and eagerly volunteered to host the talks. As the country’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva explained:

“I am convinced it will be a great event... the world will love the people [in Belém]. I already participated in this conference, in Egypt, in France, and everyone was talking about the Amazon. So I said: ‘Why not hold the conference there, so you know where the Amazon is?’”

The initial months of Lula’s third term have seen a stark reversal of the policies pursued by his far-right, climate change-denying predecessor Jair Bolsanaro, who sought to dismantle environmental protections wholesale. Illegal deforestation of the Amazon is on track to be eradicated by 2030, under the new President’s watch.

Even before Lula took office in January this year too, he had made clear his election would renew the vigour and relevance of the ever-growing global economic alliance led by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS), and its collective determination to lead the way on climate issues in future. Under Bolsanaro, the alliance was much-diminished.

In a landmark speech at COP27 in Egypt, November 2022, Lula explicitly linked his historic advocacy for Latin American regionalism, Global South cooperation, UN Security Council expansion, and an international order “that is peaceful and based in dialogue, multilateralism, and multipolarity” to climate change. The challenge, he said, “will have the highest profile in the structure of my government.”

He went on to outline the recommendations of a detailed policy paper, drafted by members of his then-Presidential transition team drawn from the Workers’ Party, and Brazilian environmental NGO Plataforma CIPÓ. This included proposals for BRICS to invest in green energy projects via its unified investment bank, and constituent countries to shift their state energy firms towards renewables.

Home to billions, rich in resources, and possessed of carbon-intensive economic systems, the future path of the Global South will by definition be vital for averting climate disaster. The road ahead is neither without challenges, nor opportunities. Lula has in effect pitched a friendly gauntlet to the current US-led order, seeking assistance with overcoming the former, and maximising the latter, based on mutual benefit.

For both objectives to be achieved, it will require concerted international collaboration - and a leading role for BRICS.

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