Biodiversity and Climate Change Pave the Way for COP30 in Brazil

Jana, Lula, Helder Barbalho and Daniela Barbalho (Photo: Ricardo Stuckert/PR)

It is essential to emphasize the fight against climate change, combining carbon neutrality policies with the promotion of other environmental gains.

Between November 11 and 22, the distant city of Baku, Azerbaijan, hosted representatives from 198 countries and territories for the 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP29. One of the main topics of the conference was the need to structure a global financing system to mobilize and accelerate aid to countries most affected by climate-induced disasters.

The event gathered smaller delegations from signatory countries of the Paris Agreement, as well as representatives from interest groups that coexist in the Climate Conference universe. COP29 is part of the coordinated action strategy for international climate governance, modeled by the troika Dubai – Baku – Belém. It took place in the context of accelerated global warming (2024 marks the peak of 1.5C) and unprecedented extreme climate events. The negotiations in Baku concluded a challenging moment for the international cooperation system: driving results that ensure the Paris Agreement mandate and advance national ambitions for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. This was certainly a political challenge for the host country, which has little tradition in climate diplomacy and is trying to reconcile the various interests present in climate negotiations. Tensions surrounding progress on the climate agenda were evident at COP29, particularly in decisions made to advance a roadmap to address the challenge of transitioning away from fossil fuels and to deal with climate financing. Significant pressure came from new demands for financing adaptation and resilience. In other words, Baku was another moment of revealing dissatisfaction, lack of coherence and transparency, and highlighting the fragmentation of interests and unmet promises from developed countries.

The failure to meet promises related to this issue by wealthy countries has been criticized by Brazilian and world leaders in recent preparatory meetings for COP30, to be held in Belém, Pará, in a little over a year. President Lula himself, in a video conference participation at the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, once again called on developed countries to take responsibility for the climate crisis, referring to the promise made in 2009 by wealthy countries to direct US$ 100 billion annually starting in 2020 to combat climate change.

Fifteen years after the failure of COP15 in Copenhagen and the “heated” promise of new funding for climate finance, COP29 faces new funding demands that amount to trillions of dollars to support actions to address the climate emergency. This demand is essentially guided by financing for mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage actions, as well as climate crisis management, marked by extreme events and the damage they cause, and the local and regional dimension.

A new scenario is emerging to address the triple planetary environmental crisis by seeking convergence of interests between the climate emergency agenda and biodiversity conservation. The recent United Nations Conference on Biological Diversity (COP16), held in Colombia, was the stage for significant mobilization, with actors filling the city of Cali. Brazil had its largest business delegation at a COP BIO, with over 70 executives representing 17 sectors. This massive participation is explained by the growing interest in the agenda involving nature, biodiversity, natural capital valuation, bioeconomy, payments for traditional knowledge, and benefit-sharing related to biological diversity, nature-based solutions, traditional peoples, food and nutritional security, water security, planetary boundaries, and the planet’s capacity to continue producing life, among other topics.

However, COP16 ended inconclusively due to conflicting views and interests between developed countries and biodiversity-rich nations regarding a new financing instrument. It also revealed a new political demand driven by the urgent need for convergence between the climate agenda and the nature protection agenda. This political movement was preceded by scientific manifestations through the IPCC and IPBES, calling for the convergence of actions and international financing. In other words, it is impossible to tackle the climate emergency without protecting and restoring nature.

The Global Biodiversity Framework, established at COP15 in 2022, directly and clearly defined the responsibility of the private sector in protecting and restoring nature and the environment. This highlighted the need for more effective actions in environmental recovery processes, alongside decarbonization efforts and carbon market regulation, which remain top priorities.

There are companies that continue to operate without considering the impacts on ecosystems and nature. They ignore the essential condition for life production on the planet: the conservation of biological diversity. Therefore, it is essential to emphasize the importance of addressing climate change by combining carbon-neutrality policies with the promotion of other environmental gains. In other words, with Nature-Based Solutions (NBS).

NBS are actions that protect and preserve entire ecosystems, enabling the mitigation of climate change impacts on the environment and society. Through these actions, it will be possible to restore forests, capture carbon, control rising temperatures, and protect water resources with initiatives aimed at protecting nature itself. By utilizing this set of actions in favor of the environment, it is possible to efficiently recover local, national, and global biodiversity, while also building resilient communities adapted to climate change, especially those living in more vulnerable areas. Nature is an ally of humanity, not an enemy.

An example of the possible application of this type of solution is in combating the destruction and degradation of the Amazon rainforest. It is often thought that combating deforestation is the Holy Grail for environmental problems in the region, but this is a limiting view. According to IMAZON, between January and September 2024, over 26,000 km² were degraded due to, among other factors, wildfires in the region. According to the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, the increase in these fires was caused by “the worst drought in 45 years and the intensification of climate change.”

IMAZON’s study shows that stopping deforestation will not be enough to contain the destruction of the Amazon. It will be necessary to act on controlling the rising temperatures that are exacerbating environmental fires; carry out carbon capture in the soil to increase its fertility and water filtration, among other actions. These are precisely the practical NBS. The deforested forest today will not produce water and other environmental services next year. Brazil loses, the world loses.

All the points raised throughout the text converge on the idea that COP30 will make biodiversity one of the main topics of discussion, and consequently, more investments from companies worldwide in projects in this direction. Therefore, this could be a unique opportunity for Brazil and tropical countries, with a natural vocation for Nature-Based Solutions, to assume a leading role and responsibility in promoting the political, economic, social, and technological means and solutions that the urgency of the planetary environmental crisis demands.

What needs to be clear is that the benefits of applying NBS will be felt in the medium and long term, and for this reason, it is crucial that governments and businesses leave next year’s Conference with assertive practical resolutions and an understanding of the urgency of creating more stringent and dedicated public policies, efficient and transparent regulatory mechanisms, as well as innovative planning that allows a more efficient relationship between the public and private sectors and social control of results.

COP30 will close several political challenges in the international and regional agenda for addressing climate change. The Paris Agreement lands in Belém with the ambition for its next ten years, Belém Plus, with complex challenges under the pressure of a changing world due to the end of an era and new international dialogue and negotiation arrangements to also face the crisis of the international cooperation system and the climate emergency. Brazil will be at the center of the political, geopolitical, and economic attention of the transitioning and updating world.

Brazilian society needs to aspire to the future in the present. There is little time to reverse the Amazon’s situation, halting deforestation and taking on with determination its recovery, conservation, and innovative paths for sustainable development. It is necessary for the protection of nature to translate into real benefits for Amazonian people and other Brazilians.

COP30 has already begun here. It requires an ambitious outlook on a Brazil that provides solutions, democratic, with competitive and productive economic sectors, with less inequality and more justice, aligned with its present and with strategic decisions regarding a more resilient and secure future. This requires a country aligned with its interests, with nature as its strategic ally. After all, according to NASA, we are the country that generates the most life on the Planet. There is no reason for us to be different in the future that is unfolding.

By Tercio Borlenghi Junior – founder and CEO of Ambipar Group

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