From left to right: Paulo Artaxo, Karen Silverwood-Cope, Thelma Krug and Luiz Aragão (screenshot of the event’s online broadcasting)
Published on 02/17/2025
By José Tadeu Arantes | Agência FAPESP – Thirty-four years have passed since the first report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was published in 1990, and after 29 Conferences of the Parties (COPs), annual meetings organized by the United Nations (UN) to define and implement global actions to address the climate crisis, the world continues to release increasing amounts of carbon into the atmosphere – a new record of 57.1 gigatons of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) was recorded in 2023, an increase of 1.3% over the previous year.
The goal of the Paris Agreement (2015) to limit the global average temperature increase to below 2 °C compared to pre-industrial levels by the end of this century (2100), with efforts to limit this increase to 1.5 °C, seems like a utopian goal today. Even more so now that the United States, the world’s second largest carbon emitter, has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement for the second time.
At the end of 2024, COP29 was held in Baku, Azerbaijan. And the protagonists are preparing for COP30, which is awaited with particular interest due to the highly symbolic fact that it will take place in Belém, in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon. In addition to the approximately 7,000 members of the UN teams and delegations from member countries, a large number of climate activists and observers are expected to attend the meeting scheduled for November this year. The Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) estimates that more than 40,000 visitors will come to the capital of Pará state.
COP29 concluded with a commitment by developed country governments to “take the lead” in providing at least USD 300 billion per year over the next decade to developing countries to support actions to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and adapt to climate change. And that the amount should reach USD 1.3 trillion by 2035. According to studies cited by the Brazilian Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (MMA), “the needs of developing countries to address the climate crisis exceed trillions of dollars per year.”
The COP agenda includes: reducing greenhouse gas emissions; adapting to climate change; climate finance for developing countries; renewable energy technologies and low-carbon solutions; forest and biodiversity conservation; climate justice and the social impacts of climate change.
According to physicist Paulo Artaxo, reducing emissions must be the main goal at this time – and it must not be overshadowed by other issues that are also important, but secondary, or brushed aside with excuses. In short, we need to drastically reduce the amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere, and we need to stop burning fossil fuels.
“The IPCC has made projections of future temperatures. On the current trajectory, we’ll see an increase of 4.3 °C. In a scenario where the Paris Agreement is implemented as it is now, more or less, the increase will be 3.7°C. Strict implementation will lead to an increase of about 2.8 °C,” he said. And he emphasized that the vast majority of annual emissions (57.1 gigatons of CO2e) into the atmosphere come from burning fossil fuels.
A full professor at the Physics Institute of the University of São Paulo (IF-USP) and a member of the IPCC, Artaxo is a member of the scientific committee of the FAPESP Research Program on Global Climate Change (RPGCC). His warning was made during the conference “Paths for post-COP29 Brazil”, promoted by the RPGCC last December at the Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences (IAG-USP).
He was joined at the conference by Thelma Krug, a researcher at the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and former vice-president of the IPCC; and Karen Silverwood-Cope, former director of the National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change and current climate director at WRI Brasil, a research institute that is part of the World Resources Institute (WRI) network.
Krug, who represented Brazil in the COP negotiations for some 13 years, complained about the slowness of the process. “There are 196 member states. Decisions in the United Nations are made by consensus. How can we get things done quickly? We know we’re not on a path to limit warming to 1.5 °C. Forests came on the agenda in 2005, and the last rule on the subject came out in 2015. In other words, it took ten years to regulate the issue, which was payment for results in reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, for conservation and sustainable management of forests, for enhancement of sinks. It was for developed countries to pay for developing countries’ efforts to reduce emissions. There were ten years of negotiations and it never happened. It went into the carbon market as it is now,” she said.
As Artaxo pointed out in a presentation backed up by quantitative indicators, this slowness is particularly worrying for Brazil because warming will not be evenly distributed across all territories. Tropical regions will be much more affected. “On a planet that is 3 °C warmer, Brazil could see an average temperature increase of around 4 °C to 4.5 °C. This will have a huge impact, especially on water resources, on changes in water availability. The Amazon and Central Brazil will lose very significant amounts of water, as will Southern Africa and Mediterranean Europe,” he explained.
Hence the high expectations for COP30, which is being held in the Amazon and chaired by Brazil, and which could provide a window of opportunity to address the climate crisis in a more substantive way.
Silverwood-Cope gave a positive assessment of Brazil’s climate achievements. At the same time, she left a challenging question hanging in the air. “This year we celebrate 15 years of the National Climate Change Policy [PNMC]. And yes, it has delivered results. In 2009, our target for 2020 was to emit up to 2 gigatons. According to the official system of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation [MCTI], we arrived in 2020 with a ceiling, rounded up, of 1.7 gigatons. So we’ve met the first target, for 2020. We should also meet the second target, for 2025, of 1.3 gigatons because in 2024 we had a record reduction in deforestation in the Amazon. The forecast is that we’ll continue to lower the ceiling: 1.2 gigatons in 2030; 0.8 to 1 gigaton in 2035. But I want to make a point here: today, Brazil’s emissions are mainly due to land use change, deforestation and agriculture. If all goes well and we manage to control deforestation and promote restoration, which in the official targets is 12 million hectares by 2030, we’ll no longer be a country that emits through land use change, and our main source of emissions will be energy consumption, in industry, in transportation. Has anyone in this country, whether in the federal government, state governments or research agencies, started to prepare Brazil for a post-2030 emissions profile?” she asked.
COP30, the three researchers insisted, could be a turning point for Brazil, both because of its greater awareness of climate responsibility at home and because of its leadership on the international stage, with the country taking a leading role in efforts to change the global governance system, which is essential if there is to be any chance of success in limiting the temperature rise to at least 2 °C or a little more over the course of this century.
The conference was moderated by Luiz Aragão, a researcher at INPE and member of the RPGCC. He stressed that mitigation alone will not be able to maintain the social and economic sustainability of countries. And that adaptation initiatives will also be necessary.
The conference was opened by Professor Ricardo Trindade, Director of IAG-USP, and Professor Sylvio Canuto, Advisor to the Scientific Directorate of FAPESP, who represented the Scientific Director, Marcio de Castro.
The “Paths for post-COP29 Brazil” conference can be viewed in full at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uhn6mEF02c.
Source: https://agencia.fapesp.br/53975
