Last Tuesday (19), the Regional Climate Foundations Pavilion hosted talks that projected how some main topics of discussion on the climate agenda will unfold in the coming months and years. The panellists covered from the impacts of the EU carbon tax, the road to more ambitious NDCs and important debates that will happen at the next UN Climate Conference, in Brazil.
The first conversation was around the CBAM — the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism that charges import products by the carbon emitted during its production. The CBAM will apply in its definitive regime from 2026.
“CBAM is not a commercial policy, it is a climate policy that can help many countries to make its transition to a low carbon economy”, said Wenbo Zhao, advisor at Agora Energiewende.
The panel approached the impacts of the regulation on China, Brazil and México. According to Zhao, only 3% of the Chinese commercial trade will be impacted by the CBAM. For México, this amount is 1.5%, according Luisa Sierra, the executive director of Instituto de Desarrollo, Energía y Ambiente. “Despite the low immediate impact, we know that CBAM can be applied in other regions, as Japan and Canada”, said. “We saw opportunities in the CBAM, to improve our industry performance”, completed.
Brazil is also debating a creation of its own CBAM, said Simone Klein, a industry specialist at E+ Energy Transition. The country has a clean energy matrix, and this gives an advantage to Brazilian goods: “But at the same we are exporting green premium products, we are importing high carbon emissions products”, explained. “So we are discussing a Brazilian CBAM to balance this situation”, added.
Joanna Pandera, the president of Forum Energii, an European think-thank from Poland reminded that “CBAM is not a process to impose higher costs for the production, but to reduce the global emissions”. “The Eu industrial and power sector reduced its emissions in 37% since 2008. But as the emissions go up in other countries, this is a mechanism to avoid the carbon leakage”, concluded.
Strong NDCs with local governments help
Another talk around the future of climate debate discussed what is the role of local and regional actors in the new round of the NDCs (the National Determined Contributions, the goal on carbon emissions’ reduction of each country). As the name says, it is a target established by national governments, but that impacts all levels of administration, and regional and local governments are aim to impulse the common objective.
“As local governments, we are that ones that are closer to the population, and we can feel their needs, and act properly to make these goals be a reality”, said Kenalemang Rose Phukuntsi, the mayor of Tswelopele, a city in South Africa. Besides leading action to implement the NDCs, local and regional governments can help the national governments on the task of writing the new NDCS, and also negotiate with local councils to create the necessary laws and rules.
Even in countries that have already presented their new NDCs, there is a big role for local governments. This is the case of Brazil, that presented its NDCs in the COP29, but that is planning to launch, by next year, seven sectoral plans on climate issues — one of them, to reach the cities adaptation. “The new NDCs are the beginning of the process”, said Ana Cavalcante, the director of climate governance at the Brazilian Ministry of Environment and Climate Change.
The Brazilian diplomat Danilo Zimbres, who manages the international affairs and institutional relations at the president Lula’s office, explained that the national government created a council where it supposed to have representatives of all the 5,565 municipalities in the country. “Brazil has some municipalities that are bigger than Belgium. They need to be included in the process”, said.
But although there is a lot of enthusiasm for national and local governments, there is a need for regulations on the role of each entity in climate policy and action.
“We need a climate federalism, with the rights and duties of each government and actor to make it happen”, claimed Walter de Simoni, the climate policy and law manager at the Brazilian Instituto Clima e Sociedade.
Demands for the COP30
As COP29 is coming to a close, on next Friday, all eyes are on the next Climate Conference, which will be held in Belém do Pará, in the Brazilian Amazon. That’s why activists debated at the Regional Climate Foundations Pavilion what aspects should not be left out of the event.
A group called for the phaseout of Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) commitment in the next climate conference. Another one, for a democratic and popular participation at COP.
The LNG is being understood by the governments and economic actors as a “transition fuel”, but it releases methane in the atmosphere. “Methane stays for a short time in the atmosphere, only 20 years, but is 87 times stronger than the carbon”, explained Elissama Menezes, the global director of ‘Say no to LNG’ campaign.
Rejecting LNG and other methane-based fuels as a climate solution is the purpose of Beyond Methane Pledge.The signatories of this pledge commit to stop any activities or plans that will expand the use of LNG and other methane-based fuels, immediately and no later than 2025. Signatories also commit to stop all LNG and methane-based fuel use and a complete phase-out by 2030.
In the debate ‘Decentralising the COP’s discussions‘, panellists told their experiences in organising parallel COPs at Santiago de Chile and Madrid, to allow more people, and more diverse to participate in. In Brazil, a group that already organised two editions of COP das Baixadas in Belém — that is focused on peripheries populations — is aim to organise a new one next year.
“I think it’s important for the peripheries to occupy spaces like this, the official COP. But more important than that is democratising access to this event, bringing this debate to our territories”, said Jean da Silva, that is a leader of the project Yellow Zones, from Brazil.
