Reimagining Climate Governance for Implementation and Justice

Thirty years after the Earth Summit and a decade after Paris, climate governance remains fragmented and under-resourced. Building on President Lula’s call for a UN Climate Change Council, this session advances practical reforms—incremental and structural—to make governance more coherent, effective and just. Drawing on comparative lessons from the ILO, WTO and human rights bodies, recent ICJ and IACtHR opinions, and insights from 2025 workshops, the panel will explore ways to strengthen the UNFCCC’s core role and reflect on proposals (e.g. a UN Climate and Nature Council) to bridge climate, nature and development agendas. It will identify bottlenecks, map transferrable accountability tools, and propose actionable pathways to mobilize actors and finance, elevate rights-based approaches, and accelerate Paris implementation over the next decade while leveraging COP30 in the Amazon and the mutirão spirit to reinvigorate cooperation.

Guiding questions:

1. How can this moment—COP30 in the Amazon, a proposed UN Climate Change Council, and the Circle of Presidents—help reframe and reenergize climate governance?
2. What governance or accountability tools — including those from regimes such as the ILO, WTO, and human rights systems — could make climate governance under the UNFCCC more adaptive, coherent, and justice-oriented?