COP30: WORLD LEADERS IN BELÉM: MORE FINANCE, FORESTS, AND BIOFUELS
The Leaders Summit, the meeting of heads of state and government, was held on November 6 and 7. This year, exceptionally, it was convened early to address the logistical challenges of organizing COP30 in Belém and facilitate political reflections and preliminary agreements.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva opened the summit by calling for a “roadmap to equitably and strategically reverse deforestation, overcome dependence on fossil fuels, and mobilize the resources needed to achieve these goals.”
In his speech, Lula also highlighted two “discrepancies” currently holding back climate action: the gap between diplomacy and the real lives of people—who perceive the climate crisis through the direct impact of drought, floods, and pollution rather than through technical data—and the gap between the urgent climate crisis and the geopolitical context, where conflicts and rivalries divert resources and attention from the climate. Lula stated that “it will not be possible to contain global warming without reducing inequalities between and within countries”, while relaunching climate justice and multilateral cooperation as key factors to overcoming mistrust and the zero-sum logic, in which one’s victory equals another’s loss.
The Belém 4X Pledge: More Biofuels, but Not Less Fossil Fuels
Brazil has launched the Belém 4X Pledge, a commitment to quadruple the global production and use of so-called sustainable fuels by 2035, compared to 2024. Italy is among the first countries to join the initiative, along with India and Japan. The plan calls for more ambitious national policies, new incentives to support investment, dedicated infrastructures, and harmonized standards to promote the trade and deployment of new fuels, including biofuels, biogas, and low-emission hydrogen.
The initiative raises several critical issues. A massive expansion of biofuels, if not properly regulated, may cause negative impacts on biodiversity, human rights, land use, and food security, especially in countries in the Global South. Furthermore, while aiming at decarbonization objectives, the Pledge focuses on increasing energy production without addressing the structural transformation of those industrial sectors still heavily dependent on fossil fuels. At the end of the day, it represents more of a supply expansion plan than an emissions reduction strategy.
The Baku-to-Belém Roadmap: A Blueprint for Climate Finance
During the summit, Brazil and Azerbaijan, respectively presiding over COP30 and COP29, presented the Baku-to-Belém Roadmap, a joint initiative to mobilize at least $1.3 trillion annually by 2035 for global climate action.
The Roadmap envisages concrete tools for equity and transparency, requiring developed countries to communicate their contributions and investment pathways.
It is based on five action areas, the so-called 5Rs:
- Replenishing: Grants, concessional finance and low-cost capital
- Rechanneling: Transformative private finance and affordable cost of capital
- Rebalancing: Fiscal space and debt sustainability
- Revamping: Capacity and coordination for scaled climate portfolios
- Reshaping: Systems and structures for equitable capital flows
The roadmap calls for immediate action between 2026 and 2028, including the launch of innovative tools such as the conversion of debt in climate investments (debt-for-climate swaps). However, many observers fear that the Roadmap lacks binding obligations, leaving its implementation to the political will of countries.
The new Global Fund for Tropical Forests
The Brazilian Presidency also launched the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), a new climate finance mechanism aimed at financially rewarding countries that protect their forests. The fund has already raised an initial $5.5 billion and includes public and private investments from Norway ($3 billion over ten years), France ($500 million), Brazil, and Indonesia ($1 billion each), as well as philanthropic contributions. Thirty-four of the 53 countries that have already joined the initiative are responsible for 90% of tropical forests in developed countries.
The TFFF is a blended finance model, combining public and private funds, offering financial returns to investors and payments to beneficiary countries based on environmental performance. It is also budget-neutral, as it is self-financed by the returns generated by the initial capital.
Tropical forests, which are estimated to prevent more than 1°C of global warming thanks to their capacity to regulate the climate and absorb carbon, are now increasingly threatened: deforestation rate is over 60% higher than it should to be in line with the goal of halting it by 2030. The new fund aims to reverse this trend, but there are challenges regarding governance (the mechanism is voluntary, and many supporting countries have not yet announced contributions), transparency (rigorous monitoring criteria and direct access by local communities are needed), and coordination with UNFCCC mechanisms and other tools.
Towards the COP “of Truth”
At the conclusion of the Leaders’ Summit, Brazil calls on the international community to translate the cooperation and trust that underpinned the mutirão – a Brazilian word the world has learned, which symbolizes the essence of this conference: working together – into a new pact of global co-responsibility. As Lula stated, “COP30 must be the COP of truth,” the moment to translate scientific warnings into concrete action.