This year marks the 10th anniversary of the United Nations COP20 climate change conference in Lima, Peru. There, countries presented their first climate plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), which kick-started the creation of the Paris Agreement, the landmark global agreement that has aimed to limit global warming to less than 1.5C.
At the time, Manuel Pulgar-Vidal was Peru’s Minister of Environment and served as president of the COP20 summit. He has since become one of Latin America’s leading voices on issues of climate and environment, and today works as the Global Climate and Energy Lead at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
In an interview with Dialogue Earth at COP29 in Azerbaijan, Pulgar Vidal argued that it is time to review the international climate negotiation process and push for more ambitious and binding national plans. To this end, he added, achieving an ambitious new funding target at COP29 will be central.
Dialogue Earth: In several addresses at COP29 you have mentioned that we are living in a period of mistrust of the climate negotiations process. What is the reason for this?
Manuel Pulgar-Vidal: The Paris Agreement, which is very valuable, is on a voluntary basis – it is not an instrument that has the necessary mechanisms to make it more mandatory on the public side. NDCs should be mandatory public policies in all countries. As they are not, the world is not yet aligned with the 1.5C goal. The same is true on the private side, with carbon neutrality targets that are not real. The process must evolve to become more mandatory and enforceable, with mechanisms to measure progress.
Other factors also play a role in this mistrust. First, global politics have changed, and we see the emergence of right-wing climate change denialist parties, which ends up being a bit absurd. Climate change has plenty of evidence of its impacts. Second, while many of us attend these summits, people don’t feel that the problem is being addressed – for example, by getting off of fossil fuels. People are starting to get tired of these dialogues without concrete actions materialising.
Can a change in the structure of the United Nations environmental conventions – which currently sees climate, biodiversity and desertification addressed under separate bodies – help to reverse this?
I always insisted that it was not a bad thing that in 1992 [at the Rio Earth Summit] it was decided to create three separate bodies. At that time, it was four years after the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] had been set up and scientists were beginning to look at the human causes of climate change. You needed a convention to mature that process, and the climate change convention was created. The same thing happened with biodiversity: first people were talking only about conservation, but then scientists said it also had to do with how you manage resources and how you access genetic resources. It was a process that had to mature.
However, we then realised that we need to look at how we connect the three conventions. If we think about nature and climate change, the relationship is clear. We have to look for common ground, and this has evolved at COP16 [on biodiversity], in that sense. But I don’t think we are at a point where the three conventions can be merged. That would be a mistake. It would distract from their necessary processes of maturing. In love, both sides of the relationship must have their own view and meeting points where the relationship is strengthened. Here it is the same.
The process of countries updating their NDCs is beginning, with Brazil having already submitted its new climate plan at COP29. What do these NDCs need to have to raise ambition?
The NDCs are a collective instrument that aims to establish ambitious targets and plans for countries to achieve carbon neutrality and resilience, and to contribute towards the global goal, based on the realities of each country. So far the NDCs have not achieved this and there are doubts that they will do so in the next cycle.
There are outstanding issues to put together a system that makes NDCs more enforceable. This is at the global level. At the domestic level, NDCs are produced by small and uninfluential teams in a ministry of environment that are not part of teams in ministries of finance or production or industry. We need to make NDCs part of fiscal, economic and energy policies so that they are truly implementable plans with the highest possible ambition.
The climate debate is in a pandemic moment, but the world has learned to fight the pandemic. Just as Europe installed the concept of “building back better” [from Covid-19] and set clear goals, the climate debate must do the same, and Brazil plays a fundamental role here. In the pandemic we learned to genetically map the virus and understand where the problem lies and come up with a vaccine. I hope that [COP30 in] Brazil is the time for a “vaccine” to overcome the political difficulties of the process, and to reach 2030 celebrating successes.
In Latin America, is it possible to achieve this despite its fragmentation, with differing views on geopolitics and climate change?
Latin America has not been able to break its fragmentation. I don’t think we will achieve the unity needed before COP30. We used to be a leader in the climate process, but today we are fragmented. We have to be proud of our diversity and show leadership from that. Let us build from diversity on a lowest common denominator. We must be clear about what we want to achieve in [COP30 host city] Belém. It has to be the moment where we push the process towards 2030 and overcome political difficulties.
What outcomes might Brazil’s current presidency of the G20 have for the climate agenda, ahead of the country’s presidency of COP30?
For some time now, the G7 and G20 have been incorporating strong climate and nature content [into discussions], and this is a natural evolution. The climate debate used to take place for two weeks once a year at the COP, now it takes place in every regional, sub-regional or multilateral forum. So what Brazil is promoting is positive. On the bioeconomy, in particular – [a key part of] Brazil’s agenda – we must be careful that it does not mean promoting monocultures such as sugar cane for ethanol or soy.
Since the outcome of the US elections, the way in which we set our objectives for COP30 has to change. We have to be able to navigate the political difficulties that may occur. In politics, the campaign is one thing, the mandate another. You can’t prejudge what happens in the US by campaign ads. The climate process has to show its resilience. Brazil has to define an agenda that will give impetus to the process for the next five years.
For Latin America, why is it important to close COP29 with an updated funding target that is more realistic to its needs?
There is no way to get transitions on track without financing. The cost of the energy transition, for example. The region depends on fossil fuels, and to install more renewables it needs financing. That is why the new financing target is fundamental. This also means reforming the financial system. Climate money is not only bilateral but also private money. And if we talk about private funds, we are talking about investments, not just donations. So we have to think about how we give value to nature so that investors target this sector. This is the most contentious debate, one that was not achieved at COP16, and which generated disappointment.
