COP31: Latin America’s fragmented climate alliances head to Antalya

Latin America is heading to this year’s UN climate summit with less political backing for the agenda it pushed a year ago in Brazil.

Many Latin American countries showed more unity at November 2025’s COP30, held in the Amazonian city of Belém, than had been the case in previous years. These alliances pushed for further ambition in areas such as the energy transition, deforestation and climate finance.

Since then, some of the leaders central to pushing forward that agenda have left office, and with them any prospects of a united regional voice.

Colombia elected a president who pledged to boost oil production and pursue fracking, an about-turn from the previous administration’s initiative to move away from fossil fuels. Chile’s new government withdrew over 40 environmental decrees within its first months, and has cut funding for its environment ministry and international treaties, including Escazú. Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz’s government eliminated the country’s environment ministry in August.

Brazil is a notable exception. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s fourth term, at the expense of another Bolsonaro administration, has re-secured the government that led COP30 – albeit with fewer regional allies than a year ago. Even Lula, however, has faced criticism for supporting fossil fuel exploration in the Amazon river basin.

“We have a totally different political situation from one year ago,” Andrés Gómez, Latin America director at the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, told Dialogue Earth. “Ultra-right governments are interested in the idea of exploiting everything in their territories.”

Maintaining the Belém momentum

COP31 opens in Antalya this Monday, 9 November, with Türkiye as host and Australia presiding over negotiations. It will pick up Belém’s unfinished business: two roadmaps, one on moving away from fossil fuels and another on halting deforestation; and a call to increase climate finance.

Ana Toni, who was COP30’s CEO, is optimistic. “I’m quite confident that the momentum that was created in COP30 will be continued in COP31,” she told Dialogue Earth.

Türkiye has billed the summit as a “COP of implementation”, with the focus being on supporting nations in realising their climate plans. In Latin America, the vast majority of countries have submitted updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement in the past two years. (NDCs 3.0 were due in 2025.) Argentina, Guatemala and Haiti have not.

As the COP host, Türkiye may elect a centrepiece agenda item it wishes to pursue and has chosen electrification. COP31’s president, Murat Kurum, has proposed a voluntary global goal to raise the share of final energy demand met by electricity from just over 20% (as of June 2026) to 35% by 2035.

On energy, Latin America sits close to the global average on electrification: electricity meets about 20% of its final energy demand. But its grid is much cleaner than most, with 65% of electricity from clean sources in 2025.

Extraction has become politicised in several countries. Arguments over fracking became a major talking point in the Colombian elections, where successful candidate Abelardo de la Espriella painted fossil fuels as a route to prosperity. 

Alejandra López, climate diplomacy director at the regional think-tank Transforma, says electrification could help take the politics out of climate action in the region. “Electrification, mobility, energy security, job creation, public transport: these are all agendas that are not political from left to right and don’t sound environmental,” she told Dialogue Earth. 

Two roadmaps in sight

Brazil, as holder of the COP30 presidency, sought to include concrete commitments on deforestation and the phaseout of fossil fuels in the final agreement of the summit last year. However, differences between governments meant these points did not survive the negotiations.

The country then announced it would produce two voluntary roadmaps and present them in Türkiye. One addressed the phaseout, the other deforestation and sustainable forest management. The documents are not intended to be binding but could act as a framework for national governments to follow.

South America lost more forest than any other region in the world between 2015 and 2025, averaging 4.1 million hectares per year. This was caused by activity including agriculture, cattle ranching and infrastructure development. However, there have been some success stories, including deforestation currently being at its lowest level in Brazil since 1988.

Though South America lost more forest than any other region between 2015 and 2025, in Brazil deforestation is currently at its lowest level since 1988 (Image: Fernando Frazão / Agência Brasil)

Yet the region is also pumping more fossil fuels: its oil output rose 20% last year, mainly driven by Guyana and Brazil. Countries across the region, including Argentina and Brazil, are also actively looking to expand oil and gas extraction.

Citing the current disruption in the strait of Hormuz, Toni argued that moving away from fossil fuels is not just a climate problem: “It’s an economic problem, it’s a political problem, it’s a sovereignty problem.”

The financial burden

COP30’s final package unveiled a route toward mobilising about USD 1.3 trillion in climate finance for developing countries per year by 2035. Countries agreed to triple adaptation finance by that year, from 2025 levels. Based on the Glasgow target of about USD 40 billion a year, that would mean roughly USD 120 billion.

Critics have noted, however, that COP30’s pledge lacks a defined baseline and does not say who is responsible for the increase.

“The world urgently needs adaptation finance to prevent and prepare vulnerable communities for disasters and the slow onset of climate impacts,” Tariye Gbadegesin, CEO of the Climate Investment Funds, told Dialogue Earth. “Developing countries currently receive adaptation financing that is 12-14 times below what they need.”

Last year, Brazil also launched the Tropical Forests Forever Facility. This fund has been designed to pay countries for keeping forests standing and has a USD 10 billion fundraising target for 2026. Pledges have reached nearly USD 8 billion so far. That is still quite some distance from the USD 125 billion endowment its backers ultimately envisage, but further pledges could be announced this year.

For the region, the question is also who pays and on what terms. Latin America and the Caribbean received 17% of international climate finance between 2016 and 2020. This came mostly as loans rather than grants, adding to debts that are already heavy. In several countries, debt servicing now exceeds spending on areas such as health and education.

A fragmented bloc

At climate COPs, Latin American countries negotiate individually and in various blocs, as opposed to other regions, like Africa, which vote and lobby together. Most nations are a part of multiple such groupings built upon shared interests and positions.

All countries in the region have long been a part of the Group of 77 and China, a coalition of developing nations that operates within the UN system. Meanwhile, a bloc including Chile, Colombia and Panama make up the Independent Association of Latin America and the Caribbean (Ailac). There is also the Grupo Sur, a bloc mostly containing countries in the Southern Cone, as well as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, which rose to prominence in the late 2000s.

The result of these various groupings is that Latin America is divided when it comes to negotiations. Regional unity such as that displayed by Africa has, some experts argue, allowed its countries to achieve more effective results. 

María Fernanda Souza, Uruguay’s climate change director and alternate chair of the Group of 77, told Dialogue Earth that the inability to negotiate as a bloc “has had costs and continues to have costs” for Latin America. “I can’t put my finger on why we can’t be more united,” she continued. “The possibility that Latin America and the Caribbean have in negotiating together has a power that is superior to any possibility that we can have in negotiating separately.”

Fernanda Souza points out that the interests of the southern states, which have strong dependence on livestock and agricultural industries, are different from those of the Caribbean islands, which have been buffeted by climate change and desperately need money to adapt.

However, there are individual issues where Latin American countries should be able to put political differences aside and unite, said López. She identified climate finance as such a topic for COP31: “Since there are no big fights, they will be able to align more easily.”

Toni thinks the divide predates the region’s recent political shifts: “Even when there were different types of governments in place, we never really spoke with one voice.” She rejected the idea that the region is too diverse to align, pointing out that Africa, which votes together, also has a plurality of countries including small island states. “I think it’s always possible, and I think it’s desirable,” she said.

López worries that a low-profile Latin America at COP31 will carry that weakness into COP32, to be hosted in Ethiopia: “The moment you singularise Africa as a special region – a particularly vulnerable region – [there will be] those who are left out of the universe of ‘we are important, we are vulnerable’. That’s Latin America.”