Sharm El-Sheikh – In the last day of the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP27, Brazil’s Environment minister Joaquim Leite talked about the event, the negotiations and Brazil’s commitments, and he praised the alliance between the world’s three largest rainforest nations – Brazil, Congo and Indonesia – to preserve the biome.
“As for the commitments, we created the “OPEC of forests,” which is a group of rainforest nations, with Congo and Indonesia, and every legal framework that Brazil has created for its native forest, for monetizing it, will be transferred to Congo and Indonesia,” Leite said in an exclusive interview with ANBA, adding that this was the most important announcement from Brazil in the conference. The minister led the Brazilian official delegation at COP27.
The coalition’s goal is to value the biodiversity and promote fair remuneration for the ecosystem services provided by the three nations – especially through native forest carbon credits. The deal was clinched in Bali, Indonesia, earlier this week, during the G20 meeting of Environment ministers.
Another announcement was the signing of a document that proposes the creation of a global methane credit market. Last year, at COP26, Brazil joined the Methane Pledge, and last March it launched the Zero Methane Program. The letter signed Friday (18) in the Brazil Pavilion was delivered to the European Union and will be sent to Untied States, the COP26 and COP27 presidencies, and the Climate & Clean Air Coalition (CCAC).
“We were one of the first countries to join the Methane Pledge, which has grown to 150 nations already. We’re including our Zero Methane policy (by 2030) in this proposal, to create an exclusive market for methane, based on organic waste. Within this program, there’s the possibility to create a methane credit, a program that’s exclusive for methane, which would fast-track the waste treatment process,” the minister said.
Negotiations
Joaquim Leite said that the COP27 negotiations are walking at a slow pace in topics such as carbon market, and he believes that some agendas, like climate funding, adaptation, and lost and damage, will not be solved this year.
“Negotiations regarding the Article 6 are walking at a slow pace, which was to be expected, as this is in fact a very complex matter, he said on the carbon credit market. “But we’ve already started bilateral talks with Saudi Arabia and Japan to fast-track this process bilaterally,” he said. Joaquim Leite criticized the conduct of negotiations at Egypt’s COP27.
“As for climate funding as a whole, in recent years the G7, the developed and industrialized countries, have not fulfilled its agreements and have not financed in a robust, efficient manner all countries that have suffered losses and damages. Loss and damage [financing] appears to be stuck. Together with adaptation and mitigation [financing], which has not happened in a necessary volume, they are leaving it for the next year, unfortunately. If you leave it for the next year, it won’t do any good, as this was supposed to be come out this year, but we hadn’t heard any news that this situation would be reversed,” the minister lamented.
The minister believes the Glasgow Pact was a great victory for Brazil, with the creation of the carbon credit market. “And the pressure for financing was already there, so this was not the implementation [COP], but the summit that postponed the new great challenge that is the climate financing. This new economy won’t come only from climate conference meetings. We have to keep pushing the most polluting countries to pay the bill — and then you have Europe, the US, India, Japan, China… The world’s top emitters would have to contribute to this new economy, and it seems this situation will continue to be the same,” he concluded.
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
