Brazil & Southern Cone - January 2026

The United Nations climate change conference (COP30) hosted in the Brazilian city of Belém from 10-22 November was supposed to be the top highlight of Brazil’s foreign policy calendar in 2025 and the main stage on which President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva could promote his ambitions to position Brazil as a leading country on multilateral climate action. However, his lofty ambitions, including calls for a clear plan to phase out fossil fuels, fell short, with government delegations reaching a mild agreement that avoided addressing the controversial topic.

Since the announcement in 2023 that Brazil would host COP30, Lula frequently mentioned the conference in Belém at most of the high-profile diplomatic engagements and multilateral events he attended. Brazil also hosted the G20 summit in November 2024 [SSR-24-12] and the summit of the Brics group of developing economies in July 2025 [SSR-25-08], where Lula pushed climate financing and other environmental initiatives as priority issues on the agenda of the events.

Ahead of the main COP summit, Lula hosted a gathering of world leaders in Belém on 6 November, where he said that “despite our difficulties and contradictions, we need roadmaps… to reverse deforestation, overcome dependence on fossil fuels, and mobilise the necessary resources for these objectives.” The explicit call for plans to end deforestation and phase out fossil fuels laid out what he hoped would be agreed at COP, but these hopes were ultimately frustrated, with the final declaration of the Belém summit mainly reaffirming previously proposed global objectives rather than offering new measurable goals and deadlines regarding divisive issues such as fossil fuels and climate finance.

The agreement of COP30 was signed on 22 November, a day later than the scheduled end of the summit, due to the difficulties in reaching a consensus. The final Belém declaration did not include words like “roadmap” or “phasing out” of fossil fuels, instead using safe wording such as the intention to “scale up” sustainable investments and a just energy transition, without specifying concrete deadlines and action points. Despite Lula’s overt calls for a phase-out roadmap, major oil producers such as Saudi Arabi were reportedly the staunchest opposition to including these calls in the agreement, and their opposition ultimately resulted in a tepid declaration which frustrated Lula’s ambitious rhetoric.

Parallel agreements and processes

Regarding efforts to address deforestation, the Belém declaration also failed to go beyond general calls to “pilot, deploy and scale up inclusive, sustainable solutions” and to “expand sustainable livelihood alternatives through bioeconomy agroforestry, rural services, ecotourism, and land and ecosystem restoration and conservation”. The main deforestation agreement launched in Belém was not part of the official COP process, but a parallel initiative led by the Brazilian government known as the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF). Launched on 6 November at the leaders’ summit prior to COP, the global initiative aims to raise US$125bn in public and private investment to finance rainforest conservation.

The Belém summit reinforced the growing sense among environmental groups and experts that the COP process might struggle to deliver landmark climate accords such as the Paris Agreement from COP21 in 2015 going forward, given the difficulty in convincing the nearly 200 country delegations in attendance to align on the specifics of climate action plans. COP30 was also snubbed by the leaders of the world’s two largest economies and top carbon emitters, US President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping. While China at least sent a delegation, the US federal government did not send any representatives to Belém, which came as little surprise, given Trump signed a decree in January 2025 to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement.

However, the frustrations with COP30 do not necessarily spell doom for multilateral climate action. The president of COP30, Brazilian diplomat André Corrêa do Lago, suggested that the discussions overseen at the summit will continue in parallel events. For example, Brazil’s proposal for a fossil fuel phase-out roadmap received the backing of over 80 countries, suggesting that there are coalitions of the willing to continue talks on proposals that struggle to gain support at large multilateral conferences. In April this year, Colombia and the Netherlands have agreed to co-host the first edition of the International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels, which will seek to build momentum on what was discussed in Belém.

International relations experts have long highlighted the trend of ‘minilateralism’ as a new model for how a multilateral processes could work in the 21^st century. There are pros and cons to having a more fragmented international patchwork of coalitions and ad-hoc alliances to discuss issues of global relevance such as climate action, but the minilateral approach could be viewed as compatible with Brazil’s diplomatic tradition of non-alignment and maintaining dialogue with a wide range of parties. Brazil, especially under Lula, has sought to engage with several international groupings, including the G7, G20, Brics, and regional organisations such as the African Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), as well as the plethora of regional blocs in Latin America.

Domestic environmental setbacks

While Lula and his government ministers were at COP seeking to promote Brazil’s green credentials, the state-controlled oil giant Petrobras was exploring oil off the coastline of Amapá state, near the northern shore of the Amazon Delta; Belém lies to the south of the Amazon Delta. On 20 October, just weeks before the start of the climate summit, Petrobras announced that it had received approval from Brazil’s federal environmental regulator (Ibama) to drill its first exploratory well in the FZA-M-059 block. The controversial project has been highlighted in the press as a key contradiction in the Lula government’s simultaneous efforts to call for global climate action while also seeking economic development for Brazil’s poorer states, including Amapá.

Lawmakers from Amapá, such as the centre-right senate president Davi Alcolumbre (União Brasil), have long sought to pressure the federal government to approve the Petrobras project, in the hopes that the state could benefit from the vast oil wealth that could be extracted from the equatorial margin. Prominent members of Lula’s ruling left-wing Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), such as Senator Randolfe Rodrigues, have also expressed support for the project.

 Shortly after COP, relations between the government and the right-of-centre parties that dominate congress soured to the point that lawmakers decided to deal a political blow to Lula by overriding the vetoes he issued last year on a controversial bill which environmentalist groups had described the ‘PL da devastação’ (devastation bill). Proposing reforms to streamline the environmental permit process, effectively reducing checks on economic development projects that could cause environmental damage, the bill was backed by lawmakers such as Alcolumbre and passed congress in July 2025. In August, Lula partially promulgated the legislation but watered it down by vetoing 63 of its nearly 400 articles. On 27 November congress restored 52 of the vetoed articles, which was met with condemnation from environmental NGOs.

Nod to indigenous groups

Brazil’s minister for indigenous peoples, Sônia Guajajara, announced in Belém on 17 November that the government will take further steps to complete the demarcation of ten new indigenous territories, spanning the states of Amazonas, Bahia, Mato Grosso do Sul, Pará, Pernambuco, Paraná, and São Paulo. The Lula government sought to highlight Belém’s location as the gateway to the Amazon and make gestures to include civil society groups, including indigenous rights organisations, in the conference. The demarcation of more indigenous reserves has long been a demand that activist groups have been pressuring the government to deliver. 

Protests at COP

On 11 November, the second day of COP30, groups of left-wing protesters as well as indigenous activists clashed with security guards outside of the Blue Zone, the restricted area in Belém where official negotiations between country delegations took place. The protesters carried banners and placards to criticise the oil exploration project near the mouth of the Amazon River and call for more taxes on billionaires, among other issues often highlighted by the Brazilian left.