Brazil’s Congress has pushed through legislation to weaken environmental safeguards for mining, infrastructure and agricultural projects, overriding a partial presidential veto just days after the end of COP30 and setting the stage for a possible showdown in the Supreme Court.

Earlier this year, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva vetoed some of the most controversial sections of the environmental licensing legislation, dubbed the “devastation bill” by environmentalists, who say it would sweep away Indigenous land protections and could help fast-track the paving of an Amazon highway.

But in a November 27 plenary vote led by lawmakers aligned with Brazil’s powerful farm lobby, Congress reinstated 56 of the 63 articles vetoed by Lula in August – essentially returning the legislation to its original form.

Warning that the legislation will effectively do away with environmental licensing requirements, several Brazilian NGOs and the left-wing PSOL party said they planned to mount a legal challenge over the constitutionality of the new rules at the country’s Supreme Court.

Juliano Bueno, president of the Arayara Institute NGO, one of the groups planning a legal fight, said the legislation meant “Brazil will be unable to meet its climate targets or the commitments it recently made at COP30”.

“Death blow” for Brazil’s climate push

Lula’s allies said the congressional decision was a sharp blow as Brazil strives to play a prominent role in global efforts to fight climate change and deforestation, including in the Amazon.

Institutional Relations Minister Gleisi Hoffmann said it “contradicts the government’s environmental and climate efforts just made at COP30″, calling the decision “very bad news”.

Government-allied Senator Eliziane Gama told the plenary session the new licensing rules were “shameful for Brazil” and “a death blow to the main agreements formed at COPs”. Others warned that scrapping the vetoes would open the doors to lawsuits from Indigenous and environmental rights groups.

Despite record turnout, only 14% of Indigenous Brazilians get access to COP30 decision-making spaces

The bill’s backers, who include agribusiness and the mining association, have said Brazil needs to streamline environmental licensing to boost production of minerals vital to the clean energy transition, and foster economic development in remote parts of the country.

Davi Alcolumbre, an ally of the ruralist caucus and president of the Senate, told the plenary overturning the veto was “fundamental to clearing the issue of environmental licensing as a whole”.

“There are entire regions waiting for Congress to finish this discussion, so that great projects can move past the paperwork, generating work, generating income and economic growth, always with environmental responsibility,” he told the session.

After being approved by the Senate and Congress with a strong majority, the legislation is expected to be ratified by both chambers this Wednesday.

Oil exploration fast track?

Among other provisions, the new environmental licensing rules fully reinstate two controversial figures: a system that allows some projects to issue their own licences, called Environmental Licence by Adhesion and Commitment (LAC), and a Special Environmental Licence (LAE) to fast-track “strategic projects”.

Bueno of the Arayara Institute said the LAE in particular could weaken controls on oil exploration, mining projects and gas-powered plants, which could be labelled as strategic for national development.

Lula’s veto had lowered the scope of the self-licensing process in the LAC, by only allowing small-scale projects to qualify for it. Observers interpreted this as mostly roads and infrastructure upkeep. With the veto gone, it would allow for larger projects, too.

A controversial expansion of the BR-319 highway connecting the Amazon cities of Manaus and Porto Velho could benefit from the LAE, despite environmental groups saying it could cause deforestation in the area to skyrocket by allowing new routes into the forest. Under the new law, the road could be paved without new environmental studies.

The new regulations also exempt states from having to consult Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities that lack formal land ownership titles on infrastructure projects. Land tenure was one of the main Indigenous demands at COP30.

Before the Congress vote, Brazil’s National Foundation for Indigenous People said 297 Indigenous lands – accounting for more than 40% of the total – would be left unprotected if the bill returned to its original form.

Brazil’s Supreme Court has ruled in the past that Indigenous lands can pre-exist current land demarcation titles, meaning the titles are not always necessary for land rights to be recognised.

“Congress has institutionalised environmental racism and amplified conflicts in traditional territories,” said Alice Dandara de Assis Correia, environmental lawyer at the Socioenvironmental Institute (ISA), a Brazilian NGO, one of the other groups planning a legal challenge.

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The 2025 UN Climate talks, COP30, finished on Saturday, November 22nd, following talks (unsurprisingly) being pushed into overtime.

COP30, billed as the COP of truth and implementation, the forest COP, and the Amazon COP, failed to include any language in its final decision committing to a fossil fuel phase-out.

At the heart of COP30’s discord was developed countries’ refusal to step up on finance and their refusal to explicitly recognize the need for a just and fully funded transition away from fossil fuels. They obstructed efforts to fund adaptation, loss and damage, and any explicit naming of a transition away from fossil fuels. It’s a huge disappointment that fossil fuels were not mentioned in the final COP30 text, but unsurprising, since once again, fossil fuel lobbyists outnumbered almost every single country delegation. One in 25 participants represented the fossil fuel industry, a trend that continues from previous COPs.

By the end of COP30, 119 countries, representing 74% of global emissions, had submitted new national commitments in NDCs. But they still fall short, collectively delivering less than 15% of the emissions reductions required by 2035 to hold global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C. UN analysis finds that even with the latest NDCs and current policies, the world remains on course for 2.3-2.8 degrees C of warming, a dangerous prospect that’s well above the Paris Agreement’s temperature benchmarks. Instead of phasing out fossil fuels, the root cause of climate change, parties agreed to two voluntary initiatives to increase ambition: the Belém Mission to 1.5 and the Global Implementation Accelerator.

Regarding adaptation, negotiators adopted a set of 59 indicators across seven sectors, including water, agriculture, and health, and the adaptation policy planning process, encompassing finance, capacity building, and technology transfer.

Loss and damage, which addresses the most severe impacts of climate change, received relatively little attention compared to previous COPs.

Regarding finance, the talks concluded with a call to at least triple finance for adaptation by 2035, which, despite being an increase, is still far below the amount needed. Ultimately, financial decisions are made in many venues and institutions across the globe, from multilateral development banks to the G20, and are too often grounded in loans and debt creation, rather than grants.

Despite COP30’s location in Belem, the gateway to the Amazon rainforest, negotiators ultimately failed to launch a global roadmap for ending deforestation. Brazil’s Tropical Forests Forever Facility received pledges totalling $6.7 billion, far short of the initial target of $25 billion.

There were some wins at COP30. The adoption of a process to develop a “just transition mechanism” marked the furthest a COP has gone to address workers’ and communities’ rights. The Belém Action Mechanism’s adoption is the result of frontline communities, indigenous peoples, and climate justice advocates tireless advocacy efforts.

COP30 included an unprecedented effort to center indigenous voices. At least three COP documents explicitly recognize Indigenous rights: the Global Mutirão affirms their land rights and traditional knowledge; the mitigation work program highlights their vital role in sustainable forest management and calls for long-term recognition of their land rights; and the just transition mechanism refers to rights and protections for Indigenous Peoples in voluntary isolation and initial contact.

Also, for the first time, people of African descent appear in decisions and are referenced across multiple strands of negotiating texts.

Photo credit: cop30.br

The post Your Summary of Negotiations: Dec. 3 appeared first on Climate Generation.

Your Summary of Negotiations: Dec. 3

After two years of stonewalling, governments agreed at COP30 to hold a series of annual discussions about how their trade policies can enable emissions reductions while helping, rather than hindering, economic development. But analysts warn the process may not be able to achieve much in practice.

Since COP28 in Dubai in 2023, emerging economies including China, India and South Africa have been pushing – in the face of resistance from developed countries – to get the UN climate negotiations to discuss “unilateral trade measures”. These, they argue, include the European Union’s imminent tax on imports of certain high-emission products, known as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM).

The Brazilian presidency of COP30 bundled trade and other contentious issues such as finance and emissions-cutting together in the summit’s most high-profile outcome: the “Global Mutirão” decision of the Belém political package.

COP30 fails to land deal on fossil fuel transition but triples finance for climate adaptation

Under that, governments agreed to hold dialogues on opportunities, challenges and barriers for international cooperation on trade and climate at the mid-year June talks in Bonn for the next three years as well as an additional “high-level event” in 2028, and then produce a report.

Besides governments, other relevant bodies will be asked to participate in the dialogues, including the International Trade Centre, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the World Trade Organization, the decision says.

On its own initiative, the Brazilian government has also launched what it calls an Integrated Forum on Climate Change and Trade, a three-year effort open to all countries that will bring together officials working on the two issues to consider how trade can support sustainable economic growth.

It is expected to develop ways for trade and climate policies to better intersect across key areas such as the energy transition, the fight against deforestation and carbon accounting

Mixed reactions to trade outcome

The formal move to broaden UN climate discussions on trade beyond their previous narrow placing under negotiations on climate response measures and just transition met with a mixed reaction.

One African negotiator, who is critical of the EU’s carbon border tax plan, told Climate Home News that while the UN dialogues are “a start, it is weak to not have a full COP item on it”. “What’s the point if it’s only at Bonn sessions and not going to COP?” they asked. “It’s like they want to kill it in a polite way.”

Aaron Cosbey, a climate and trade researcher at the European Roundtable on Climate Change and Sustainable Transition, said the dialogues are “very unlikely to have any impact” because most trade-climate topics are “just too hot to handle”.

But Li Shuo, head of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said he hoped the new discussions would help define a constructive role on the issue for the UN climate process, while Arunabha Ghosh, head of the Delhi-based Council on Energy, Environment and Water, said the dialogues represented “progress”.

Ellie Belton, E3G’s trade and climate lead, said referencing trade was a significant step towards addressing trade tensions in UN climate talks. Dialogues, she added, could “offer the space many countries have been calling for to continue collaborative discussions on both the opportunities and challenges, which should help to rebuild trust and unlock enduring solutions”.

Brazil’s call for COP trade forum gets lukewarm response

The European Union agreed to these dialogues after references to unilateral trade measures – which the bloc regards as a loaded term targeting the CBAM – were downgraded. EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra had told a press conference at COP30 that “we’re not going to be lured into the suggestion that [the EU’s carbon border tax] is a unilateral trade measure, and in that realm we’re also not going to discuss it.”

The final COP30 deal just repeats a previous agreement that “measures taken to combat climate change, including unilateral ones, should not constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or a disguised restriction on international trade”.

Europe’s contentious carbon border tax

From January 1 2026, the EU will tax imported cement, steel, chemicals, aluminium, hydrogen and fertilisers at a rate depending on the amount of greenhouse gases emitted during their production. The UK will introduce an almost identical policy a year later.

European countries argue that the new levy will level the playing field and ensure companies do not move their production out of the continent to countries with lower carbon taxes and weaker environmental regulations.

They have some international support, with Vanuatu’s climate minister Ralph Regenvanu telling Democracy Now at COP30 that measures such as this are important because they pressure countries to reduce emissions, rather than just relying on voluntary action as much of the Paris Agreement does.

Nonetheless, China, India, Russia, South Africa and others have argued that the European scheme is unfair, as developing countries cannot afford to clean up these industries on their territory or pay higher prices for green versions of the affected products.

The EU’s recent promise to offer “flexibilities” on the CBAM tax to the US also angered many developing countries, particularly as the bloc rejected calls to exempt the world’s least developed countries.

David Ryfisch, co-head of international climate policy at the Germanwatch advocacy group, praised the border tax for helping European industries decarbonise and pressuring governments outside Europe to improve their climate policies.

But, he said, the EU could have made the policy “more acceptable to other countries if it had consulted with them earlier and if the collected revenues were re-channelled to developing countries for them to accelerate decarbonisation domestically”.

Other issues that could be tackled by these UN climate dialogues and the Brazil-led forum include tariffs on green economy goods such as solar panels. The US has imposed tariffs on panels from China and some other parts of Asia. Meanwhile, other countries including India have introduced tariffs on solar panels in an attempt to encourage domestic manufacturing of clean energy equipment.

The post Trade breaks into agenda of UN climate talks – but will it have teeth? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Trade breaks into agenda of UN climate talks – but will it have teeth?