Brazil’s COP30 presidency has unveiled a much-anticipated plan to halt forest loss around the world, saying a global target to end deforestation by 2030 remains within reach using existing national and international tools, but requires more finance behind it and everyone to go “faster and further”.
COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago told a press conference to launch the new roadmap in Brasilia that, while some countries pushed back against a global blueprint, it was developed as a way to inspire governments, business and civil society to focus on meeting commitments to protect forests.
“It’s all processes that already exist. All instruments that already exist. That’s one of the best conclusions: everyone can start acting today,” do Lago said.
The voluntary deforestation roadmap, along with another on transitioning away from fossil fuels, was promised by Brazil in the final hours of last year’s COP30 in the Amazon city of Belém after countries could not agree to include it in the formal Mutirão outcome.
Do Lago reiterated on Tuesday that the roadmap is not an official UN document, but rather a guide to implement targets already agreed three years ago at COP28 in Dubai, when countries took stock of national climate policies and agreed to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030.
Last year, global deforestation declined by 15% – the largest drop in recent years, achieved in large part thanks to Brazil’s tougher enforcement against illegal expansion of cattle-ranching – but countries remain far off track for the drop needed to achieve the COP28 target.
Former Brazilian environment minister Marina Silva, a close ally of newly re-elected President Lula da Silva and one of the main advocates of the roadmap, celebrated its launch and described it as “not a new path but a new way of walking” towards the global goal.
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What’s included in the roadmap?
The roadmap compiles a menu of policies to reverse deforestation and restore the world’s forests at both the national and international level, informed by more than 180 contributions from governments, civil society, the private sector and others. It focuses on ways countries can ramp up forest conservation, sustainable management and restoration, while tackling deforestation and forest degradation.
At the country level, it urges each government to follow a four-point plan, starting with identifying the drivers of deforestation in its territory, adjusting existing policies such as climate and biodiversity plans to address those drivers, setting targets according to available resources, and then implementing measures to reach them.
At the international level, it urges countries to co-operate on diverting trade-related incentives away from forest-destructive activities, and to strengthen prosecution of cross-border environmental crimes at the UN Convention against Transnational Organised Crime (UNTOC). It also calls for collaboration on forest monitoring platforms and developing unified indicators for tracking progress.
The document also identifies the next UN Global Stocktake of climate policies in 2028 as a key milestone when countries will have a last chance to review forest policies before the end of the decade.
Do Lago said some countries might want the roadmap to become a contribution to the next stocktake, adding that this document is “the first contribution for that discussion”, which will start at COP31 in Antalya and continue until COP33.
Finance boost needed
To achieve the 2030 global target, the roadmap also says a major scale-up of financial resources will be required. The UN estimates that $84.5 billion was channelled into forest protection in 2023, which will need to increase to more than $300 billion a year by 2030. Nearly 90% of finance going to forests comes from domestic government budgets in developing countries, rather than international aid or private-sector investment.
The roadmap suggests that, since countries are already paying to look after their forests, they can act in two main ways: diverting domestic support away from nature-damaging activities, and building demand for “verified forest outcomes” such as paying to keep forests standing or creating forest-positive subsidies.
In the case of international finance, the document identifies several initiatives seeking to channel new public and private funds towards forest protection, including paying for carbon sinks – known as REDD+ in technical jargon – as well as through the newly established Paris Agreement carbon market.
The roadmap also singles out recent efforts to shift more private finance into solutions for nature, such as the Brazil-led Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) launched last year in Belém.
“The great challenge is not new policies, but scalability and acceleration to arrive at 2030 as promised, having ramped up efforts to end deforestation and forest degradation,” COP30 CEO and veteran climate diplomat Ana Toni said at the press conference.
Timeline requires quick implementation
Damian Fleming, senior director for forests at green group WWF International, said the roadmap “gets many of the fundamentals right” including on governance, regulatory and legal enforcement, community rights, finance, and the need to tackle degradation as well as deforestation.
However, he added that “the challenge now is speed” with 2030 just a few years away. “Countries need to use [the roadmap] to turbocharge action for results on the ground,” he said, urging governments to pursue deforestation-free supply chains and respect the rights of Indigenous peoples.
Anders Haug Larsen, director of international advocacy at the Rainforest Foundation Norway, highlighted the wide range of partners that can drive the anti-deforestation plan forward, adding he hoped that rainforest nations would now step up to champion it.
“Tropical forests are too important for fragmented approaches,” he said. “The roadmap can help bring together governments, Indigenous Peoples, investors and existing initiatives behind a common goal: ending deforestation and keeping forests standing.”
Natalie Unterstell, founder of the Talanoa Institute, a Brazilian climate think-tank, said the roadmap builds on Brazil’s “successful experience” of reducing deforestation, which has dropped to a record-low level, going beyond a simple focus on law enforcement but also identifying business and finance opportunities that bring positive results.
“The next step is for other governments and incoming COP presidencies to take ownership of this agenda, turn the proposed pathways into co-ordinated action, and use the 2028 Global Stocktake to assess collective progress. With only four years left, the roadmap needs a coalition of countries committed to delivering it,” she told Climate Home News.
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COP30 roadmap says faster use of existing tools can halt forest loss by 2030
Brazil has proposed a voluntary timetable to speed up the world’s transition away from fossil fuels (TAFF), fulfilling the promise it made to draw up the first global roadmap at last year’s UN climate summit in Belém.
Through a “TAFF Mutirão”, named after the Indigenous Brazilian term for collective effort, the COP30 presidency sets out three stages for cutting the world’s reliance on oil, gas and coal up to 2033.
Countries are first encouraged to draw up national transition plans by 2028 in time to feed into the next global stocktake, the UN’s five-yearly review of progress on climate action. During the same period, Brazil’s blueprint suggests governments could take early steps such as reforming fossil fuel subsidies or stopping methane leaks at oil and gas sites.
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In 2029 and 2030, Brazil sees the focus shifting to building an alternative energy system, by prioritising clean power, electric transport and heating, more efficient energy use and by rolling out the power grids and batteries that support them.
Only in the final stage, from 2031 to 2033, does the roadmap expect the main push to reduce fossil fuel production. By then, it argues, falling use of fossil fuels should allow producers to “adjust and diversify supply in step with demand”.
The roadmap acknowledges that fossil fuel demand must fall “substantially faster” to meet the 1.5C temperature goal, but warns that cutting supply too early would drive up prices and risk “losing societal support for the transition”.
Coordinated agenda
Pedro Brancante, a senior official at the Brazilian Foreign Ministry and one of the authors of the roadmap, said the document proposes both a global, coordinated agenda and accelerated action at the national level.
He told a webinar hosted by Climate Home News that Brazil sees the roadmap as a tool to organise the discussions around the fossil fuel phase-out and help that debate develop further without getting stuck on definitions or the different responsibilities of particular countries.
The COP30 presidency offered to draw up the roadmap in the dying hours of the Belém summit. A push by about 80 countries to start that work within the formal negotiations had been blocked by some fossil fuel-producing nations.
The 182-page document does not name any countries and it sets no deadlines for winding down fossil fuel production. But it offers countries a self-assessment tool to score themselves on how heavily they depend on fossil fuels and what capacity they have to move away from them.
Fossil fuel “archetypes”
Across energy demand, supply and the wider economy, countries can place themselves in one of 12 “archetypes”, each with its own suggested first steps.
For example, countries where transport, industry and homes still run mostly on fossil fuels, and where energy demand is growing fast, are urged to meet that growth with electric and other low-emissions options rather than locking in new fossil fuel use. Major oil and gas producers with strong institutions and good renewable resources are told to manage an “orderly transition” of their production while expanding clean energy, then to redirect their infrastructure and skills toward new energy industries.
COP30 President André Aranha Corrêa do Lago told journalists on Tuesday that countries need to recognise themselves in the categories and use the frameworks as “food for thought” to plan the next steps.
COP30 CEO Ana Toni added that the presidency limited its time horizon to 2033 and did not try to think about 2050 or 2060 because “there is an urgency and these are short-term measures” that all countries can act upon now.
Lula’s election win in Brazil raises hopes for zero deforestation drive
Brazil has yet to publish its own national roadmap away from fossil fuels. Officials said on Tuesday it had been expected by the end of last year and is still awaiting approval from President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Lula, who was recently re-elected, has backed the expansion of oil and gas exploration. In August, after Petrobras struck oil off the coast near the mouth of the Amazon River, he said drilling along Brazil’s northern coast could be “a passport to the country’s future”.
“Valuable blueprint”
The release of the roadmap was largely welcomed by analysts and campaigners.
Romain Ioualalen, global policy lead at Oil Change International, said Brazil has offered “a valuable blueprint” for the fossil fuel phase-out, adding that while “there is not one-size-fits-all pathway”, all countries need to plan their transition now.
But he warned that suggesting that a reduction in fossil fuel supply could wait until the 2030s would be “a grave mistake” and guarantee a “chaotic transition”.
Kat Paterson, programme lead for Global Clean Power Diplomacy at E3G, said the roadmap puts the fossil fuel transition at the heart of both global climate cooperation and national economic planning.
“As governments head to Antalya, the task is now for the COP31 Presidency to carry Brazil’s work forward, and for countries to demonstrate their own plans to develop national roadmaps as pathways towards clean, resilient economies,” she added.
Turkey, which hosts COP31 from next Monday, and Australia, which will preside over the negotiations, have not said whether or how they will take the roadmap forward at the summit.
At the press conference in Brasilia, the Brazilian officials stressed that the roadmap represents a call for action and not a formal document that needs to be adopted in the official talks.
“We are not suggesting negotiations, we are not suggesting the creation of a new entity,” said Corrêa do Lago. “Everything is around implementation, around institutions and processes in place that already exist and have been agreed beforehand.”
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Brazil’s fossil fuel roadmap sketches out first global timetable
The upcoming COP31 climate talks in Antalya, Turkey need to respond to the latest science on global warming, which is “really scary”, says UK climate minister Katie White.
In an interview with Carbon Brief setting out the UK’s priorities for the summit, White also responds to suggestions that the government is walking back its climate policies.
White says the “shocking” impact of extreme heat and wildfires this summer makes it clear that climate change “isn’t something far off; it’s something we’re living through”.
She adds that the UK will be working to “hold up the science”, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that should be the “basis of discussions”.
The COP31 presidency push on electrification is “going to be key”, says White, who points to other priorities for the UK that include tackling methane emissions and reducing deforestation.
White says the recent approval of the Jackdaw gas field in the North Sea is “fully in line” with carbon budgets and that the UK continues to support the “transition away from fossil fuels”.
She adds that the Hormuz crisis has helped drive the “biggest uptake…we’ve ever seen” in the UK for solar, electric vehicles and heat pumps.
Finally, White defends the new approach set out in the budget by chancellor John Healey, including a greater focus on affordability, as a “natural evolution” of UK government policy.
Carbon Brief: Katie White, thank you very much for joining Carbon Brief today. Next week we’re going to be heading to COP31 climate talks in Antalya in Turkey.
We’ve seen this year the UN warning that a temporary overshoot of 1.5C degrees is now inevitable. We’ve had 50,000 excess heat deaths across Europe this summer. We’ve had extreme weather events hitting Nepal, deadly floods there. Heading into the talks, what would you say the UK’s priorities are?
Katie White: Thanks, Simon. Look, just to say, it’s great to be here. I’m a big fan of Carbon Brief and the work you’ve been doing. I think it’s incredibly important that there are people who are focused on the facts and have really excellent commentary. So just to say thank you, and it’s good to be here to discuss with you.
Look, this year has been a very significant year in terms of climate, particularly sat here in the UK. I think we have really felt the impacts of climate change for the first time. For you and me, who’ve been working on this for a long time [and] we talk about it. But even so – I don’t know how you felt – but I was even shocked by the implications of what that was for everyday life, for people actually sleeping at night. You know, in terms of parliament, I had colleagues who had to go pick up their children because their schools weren’t available, and you know, tragedies in terms of older people struggling in the heat.
Not to mention the wildfires that we had across the country. I went to visit one in Romford and I think just standing – literally in the ashes – and seeing people’s homes really close by. My colleague in Stourbridge, obviously, they had burnt-out houses – you know, devastating. And you think about it – and I talked with her about – the actual real-life implications of that.