Latin American and Caribbean countries approved a new action plan to protect environmental defenders this week.
This occurred at the third Conference of the Parties (COP3) to the Escazú Agreement, held in Santiago, Chile, from 22 to 24 April.
The Escazú Agreement, in force since 22 April 2021, is a legally binding regional treaty that aims to protect environmental defenders and promote public participation and access to information on environmental matters.
The conference brought together more than 700 people, from state parties and civil-society organisations to youth activists and Indigenous environmental defenders.
Latin America and the Caribbean is considered by campaign groups to be the “most dangerous place in the world for activists”.
The regional action plan sets out priority areas and strategic measures for countries to enact article 9 of the Escazú Agreement, which urges states to recognise and protect the rights of environmental defenders and prevent and punish attacks against them.
Graciela Martínez, regional campaigner for the Americas at Amnesty International, tells Carbon Brief that the action plan is an “important step towards implementing the Escazú Agreement”.
Action plan
Between 2012 and 2022, Latin America and the Caribbean saw 1,910 killings of environmental and land defenders, according to a 2023 report from campaign group Global Witness. This accounted for 88% of such killings around the world during that decade, the report notes.
The Escazú Agreement came out of the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development and seeks to guarantee the right to a healthy environment and sustainable development for current and future generations. Part of this is achieved, the agreement says, by recognising the important role that environmental and human-rights defenders play in this regard.
Currently, 16 countries have ratified the Escazú Agreement, including Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Mexico, Ecuador, and several Caribbean countries, such as Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada and Saint Kitts and Nevis. A recent statement by Amnesty International points out that some of the countries that have not yet ratified the agreement are among the most dangerous for environmental defenders, such as Brazil, Colombia and Guatemala.
The action plan agreed upon at COP3 will be implemented from 2024 to 2030 and comprises four priority areas, each accompanied by strategic measures to comply with objectives:
- Knowledge creation.
- Recognition.
- Capacity-building and cooperation for national implementation.
- Evaluation of the action plan.
Knowledge creation refers to understanding the situation of defenders and identifying mechanisms to prevent and punish violations of defenders’ rights. Recognition measures require publicly acknowledging the work of defenders.
Within national implementation, the action plan mandates parties to create and strengthen institutions to provide free legal assistance to environmental defenders and training for judges and prosecutors.
Jesús Maya, a Mexican human-rights defender and youth representative at COP3, tells Carbon Brief:
“This is more than necessary for us to be able to talk about environmental justice and justice for people.”
Maya adds that the consultancy he manages, Eheco, is working to ensure that the Escazú processes “takes into account alternative justice” such as “collective justice” – as violence can also be directed at entire groups, not just individuals – and policies to preserve the “collective memory” of killed defenders, “so as not to repeat the issue”.
There are other examples of alternative justice, Maya says. One is Colombia’s special jurisdiction for peace – which seeks to deliver transitional justice to victims of the decades-long armed conflict by providing the right to justice, truth and restoration of damages. Another comes in the form of the truth commissions in Argentina, Peru, Chile, Mexico and Colombia, which were created to uncover the truth about human rights violations committed by military dictatorships, authoritarian regimes or internal armed conflicts.
Indigenous demands
Teresita Antazú López, an Indigenous environmental defender of the Yanesha people of the central Peruvian rainforest, tells Carbon Brief that Indigenous peoples had a number of demands at this COP.
According to López, who attended the COP3 as a member of the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Jungle, the highest priority was to ensure their effective participation in the negotiations going forward. This includes having an Indigenous caucus to represent them and an Indigenous peoples rapporteur to report on violations in their territories.
Alice Piva, a Brazilian climate activist and young ambassador of the Escazú Agreement, tells Carbon Brief that young activists and defenders are asking for the recognition of their leadership and participation in the Escazú processes. She explains that environmental justice includes intergenerational justice, adding:
“It is up to the younger generations to push [the Escazú Agreement] forward to achieve this vision of a Latin America with a strong environmental democracy.”
Piva also criticises accessibility of the COP for Brazilian organisations, noting that negotiations are often held in Spanish and English and less frequently in Portuguese.
Information access
COP3 also addressed transparency and access to environmental information.
During a side event organised by Article 19 Mexico and Central America – an organisation that promotes freedom of expression and access to information, Maribel Ek, guardian of the cenotes – or deep natural wells – of Homún, in the south-eastern Mexican state of Yucatán, told the audience that her community, which is home to 360 cenotes, managed to shut down a 49,000-pig mega-farm on its territory after investigating the farm’s permits and receiving support from lawyers. Ek said:
“To defend nature, we just need information. We need to know the steps to follow, the places to touch and how to do it.”
Article 6 of the Escazú Agreement states that “each party shall ensure the right of public access to environmental information in its possession, control or custody, in accordance with the principle of maximum disclosure”.
However, during the event, speakers said the Latin America and the Caribbean region still has shortcomings when it comes to disclosure. For example, panellists pointed out, Peru lacks training for officials and the budget for disclosures.
Speaking at the side event, Lourdes Medina, a lawyer specialising in environmental and Indigenous rights, said that if the right to access environmental information is not protected and guaranteed, other rights are at risk. Medina said:
“Citizens’ participation in resistance cannot be guaranteed. There is no adequate mechanism for access to justice, and this produces different forms of violence against defenders.”
Current implementation
During COP3, seven countries presented their national plans – either approved or in progress – to implement the Escazú Agreement. According to the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Ecuador, Argentina, Santa Lucía, Belize, Mexico, Uruguay and Chile all presented their plans at the summit. The COP also welcomed Dominica as the 16th party to the agreement.
Maya tells Carbon Brief that Mexico’s plan for implementing the Escazú Agreement is on hold due to the country’s upcoming national elections.
Piva says she is working with civil society organisations to get Brazil to ratify the agreement. She said that given Brazil’s size and its leadership in economic issues and regional networks such as Mercosur, the Escazú Agreement also needs Brazil. She tells Carbon Brief:
“If Brazil does not ratify or takes too long to ratify, the agreement will lose strength because it needs the country as a strong negotiator.”
According to the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin (COICA), this COP succeeded regarding the inclusion of public participation, including Indigenous peoples, in implementing national plans.
Defenders and civil society organisations consulted by Carbon Brief highlight the need for the COPs on Escazú to be annual rather than biannual since protecting defenders is an urgent matter. Piva says:
“I don’t think it’s fair that defenders already threatened or at risk [wait] more than two years to have [a tool] to demand that their countries protect them.”
The post Latin America approves plan for protecting environmental defenders appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Latin America approves plan for protecting environmental defenders
Colombia wants countries to discuss options for a global agreement to ensure that the extraction, processing and recycling of minerals – including those needed for the clean energy transition – don’t harm the environment and human wellbeing.
The mineral-rich nation is proposing to create an expert group to “identify options for international instruments, including global and legally-binding instruments, for coordinated global action on the environmentally sound management of minerals and metals through [their] full lifecyle”.
Colombia hopes this will eventually lead to an agreement on the need for an international treaty to define mandatory rules and standards that would make mineral value chains more transparent and accountable.
The proposal was set out in a draft resolution submitted to the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) earlier this week and seen by Climate Home News. UNEA, which is constituted of all UN member states, is the world’s top decision-making body for matters relating to the environment. The assembly’s seventh session will meet in Kenya in December to vote on countries’ proposals.
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Soaring demand for the minerals used to manufacture clean energy technologies and electric vehicles, as well as in the digital, construction and defence industries have led to growing environmental destruction, human rights violations and social conflict.
Colombia argues there is an “urgent need” to strengthen global cooperation and governance to reduce the risks to people and the planet.
Options for a global minerals agreement
The proposal is among a flurry of initiatives to strength global mineral governance at a time when booming demand is putting pressure on new mining projects.
Colombia, which produces emeralds, gold, platinum and silver for exports, first proposed the idea for a binding international agreement on minerals traceability and accountability on the sidelines of the UN biodiversity talks it hosted in October 2024.
Since then, the South American nation has been quietly trying to drum up support for the idea, especially among African and European nations.
Its draft resolution to UNEA7 contains very few details, leaving it open for countries to discuss what kind of global instrument would be best suited to make mineral supply chains more transparent and sustainable.
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Colombia says it wants the expert group to build on other UN initiatives, including a UN Panel on Critical Energy Transition Minerals, which set out seven principles to ensure the mining, processing and recycling of energy transition minerals are done responsibly and benefit everyone.
The group would include technical experts and representatives from international and regional conventions, major country groupings as well as relevant stakeholders.
It would examine the feasibility and effectiveness of different options for a global agreement, consider their costs and identify measures to support countries to implement what is agreed.
The resolution also calls for one or two meetings for member states to discuss the idea before the UNEA8 session planned in late 2027, when countries would decide on a way forward.
No time to lose for treaty negotiations
Colombia’s efforts to advance global talks on mineral supply chains have been welcomed by resource experts and campaigners. But not everyone agrees on the best strategy to move the discussion forward at a time when multilateralism is coming under attack.
Johanna Sydow, a resource policy expert who heads the international environmental policy division of the Heinrich-Böll Foundation, said she had hoped that the resolution would explicitly call for negotiations to begin on an international minerals treaty.
“Treaty negotiations take a long time. If you don’t even start with it now, it will take even longer. I don’t see how in two or three years it will be easier to come to an agreement,” she told Climate Home.
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Despite the geopolitical challenges, “we need joint rules to prevent a huge race to the bottom for [mineral] standards”. That could start with a group of countries coming together and starting to enforce joint standards for mining, processing and recycling minerals, she said.
But any meaningful global agreement on mineral supply chains would require backing from China, the world’s largest processor of minerals, which dominates most of the supply chains. And with Colombia heading for an election in May, it will need all the support it can get to move its proposal forward.
‘Voluntary initiative won’t cut it’
Juliana Peña Niño, Colombia country manager at the Natural Resource Governance Institute, is more optimistic. “Colombia’s leadership towards fairer mineral value chains is a welcome step,” she told Climate Home News.
“At UNEA7, we need an ambitious debate that gives the proposed expert group a clear mandate to advance concrete next steps — not delay decisions — and that puts the voices of those most affected at the centre. One thing is clear: the path forward must ultimately deliver a binding instrument, as yet another voluntary initiative simply won’t cut it,” she said.
More than 50 civil society groups spanning Latin America, Africa and Europe previously described Colombia’s work on the issue as “a chance to build a new global paradigm rooted in environmental integrity, human rights, Indigenous Peoples’ rights, justice and equity”.
“As the energy transition and digitalisation drive demand for minerals, we cannot afford to repeat old extractive models built on asymmetry – we must redefine them,” they wrote in a statement.
Main image: The UN Environment Assembly is hosted in Nairobi, Kenya. (Natalia Mroz/ UN Environment)
The post Colombia proposes expert group to advance talks on minerals agreement appeared first on Climate Home News.
Colombia proposes expert group to advance talks on minerals agreement
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Climate Change
DeBriefed 3 October 2025: UK political gap on climate widens; Fossil-fuelled Typhoon Ragasa; ‘Overshoot’ unknowns
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Shattered climate consensus
FRACKING BAN: UK energy secretary Ed Miliband has announced that the government will bring forward its plans to permanently ban fracking, in a move designed to counter a promise from the hard-right Reform party to restart efforts to introduce the practice, the Guardian said. In the same speech, Miliband said Reform’s plans to scrap clean-energy projects would “betray” young people and future generations, the Press Association reported.
ACT AXE?: Meanwhile, Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Conservatives, pledged to scrap the 2008 Climate Change Act if elected, Bloomberg reported. It noted that the legislation was passed with cross-party support and strengthened by the Conservatives.
‘INSANE’: Badenoch faced a backlash from senior Tory figures, including ex-prime minister Theresa May, who called her pledge a “catastrophic mistake”, said the Financial Times. The newspaper added that the Conservatives were “trailing third in opinion polls”. A wide range of climate scientists also condemned the idea, describing it as “insane”, an “insult” and a “serious regression”.
Around the world
- CLIMATE CRACKDOWN: The US Department of Energy has told employees in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy to avoid using the term “climate change”, according to the Guardian.
- FOREST DELAY: Plans for Brazil’s COP30 flagship initiative, the tropical forests forever fund, are “suffer[ing] delays” as officials remain split on key details, Bloomberg said.
- COP MAY BE ‘SPLIT’: Australia could “split” the hosting of the COP31 climate summit in 2026 under a potential compromise with Turkey, reported the Guardian.
- DIVINE INTERVENTION: Pope Leo XIV has criticised those who minimise the “increasingly evident” impact of global warming in his first major climate speech, BBC News reported.
€44.5 billion
The cost of extreme weather and climate change in the EU in the last four years – two-and-a-half times higher than in the decade to 2019, according to a European Environment Agency report covered by the Financial Times.
Latest climate research
- Fossil-fuelled climate change caused around 36% of Typhoon Ragasa’s direct damage to homes and properties in southern China, according to a rapid impact attribution study | Imperial Grantham Institute – Climate Change and the Environment
- Some 86% of the global population are concerned about climate change, according to a survey of 280,000 people in 142 countries and regions | Climate Policy
- A global shift towards a “planetary health diet” could slash emissions and save tens of thousands of lives each day | EAT-Lancet Commission 2025 report
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Clean energy has met 100% of Great Britain’s electricity demand for a record 87 hours this year so far, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. This is up from just 2.5 hours in 2021 and 64.5 hours in all of 2024. The longest stretch of time where 100% of electricity demand was met by clean energy stands at 15 hours, from midnight on 25 May 2025 through to 3pm on 26 May, according to the analysis.
Spotlight
‘Overshoot’ unknowns
As the chances of limiting global warming to 1.5C dwindle, there is increasing focus on the prospects for “overshooting” the Paris Agreement target and then bringing temperatures back down by removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
At the first-ever Overshoot Conference in Laxenburg, Austria, Carbon Brief asks experts about the key unknowns around warming “overshoot”.
Sir Prof Jim Skea
Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and emeritus professor at Imperial College London’s Centre for Environmental Policy
So there are huge knowledge gaps around overshoot and carbon dioxide removal (CDR). As it’s very clear from the themes of this conference, we don’t altogether understand how the Earth would react in taking CO2 out of the atmosphere.
We don’t understand the nature of the irreversibilities and we don’t understand the effectiveness of CDR techniques, which might themselves be influenced by the level of global warming, plus all the equity and sustainability issues surrounding using CDR techniques.
Prof Kristie Ebi
Professor at the University of Washington’s Center for Health and the Global Environment
There are all kinds of questions about adaptation and how to approach effective adaptation. At the moment, adaptation is primarily assuming a continual increase in global mean surface temperature. If there is going to be a peak – and of course, we don’t know what that peak is – then how do you start planning? Do you change your planning?
There are places, for instance when thinking about hard infrastructure, [where overshoot] may result in a change in your plan – because as you come down the backside, maybe the need would be less. For example, when building a bridge taller. And when implementing early warning systems, how do you take into account that there will be a peak and ultimately a decline? There is almost no work in that. I would say that’s one of the critical unknowns.
Dr James Fletcher
Former minister for public service, sustainable development, energy, science and technology for Saint Lucia and negotiator at COP21 in Paris.
The key unknown is where we’re going to land. At what point will we peak [temperatures] before we start going down and how long will we stay in that overshoot period? That is a scary thing. Yes, there will be overshoot, but at what point will that overshoot peak? Are we peaking at 1.6C, 1.7C, 2.1C?
All of these are scary scenarios for small island developing states – anything above 1.5C is scary. Every fraction of a degree matters to us. Where we peak is very important and how long we stay in this overshoot period is equally important. That’s when you start getting into very serious, irreversible impacts and tipping points.
Prof Oliver Geden
Senior fellow and head of the climate policy and politics research cluster at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs and vice-chair of IPCC Working Group III
[A key unknown] is whether countries are really willing to commit to net-negative trajectories. We are assuming, in science, global pathways going net-negative, with hardly any country saying they want to go there. So maybe it is just an academic thought experiment. So we don’t know yet if [overshoot] is even relevant. It is relevant in the sense that if we do, [the] 1.5C [target] stays on the table. But I think the next phase needs to be that countries – or the UNFCCC as a whole – needs to decide what they want to do.
Prof Lavanya Rajamani
Professor of international environmental law at the University of Oxford
I think there are several scientific unknowns, but I would like to focus on the governance unknowns with respect to overshoot. To me, a key governance unknown is the extent to which our current legal and regulatory architecture – across levels of governance, so domestic, regional and international – will actually be responsive to the needs of an overshoot world and the consequences of actually not having regulatory and governance architectures in place to address overshoot.
Watch, read, listen
FUTURE GAZING: The Financial Times examined a “future where China wins the green race”.
‘JUNK CREDITS’: Climate Home News reported on a “forest carbon megaproject” in Zimbabwe that has allegedly “generated millions of junk credits”.
‘SINK OR SWIM’: An extract from a new book on how the world needs to adapt to climate change, by Dr Susannah Fisher, featured in Backchannel.
Coming up
- 7 October: International Energy Agency (IEA) renewables 2025 report launch
- 8-10 October: World summit of Indigenous peoples and nature, Abu Dhabi, UAE
- 9-15 October: International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) 2025 congress, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Pick of the jobs
- UK government foreign, commonwealth and development office, senior climate policy adviser | Salary: CA$93,207. Location: Calgary, Canada
- Wellcome Trust, senior research manager, climate and health | Salary: £64,800. Location: London
- Bloomberg, product manager – climate, nature and sustainability regulations | Salary: Unknown. Location: London
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 3 October 2025: UK political gap on climate widens; Fossil-fuelled Typhoon Ragasa; ‘Overshoot’ unknowns appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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