Federal prosecutors in Brazil’s Pará state have filed a lawsuit calling for the immediate suspension and cancellation of a multi-million-dollar contract between the state and a coalition of foreign governments and companies for the sale of carbon credits from the Amazon forest.
The prosecutors argued, among other things, that the deal – valued at up to $180 million – is invalid because Pará lacks a legally approved system to create and sell CO2 emissions reductions from lowering deforestation.
They requested that Pará be ordered to pay R$200 million ($35.5 million) in moral damages to society “due to the premature commercialisation of environmental assets originating from the territories of Indigenous Peoples and traditional communities without required free, prior and informed consultation.”
The public interest lawsuit, filed in early June, seeks to stop the federal government from authorizing Pará to work directly with international certifiers until the state’s carbon credit system is made compliant with Brazilian law. Named in the suit are the federal government, Pará state and CAAPP, the state’s public-private carbon asset company.
The September 2024 contract between Pará and the LEAF Coalition – a partnership involving US retail giants Amazon and Walmart, and the US, UK and Norwegian governments, among others – promises payment for emissions reductions under a state-administered forest carbon market system, called REDD+, which Pará says is still “in construction”.
Traditional communities, for their part, have said the timeline for consulting them on that new REDD+ system is too short, given its complexity, and are pushing for a larger share of proceeds from the scheme. On May 28, Pará’s environmental agency SEMAS launched consultations with forest communities under a protocol put together by the state.
‘Advance sale’ of credits questioned
LEAF’s intermediary, the nonprofit group Emergent, told Climate Home by email that it is aware of the lawsuit, adding that it agrees with the Government of Pará that the carbon credit deal “is fully aligned with Brazil’s new carbon market law”.
“It stands to deliver critical climate finance to the State of Pará and leads the way for other states in Brazil,” said Eron Bloomgarden, CEO of Emergent. “Proceeds from the agreement will be shared with Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities on the front line of the fight against deforestation, supporting communities, providing livelihoods and protecting forests and nature.”
Prosecutors, however, argue that the contract constitutes an illegal “advance sale” of carbon credits for emission reductions that have not yet been verified, while SEMAS’ rollout of REDD+ lacks transparency.
Global forest loss hits “frightening” record high with climate-fuelled fires
In September, Pará’s communications agency celebrated the “sale” of carbon credits from the LEAF deal. The contract states that Emergent “intends to resell” credits to corporations and governments.
Advance sales and resales of credits are prohibited under Brazil’s 2024 federal carbon market law, which established the Brazilian Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading System.
SEMAS maintains that the contract “was a pre-agreement”, telling Climate Home it will only be executed once carbon credits are generated, beginning in 2026. “Therefore, it does not fall under the prohibitions, as it constitutes a legally valid arrangement and does not infringe on rights, since no funds have yet been disbursed,” the agency added in emailed comments.
Ronaldo Amanayé of the Amanayé Indigenous people, treasurer of the Indigenous Peoples Federation of Pará (FEPIPA), took a different view. “They say it’s a ‘symbolic agreement’. But it’s a pre-sale,” he told Climate Home.
Experts said that without a finalised REDD+ system – and in the absence of a state law regulating carbon credits from reduced deforestation – the contract relies prematurely on emissions reductions from traditional territories.
“Pará committed to selling something that wasn’t theirs to sell,” said Carlos Ramos, a researcher with the Family Farming Amazonian Institute (INEAF).
Aurélio Borges, treasurer of Malungu (Coordination of Quilombola Associations of Pará), said, “it’s our carbon stock”. “We keep the forest standing. We need to be in control of the process.” Instead, he added, “the state goes and does something and shows us the document later.”
Unfinished REDD+ system, limited consultation
Critics argue that the LEAF contract itself has already produced negative social impacts – including loss of forest peoples’ bargaining power to negotiate carbon credit prices, accelerated timelines and pressure to comply, and divisions between leaders and communities – and say consultation should have been carried out earlier.
In 2023, prosecutors urged Pará to implement environmental and social safeguards via a REDD+ system before entering into any carbon contracts. But that recommendation was not followed.
The LEAF contract, for example, sets a $15/tonne carbon price without input from traditional communities, Ramos noted.
Draft allocations for REDD+ projects, such as LEAF, show that Pará’s government would retain 15% of proceeds, more than the 14% proposed for Afro-descendant quilombola communities, whose lands are home to the some of the forests storing the carbon. “We think (the government’s share) is high,” Borges said in an interview.
Amanayé also said the 24% earmarked for Indigenous communities should be larger.
There is particular concern among environmentalists about a planned 7% allocation of Pará’s REDD+ funds to agribusiness, which is known to be Brazil’s main driver of deforestation. Prosecutors have called for removal of this REDD+ provision.
Borges proposed a registry of illegal deforesters to ensure that they do not benefit, adding that he fears draft provisions for “restorative agriculture” could channel more funds to agribusiness.
Though Pará’s deforestation dipped in 2023-2024, it remains Brazil’s top-deforesting state, a title it has held for nine years.
Under REDD+, “who will keep the forest standing, as contracts promise?” queried a representative of the State Public Prosecutor’s Office, who asked to remain anonymous. The office co-authored an April recommendation to cancel the contract.
Pará often doesn’t punish illegal deforestation, Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of the Brazil-based Climate Observatory, told Climate Home.
He noted that in May, Pará Governor Helder Barbalho tried to reverse a federal anti-deforestation operation suspending the activities of some of Pará’s rural properties that had committed illegal deforestation. Barbalho said in a social media video that this would be done “in line with environmental legislation, so that production goes hand in hand with preservation”.
Yet, amid Pará’s weak track record on deforestation, Ramos highlighted fears that the Pará carbon credit deal could become more of a strategy to generate financial assets than conserve forests.
Under pressure to join REDD+
Another contentious issue is the process by which forest communities were selected to participate in the REDD+ planning process. Three voluntary organisations – Malungu, FEPIPA and CNS – were appointed on behalf of hundreds of communities, many of whom “feel these organisations don’t represent them”, according to the State Public Prosecutor’s Office representative.
These same associations are slated to manage REDD+ funds coming from the state, making it unclear how frontline communities who preserve forests will obtain access to the money.
Federal prosecutors charged in their lawsuit that community participation had been limited to financial discussions, rather than shaping the system. Meanwhile, the state, “by all indications, intends to approve its REDD+ system before COP30, which has created considerable pressure on Indigenous Peoples and traditional communities in Pará to hastily approve the system,” they wrote.
The COP30 UN climate summit will take place in the Brazilian Amazon city of Belém in November.
This time limit, said traditional leaders interviewed by Climate Home, has led to what they described as “extreme harassment” to join the fledgling REDD+ system – an accusation rejected by SEMAS.
Community consultation protocols side-stepped
The leaders, however, told Climate Home they had experienced coercive tactics. At an April 28 meeting, they said SEMAS had told quilombola leaders that rejecting the state’s consultation protocol could result in exclusion from public services. Leaders cited threats to housing programmes and land titles, among others.
Prosecutors confirmed this in their lawsuit, noting it “has created pressure within the territories regarding acceptance of the proposal”. SEMAS denied issuing threats and said participation in the REDD+ system is voluntary.
SEMAS confirmed, nonetheless, that it had set a consultation window of five days for 17 quilombola territories to decide jointly whether to be part of the REDD+ system.
“That’s not going to happen,” leader Maria José Brito of São José de Icatu Quilombo told SEMAS at the April meeting. “We want to be consulted, but according to our community consultation protocol.”
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Community protocols often require multi-step processes and internal assemblies to reach decisions in keeping with traditional practices. Consultation on issues that will impact Indigenous and traditional people must respect traditional decision-making processes, according to ILO Convention 169.
Leader Rute Santos, also of the Icatu Quilombo, described the Pará state protocol as “throwing our protocol in the trash. We don’t accept that.”
Pará’s REDD+ approach “has divided leaders and communities,” noted Santos, threatening the social fabric as it tries to force rushed decisions.
Others said they had been excluded from key meetings. “They keep you in the dark,” said leader Manoel Liduino of Terra da Liberdade Quilombo.
The state’s strategy amounts to “take it or leave it”, both Santos and Liduino said, making it hard for their peoples to participate in shaping Pará’s REDD+ development. SEMAS responded that the process had so far been “fully participatory”.
Carbon sovereignty concerns
There are also questions of legal coherence. Brazil’s 2024 law defines carbon credits as a “civil fruit” that are attached to the underlying piece of land, suggesting that they cannot be resold or transferred.
The LEAF contract, by allowing resale, “violates Brazil’s sovereignty” to define its carbon sinks, said Talanoa Institute’s Amazonian public policy analyst Wendell Andrade. Pará, meanwhile, may violate federal jurisdiction by promising credits from Indigenous and conservation area lands that belong to the Brazilian state, say prosecutors.
The Pará state project is among the world’s first “jurisdictional” carbon credit schemes, set up to cover a whole state or country.
SEMAS responded that “the jurisdictional system is not a project that will enter territories causing harm or adverse effects to traditional communities.”
The Amazon rainforest emerges as the new global oil frontier
Chief Yuna Miriam Tembé of the Tembé people believes that REDD+ is effectively a way of enabling continued carbon emissions by business. “Why are the federal and state governments selling our forests so that mega-industries can keep polluting?” she asked. “Polluting the environment (with carbon) is a crime, causing the death of countless lives, people, the land, rivers, fish, animals, the forest, birds and all living beings.”
She questioned what she sees as efforts to limit forest peoples’ ancestral uses of land, like clearing small plots for cassava cultivation – a point SEMAS did not clarify when asked. “Even though the territory is ours, the state uses these carbon credit contracts to try to restrict our freedom of movement within these spaces. That is unacceptable,” Tembé said.
“We cannot accept privatisation being imposed inside our own home (territory),” she added – a sentiment echoed by Santos.
Local confusion about REDD+
As the Pará state consultations on its REDD+ programme got underway, many community members told Climate Home they do not understand what carbon credits are, despite being asked to accept the short five-day consultation period.
“Even as a movement leader,” said Liduino, “I don’t understand what REDD+ is.”
As of May, the state’s REDD+ “transparency” web page hosted only technical documents. SEMAS told Climate Home it would explain REDD+ to communities during the first two days of consultation.
The Talanoa Institute’s Andrade said carbon credits and forest carbon are “still something nebulous that a large portion of Pará’s population doesn’t understand”.
Putting information on the SEMAS website “doesn’t make the process transparent,” he added. “Transparency should be a coordinated set of communication strategies using accessible language levels that match the understanding of different segments of society,“ he said.
The post Pará’s Amazon forest carbon deal in doubt as prosecutors move to block it appeared first on Climate Home News.
Pará’s Amazon forest carbon deal in doubt as prosecutors move to block it
The head of the United Nations has called on all countries to deliver plans for phasing out their production and consumption of fossil fuels, as rising oil prices and climate shocks threaten energy and human security.
In his farewell speech to the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York on Tuesday, outgoing UN Secretary-General António Guterres for the first time urged “every government to adopt a national plan to transition away from fossil fuels” aligned with limiting warming to 1.5C. The plans, he said, should include “clear timelines and protection for affected workers and communities”.
“We know fossil fuel interests won’t step aside on their own. For decades, Big Oil has treated the atmosphere as an open sewer – and cashed in on the consequences,” Guterres told diplomats in his speech opening the leaders’ segment of the assembly, also calling out the industry’s windfall profits after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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COP31 electrification pledge leaves out clean power commitment
Campaigners and experts say the goal’s effectiveness in reducing emissions may be limited unless countries agree to meet it using only clean energy -
Climate change and energy transition rise up national security agenda
Leaders highlighted the national security risks posed by global warming and fossil fuel dependency at New York Climate Week
At last year’s COP30 climate summit in Belém, a group of about 80 governments led a failed push to develop a global roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels. Brazil instead proposed to draft a voluntary report that will be presented this year ahead of COP31 after countries and organisations submitted their views to the process.
Governments first agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems at COP28 in Dubai in 2023, but have since failed to agree at UN climate talks on how to move forward with that commitment, as efforts to do so have been effectively blocked by large fossil fuel-producing countries.
France, Netherlands issue plans
A few countries have moved forward with their own transition plans. France launched the first one at an international conference on the issue in April and the Netherlands followed suit this month. Not being major fossil fuel producers, both European nations aim to end their coal, oil and gas consumption by 2050, although the Dutch plan was criticised for not setting specific phase-out dates for the dirty fuels.
Adão Soares Barbosa, climate ambassador from Timor-Leste and chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group in the UN climate negotiations, told a press briefing on Tuesday that last year’s discussions on shifting away from fossil fuels need to continue at COP31, adding that developed countries should lead the way with transition plans and curb their use of fossil fuels.
“We are expecting that we can make a request to major-emitting countries to limit emissions from this sector,” he said. “For LDCs, we’ll also try to reduce fossil fuel use, but it will depend on national circumstances.”
Samoa’s lead negotiator Anna Rasmussen said small island states have outlined their energy transition plans in their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – countries’ plans for meeting the Paris Agreement goals – but added “we’re still waiting” for climate finance to help implement those plans.
Despite the global push to clean up the energy mix, countries leading climate talks are themselves also expanding fossil fuel production. COP31 co-presidents Australia and Türkiye have both recently given the green light to mine and drill more coal, oil and gas, and still depend on fossil fuels for 60% and 56% of their electricity production respectively.
Fossil fuel expansion threatens COP31 hosts’ credibility, experts warn
COP30 host nation Brazil has also persisted with its plans to explore potential new oil reserves near the mouth of the Amazon River – a region known as the Equatorial Margin.
These are moving ahead despite President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announcing last year at the Belém climate summit that the country would develop its own fossil fuel phase-out plan. This is still under development with little information about its progress and may be hampered by elections next month.
“We have achieved our self sufficiency in oil and will continue to explore the potential of new reserves, such as those in the Equatorial Margin,” Lula said in his speech to the UNGA on Tuesday. “But we will not abandon the environmental agenda,” he insisted. “We will move forward with the roadmap for the decarbonisation of the Brazilian economy.”
Transition far cheaper than status quo
Speaking at the main Climate Week NYC venue, Mads Christensen, executive director of Greenpeace International, said given the fast-shifting cost dynamics for both fossil fuels and renewables, countries should revise their existing energy plans because they are now out of date.
Gas power generation now costs around 150 euros per megawatt compared with around 50 euros for solar with battery storage – making the latter two-thirds cheaper.
“If these plans were updated, I think we would have a much faster transition because it simply makes good financial sense,” he said.
Tzeporah Berman, founder and chair of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, told Climate Home News that the Santa Marta process for transitioning away from fossil fuels (TAFF), launched at April’s conference, could help countries discuss, design and develop their national roadmaps, as well as mobilise the international cooperation required to actually deliver them.
“Many countries want not only national roadmaps but a global roadmap off the highway to hell,” she added. “A global plan is necessary to ensure the rules aren’t rigged against those who want to do the right thing and so all countries can make credible commitments.”
The second TAFF conference will be held in the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu next spring, co-chaired by Ireland. In New York, Tuvalu’s climate minister Maina Vakafua Talia called for stepped-up efforts to tackle the fossil fuel use that is threatening his country’s “demise” by driving global warming.
“The world is running out of time, and so I ask every government to come to… Tuvalu with solutions – real solutions, not false solutions – for us to ensure that we have a pathway and a way forward,” he urged.
The post UN chief urges countries to adopt fossil fuel transition plans with timelines appeared first on Climate Home News.
UN chief urges countries to adopt fossil fuel transition plans with timelines
COP31’s flagship initiative to accelerate the electrification of the world’s economy has been criticised for failing to include a commitment to produce the power from clean energy.
Governments that sign the voluntary pledge at this year’s UN climate summit will commit to increasing electricity’s share of total energy consumption to 35% globally by 2035 in line “with pathways consistent with keeping 1.5C alive”, the text unveiled by the Turkish presidency on Tuesday says.
While the document says that the electrification goal is “complementary to efforts to expand renewable energy and improve energy efficiency”, governments are not explicitly asked to commit to producing the extra power with clean sources and driving down greenhouse gas emissions.
The text instead says the “use of clean electricity” will vary according to national circumstances. Fossil fuels are not mentioned by name, although the pledge cites the COP28 Global Stocktake decision, which called for “transitioning away from fossil fuels” in energy systems.
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Climate change and energy transition rise up national security agenda
Leaders highlighted the national security risks posed by global warming and fossil fuel dependency at New York Climate Week -
Fossil fuel expansion threatens COP31 hosts’ credibility, experts warn
Türkiye and Australia are pushing coal, oil and gas at home with no national timeline for their own fossil fuel phase-out
COP31 president Murat Kurum said earlier this month that the push to make electrification more “widespread” – through measures like the rollout of electric vehicles and heat pumps – will “automatically” lead to a reduction in the use of fossil fuels.
But many campaigners disagree, criticising the proposed pledge for failing to give an explicit signal on the fossil fuel transition.
Lack of clarity on energy sources
“Let’s not let electrification become the Trojan horse of our times, used to hide new fossil fuel consumption rather than promote renewable energy,” Claire Smith from civil society umbrella group Beyond Fossil Fuels said in reaction to the pledge’s publication.
She added that the commitment will only help address the climate crisis if electrification is powered by a flexible energy system where solar and wind are complemented by enhanced grids and storage.
The pledge’s text says that the electricity goal should be supported by “diverse and sustainable energy sources”, but it stops short of explaining what these sources are.
Alden Meyer, an international climate policy expert and senior associate at think-tank E3G, said the details of the pledge matter to how effective it will be in helping bring planet-heating emissions down.
“It has to be clean, and we haven’t got enough clarity on a guarantee that it will be a decarbonisation move,” he told Climate Home News.
China’s industrial engine starts to break its fossil fuel habit
According to an annual electricity review from energy think-tank Ember, in 2025 renewables edged ahead of coal power for the first time in 100 years. Continued growth in solar and wind pushed the share of renewables above a third of global electricity generation to just under 34%, compared with coal at 33%, it said.
Janet Milongo, energy Transition lead at CAN International, said success cannot be measured simply by how much of the world’s final energy consumption becomes electric.
“We must ask what generates that electricity, who has access to it, who owns the infrastructure, and whether it is helping communities transition away from fossil fuels,” she added.
Electrification alone can’t meet climate goals
Analysis published by the IEA on Tuesday, alongside the pledge, found that it would already be cost-effective to raise electricity’s share of global energy use from 23% today to around 33% with existing technologies, putting the COP31 goal “within striking distance”. Based on current policies, however, the share reaches only about 30% by 2035.
Hitting the 35% target would cut fossil fuel importers’ import bills by around $400 billion a year by 2035, the IEA said. At the higher prices caused by the conflict in the Middle East, that saving rises to more than $500 billion.
Speaking at New York Climate Week on Tuesday, IEA executive director Fatih Birol said the agency’s figures show that in 2026, about 80% of all new power plants built will run on renewables, with a few percentage points coming from nuclear power and the rest from fossils fuels. “So therefore, electrification itself will lead reduction of the [greenhouse gas] emissions,” he added.
However, the IEA warned in its new report that electrification “by itself is not enough” to meet the world’s climate targets. It noted that, if “low-emission” sources of power continue to simply grow in line with current policy scenarios, that would be only just enough to cover the extra demand from electrification, driving a modest decline in emissions.
Matt Webb, associate director of global clean power diplomacy at E3G, said the pledge is a “welcome signal of leadership” and can help COP31 be a “critical moment” for countries to double down on the energy commitments made at COP28.
But to secure the full benefits of electrification, he added, it is essential that we “urgently clean up” by speeding up the rollout of renewables and developing credible national plans to transition away from fossil fuels.
The post COP31 electrification pledge leaves out clean power commitment appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP31 electrification pledge leaves out clean power commitment
People around the world have donated almost $90 million to a government-led campaign to help Nepal recover from its recent devastating Himalayan flood, according to a Nepali climate negotiator, even as the UN chief slammed the tiny amount of money in a new fund to deal with such disasters.
Individuals and companies from Nepal and abroad have chipped in from $5 to “many millions” of dollars to the Prime Minister’s Disaster Relief Fund, Manjeet Dhakal, an advisor to the poorest countries at UN climate talks, told an event on Monday focused on early warning systems.
The prompt and substantial response from the public contrasts with the slower, more limited support that is potentially on offer from the UN’s new Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD), set up by governments to compensate developing countries for climate disasters.
Comment: Human security relies on adapting to the world’s new climate reality
Over three weeks have passed since Nepal’s finance and environment ministers asked the FRLD board to take an urgent decision to allocate funding to help Nepal protect people and restore essential services in the wake of the disaster, which caused around 1,450 deaths and left more than 5,000 people missing.
“Time is of the essence,” the ministers wrote in an appeal to the FRLD on August 31, which was swiftly followed by a letter from a group of developing-country board members urging the FRLD board’s co-chairs to organise an extraordinary meeting to come up with a response.
Loss and damage fund hesitates
Yet, despite informal online meetings, the co-chairs have yet to convene a meeting with the power to allocate funds. The board’s next scheduled meeting begins on December 15.
Dhakal said on Monday that the request has “received some positive response, but still there is some discussion ongoing about how to respond to that”.
“If they can’t respond in a timely manner, then is [the fund] fit for purpose in terms of disasters that the world would be facing in the coming years? The scale and intensity of these disasters is increasing,” he said.
With just $820 million pledged to it by rich countries and not all of that yet delivered, the FRLD has earmarked just $350 million to spend in its initial phase and without further contributions could run out of money next year.
Because of these limited funds, and a huge number of requests for funding totalling nearly $3 billion, the FRLD has said it will only give out a maximum of $20 million to each project for now. It has yet to approve funding for any projects.
Dhakal recently told The Nation magazine that this amount was just a “symbolic gesture”. Nepal’s government has estimated the costs of recovery and reconstruction at $4.8 billion, with homes, roads, bridges, hospitals and hydropower stations in the affected area needing to be repaired and rebuilt.
“Ridiculously small” funding
In a speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, the body’s outgoing Secretary-General António Guterres criticised the “ridiculously small” level of funds made available by wealthy governments to the FRLD. Developed countries should “make the loss and damage fund work at scale”, he said.
The Portuguese diplomat told world leaders that when he travelled to Nepal three years ago, he had “sounded the alarm on accelerating glacier melt, warning that the rooftops of the world are caving in”.
“Some dismissed it all as overstating dangers, but as tragic events have shown, impacts are arriving sooner, hitting harder, and spreading further than many anticipated,” he said.
A recent study by scientists with the World Weather Attribution group found that climate change contributed to the rock-ice avalanche which sparked a huge flash flood along a river valley on the Nepal-Tibet border.
Speaking at a separate event in New York on Monday, leading climate scientist Johan Rockström highlighted those findings on the role of global warming in the Himalayan disaster.
“This will be potentially the first poster-child case of a loss and damage invoice, because here we have a proven case of a catastrophe which would not have occurred if it hadn’t been for human-caused climate change,” he said.
The post As loss and damage fund stalls, Nepal crowdfunds flood relief appeared first on Climate Home News.
As loss and damage fund stalls, Nepal crowdfunds flood relief
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