Following the US exit from the Paris climate agreement in January, Argentina’s government, under President Javier Milei, is evaluating whether to follow suit – but analysts say leaving the global accord would be legally tricky and could damage relations with some of the country’s key trading partners and donors.
Earlier this month, right-wing populist leader Milei told French news magazine Le Point he was considering quitting the Paris pact “because I do not adhere to the environmentalist agenda”.
Milei campaigned on a ticket of climate change denialism, has supported major oil and gas projects and cut the environment ministry’s budget by almost half. He also pulled Argentina’s negotiating team out of the COP29 climate conference in Baku last year.
On February 5, the same day the president’s comments were published, his spokesman Manuel Adorni told journalists that Argentina was mulling a withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, but no decision had been taken at that point.
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For the past year, even before Trump announced he would pull the US out of the Paris pact, Milei’s administration has been considering the implications of such a move. But analysts warn that doing so could hurt trade relations with close partners like China and the European Union (EU), and cripple climate finance flows into the country.
Experts also told Climate Home Milei would need to follow due process by seeking parliamentary approval for a withdrawal.
Congressional hurdle
On his first day in office on January 20, US President Donald Trump issued an executive order to kick-start the one-year process of pulling the US out of the Paris Agreement – the same way former President Barack Obama joined the accord. But Argentina is a different story.
The Latin American nation ratified the 2015 climate agreement through a law approved by Congress, which means that Milei would need to follow the same route to leave it.
“It was approved as an integration treaty, with a status below human rights treaties and above general laws,” said Andrés Nápoli, executive director of the Environment and Natural Resources Foundation (FARN).
“If (Milei) does not go through Congress and decides to adopt the decision unilaterally, (he) would be committing a crime,” Nápoli told Climate Home.
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Despite lacking a majority in both legislative chambers, Milei managed to negotiate his way through his first year in office, but a Paris Agreement exit might be more complex, as the low-carbon transition represents an economic opportunity for several provinces.
Argentina’s recently appointed new undersecretary of environment, Fernando Jorge Brom – a business consultant with no experience in the sector – is yet to reveal his climate agenda, including his stance on the Paris Agreement, according to local NGOs. His predecessor, Ana Lamas, resigned two weeks ago “because of personal reasons due to exhaustion”.
Trade partners back Paris
The EU is Argentina’s third-largest trade partner, with food products like soy and peanuts being the main exports. Its biggest trade partner is Brazil, the host of this year’s COP30 climate summit.
Last December, the renegotiation of the commercial agreement between the EU and Mercosur – a trade bloc that includes Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil and Uruguay – included a new article citing the Paris Agreement as an essential element.
“Recognizing the role of trade in contributing to the response to the urgent threat of climate change, each party shall remain a party, in good faith, of the UNFCCC and its Paris Agreement,” states a key clause in the text.
If Argentina were to leave the climate accord, the trade deal with the EU would be partially or totally suspended, according to its terms. It would also isolate the country from the rest of the Mercosur members, which could remain in the agreement.
The updated EU-Mercosur agreement still needs to be reviewed by legal teams and approved by respective parliaments.
Argentina’s second trading partner is China. Last month, in response to the US decision to leave the Paris Agreement, Beijing’s foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said, “China’s resolve and actions to actively respond to climate change will remain unchanged,” adding that “China will work with all parties to actively address the climate challenge and promote a global green and low-carbon transition.”
Finance needs
For the past two decades, Argentina has been struggling with economic instability, macroeconomic imbalances and a stratospheric inflation rate. More recently, climate impacts resulted in a production loss of 50 million tonnes of cereal crops between 2022 and 2023 due to a record drought.
Remaining in the Paris climate pact would allow Argentina to use the treaty as a framework to channel investments, said Enrique Maurtua Konstantinidis, an Argentinian climate policy analyst and consultant.
“It gives [Buenos Aires] access to adaptation funds, capacity building programmes and international cooperation for the development of projects aligned with climate action that contribute to a country’s infrastructure and society,” he explained.
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Of the 72 projects the World Bank approved for Argentina in the last decade, 23 were directly linked to policies to reduce emissions and adapt to climate change.
The Inter-American Development Bank has also financed projects supporting the emergency response to floods in Corrientes and Entre Ríos provinces, as well as forest fires in Córdoba.
IMF indifference?
In 2018, Mauricio Macri’s government contracted debt with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) of $44 billion, making it the largest disbursement in the fund’s history at the time.
In 2022, Argentina and the IMF agreed an extension to pay back the debt over 10 years. In December 2024, the interest part of the loan for the first two years was paid. Now Milei’s government is seeking to negotiate a debt restructuring of the same loan, which could include climate considerations.
“The IMF has an important role to play in helping its members institute fiscal and macroeconomic policies to help address these climate-related challenges,” the fund says on its website, adding that “climate considerations are now embedded in their bilateral and multilateral surveillance, capacity development, and lending.”
In the 2022 agreement, the objectives set for Argentina included three specific climate policies: a new electric mobility law, a “Green Productive Development Plan” to boost green skills and the circular economy, and a stronger environmental perspective in the national budget.
Yet those are not mandatory conditions to access funds, said Mercedes D’Alessandro, analyst and former director of economy, equality and gender at the Ministry of Economy in the previous administration.
“For the debt restructuring sought by Milei’s government, the [IMF] might have a deeper interest in macroeconomic goals,” said D’Alessandro.
In a recent evaluation, the IMF drew attention to certain commitments in Argentina’s 2022 programme of policy objectives that were not met – among them gender goals – but not climate policies.
“Climate change is not on the IMF’s agenda of priorities – or not specifically with Argentina,” D’Alessandro told Climate Home.
While that may be the case with the country’s individual fiscal situation, Maurtua Konstantinidis warned that snubbing the international climate regime could shut Argentina out of a broader global effort – now gathering pace – to ease the high debt burdens of many developing countries so they can spend more on climate action.
“At a time when there are talks of reforms to the financial system in pursuit of a more sustainable and fair future, staying outside of these spaces means losing opportunities for the future – opportunities that a country like Argentina needs,” he added.
The post Risk of financial fallout could deter Argentina from leaving Paris Agreement appeared first on Climate Home News.
Risk of financial fallout may deter Argentina from leaving Paris Agreement
As COP30 reaches its midway point in the Brazilian city of Belém, Carbon Brief has hosted its second “ask us anything” webinar to exclusively answer questions submitted by holders of the Insider Pass.
The webinar kicked off with an overview of where the negotiations are on Day 8, plus what it was like to be among the 70,000-strong “people’s march” on Saturday.
At present, there are 44 agreed texts at COP30, with many negotiating streams remaining highly contested, as shown by Carbon Brief’s live text tracker.
Topics discussed during the webinar included the potential of a “cover text” at COP30, plus updates on negotiations such as the global goal on adaptation and the just-transition work programme.
Journalists also answered questions on the potential for a “fossil-fuel phaseout roadmap”, the impact of finance – including the Baku to Belém roadmap, which was released the week before COP30 – and Article 6.
The webinar was moderated by Carbon Brief’s director and editor, Leo Hickman, and featured six of our journalists – half of them on the ground in Belém – covering all elements of the summit:
- Dr Simon Evans – deputy editor and senior policy editor
- Daisy Dunne – associate editor
- Josh Gabbatiss – policy correspondent
- Orla Dwyer – food, land and nature reporter
- Aruna Chandrasekhar – land, food systems and nature journalist
- Molly Lempriere – policy section editor
A recording of the webinar (below) is now available to watch on YouTube.
Watch Carbon Brief’s first COP30 “ask us anything” webinar here.
The post COP30: Carbon Brief’s second ‘ask us anything’ webinar appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Mohamed Adow is the Founder and Director of Power Shift Africa
A sobering truth hangs over the COP30 climate talks in Belém: negotiators are discussing adaptation indicators with the enthusiasm of technocrats while quietly starving frontline communities of the resources they need to survive.
The UN’s latest adaptation gap report could not be clearer. Needs are skyrocketing. Finance is collapsing. And yet the global community continues to debate how to measure progress, rather than how to enable it. They act as if weighing a cow will make it fatter, rather than giving it any food.
This contradiction exposes the heart of the climate crisis: adaptation is not merely a technical challenge; it is a political and moral one. Every finance gap is a justice gap. Behind every unmet target are farmers who cannot plant, families who cannot rebuild, and communities forced into displacement because “resilience” was promised but never delivered.
Adaptation is the difference between dignity and despair. It determines whether societies can endure rising temperatures, intensifying floods, or prolonged droughts — or whether they are pushed beyond the limits of survival.
Yet, as negotiators haggle over the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) and its indicators, the foundations needed to achieve these goals are crumbling. How do we talk about climate-resilient development when the means to achieve it are drying up? How do we measure resilience while draining the very resources that make resilience possible?
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At COP30, countries must resist the impulse to rush through a weak indicator framework simply to claim progress. This would give us a system that measures activity, not impact. – that measures paperwork, not protection.
Africa is championing a fit for purpose GGA, but some have misunderstood and wrongly accused it of stalling the GGA process. But Africa is not delaying adaptation work. Africa is living adaptation every day. For us, adaptation is not a choice or a policy preference or an interesting side issue. It is an existential threat that is already reshaping livelihoods, economies, and ecosystems.
Africa needs this COP to get the GGA right. What we reject is an approach that turns adaptation into an exercise in reporting rather than a vehicle for survival.
A meaningful GGA must track whether finance actually reaches those who need it, whether technologies are shared equitably, and whether vulnerable countries are being supported to build early-warning systems, climate-resilient infrastructure, water security, and heat-resilient health systems. Without this backbone of finance and technology-sharing by the rich world, adaptation indicators become little more than an empty checklist.
And this is where COP30 stands at a crossroads. If rich countries succeed in pushing through a set of indicators that sideline finance, it will confirm that the world’s poorest are once again being asked to run a race with no shoes. No community can adapt without resources. No farmer can withstand worsening heatwaves without irrigation and drought-resistant seeds. No coastal town can protect its people without early-warning systems and resilient infrastructure. To pretend otherwise is not merely flawed policy; it is a profound injustice.
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Some will argue that indicators and finance should remain separate discussions. But this is a fiction. You cannot track progress on adaptation without the means to adapt. Adaptation is where political decisions determine whether people live safely or suffer needlessly.
The world is not short of evidence of this suffering, it is short of political courage. Extreme weather displaces more than 30 million people a year, with Africa bearing the brunt. While communities rebuild with scarce resources, developed countries continue to cut aid or repackage support as loans which shackles poor countries with eye-watering debt. This does not build resilience — it entrenches vulnerability.
The Global Goal on Adaptation will become a white elephant if it is not paired with predictable, grant-based finance. Indicators that pretend adaptation is happening without resourcing it will fail the people they claim to protect. COP30 is the moment to close the distance between science and solidarity: wealthy nations must scale up adaptation finance, share technologies, and support long-term resilience planning.
Until then, the world’s most vulnerable will continue carrying the heaviest burden with the lightest support — a defining injustice of our time.
The post Global Goal on Adaptation: Weighing the cow won’t make it fatter appeared first on Climate Home News.
Global Goal on Adaptation: Weighing the cow won’t make it fatter
Last Monday, to get the COP30 agenda agreed, Brazil promised to hold consultations on four controversial issues: emissions-cutting, transparency, trade and finance. Last night, after most delegates had spent their day off exploring the Amazon, the Presidency released a five-page document summarising what was said in those consultations.
Nothing in that “summary note” has been agreed by countries. But it collects together divergent views and forms the basis of what could become a politically agreed statement (known in the jargon as a cover decision) at the end of the COP. It has three key strands on boosting climate finance, strengthening emissions reductions and tackling trade measures linked to decarbonisation.
It includes the key rhetorical messages the COP30 presidency wants to include – that this is a “COP of Truth”, multilateralism is alive (despite President Trump’s efforts to thwart climate action) and the Paris Agreement is now moving from negotiation to implementation.
On emissions-cutting and the need to raise ambition – sorely lacking after the latest round of national climate plans (NDCs) – the note includes an option to hold an annual review and explore the “opportunities, barriers and enablers” to achieve the global efforts agreed at COP28 in Dubai to triple renewable energy and double energy efficiency by 2030; accelerate action to transition away from fossil fuels; and halt and reverse deforestation. This is essentially where any reference to a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels could be anchored.
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COP30 Bulletin Day 5: COP30 could greenlight work on a fossil fuel transition roadmap
At the climate talks in Belém, governments are considering whether to launch a process to craft a roadmap and how that might look -
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UN climate chief Simon Stiell tells governments “to give a little to get a lot”, as many thorny issues remain for ministers to resolve next week
The document also includes proposals to “urge” developed nations to include finance in their NDC climate plans and “encourage” all countries that have set a range of percentage emissions reductions in their NDCs – like the EU’s 66.25-72.5% – to move toward the upper end of the range.
On finance, options include a three-year work programme on provision of finance by wealthy governments and a goal to triple adaptation finance (something the least-developed countries are pushing for) or just repeating the finance goal agreed at COP29 and “noting” a new roadmap to achieve that (which rich nations very much prefer).
There are also various options for how to talk about where climate and trade overlap: an annual dialogue, roundtables, consultations, a new platform or just to keep discussing in the ‘response measures’ strand of climate talks.
Li Shuo, head of the Asia Society Policy Institute’s China Climate Hub, told Climate Home News it was highly significant that – after two years of the issue being buried in climate talks – trade has now been “anchored in the endgame of this COP”.
The various potential outcomes in the summary note could be included in existing agenda items or they could be lumped together into what is usually referred to as a cover text but the Brazilian government would likely prefer to call a “mutirão decision” or a delivery, response or global action plan.
Essentially, after governments ignored the presidency’s pleas not to add contentious items to the agenda, it looks like they could get at least some of what they want by turning those issues into the headline deal from COP30 .
At the start of the high-level segment of the conference on Monday morning, where environment ministers deliver their speeches, UN climate chief Simon Stiell urged governments “to get to the hardest issues fast”.
“When these issues get pushed deep into extra time, everybody loses. We absolutely cannot afford to waste time on tactical delays or stone-walling,” he added.
The presidency consultations on the issues in the note will continue on Monday, along with negotiations on adaptation metrics and a Just Transition Work Programme among others. The COP30 president then plans to convene a “Mutirao” meeting of ministers and heads of delegation on Tuesday “to bring together various outcomes”.
Korea joins coal phase-out coalition at COP30
As fossil fuels have grabbed headlines at COP30, major coal producer South Korea kicked off the second week of the Belém conference with an actual concrete pledge: the country will phase out most of its coal power by 2040.
Operating the seventh-largest coal fleet in the world, Korea announced on Monday that it will join the Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA), an initiative launched in 2017 by the UK and Canada to encourage countries to wean themselves off the planet’s largest source of emissions. Oil and gas exporter Bahrain is another new member.
Asian industrial giant Korea said that out of 62 operating coal power plants, it will commit to retiring 40 of them by 2040. The phase-out date of the remaining 22 plants “will be determined based on economic and environmental feasibility”.
Korean Minister of Environment Kim Sung-Hwan said at an event announcing the pledge that the country will play a “leading role” in the energy transition.
“South Korea is known as a manufacturing powerhouse. Unfortunately renewable energy has taken a low share in our power mix, but going forward we are determined to foster renewable energy industries,” he told journalists. “We will show the world that we can create a decarbonised energy transition.”
Asked about a fossil fuel transition roadmap – an idea floated around by many governments in Belém – Sung-Hwan said “humanity and all of the governments should work together to achieve a decarbonised green transition”, adding that “COP30 will be an important momentum”.
UK climate minister Katie White said Korea was taking an “ambitious step”, and that they can “reap the rewards that we are seeing from our own clean energy transition”.
Korea is a major importer of oil and gas. Domestically, it has historically relied on coal for electricity, but the country’s production of the fossil fuel has decreased steadily by 86% in the last 25 years, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Their nuclear fleet, on the other hand, has nearly doubled in the same time period.
The post COP30 Bulletin Day 7: Brazil outlines options for a possible deal in Belém appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP30 Bulletin Day 7: Brazil sets out options to reach a deal in Belém
COP30: Carbon Brief’s second ‘ask us anything’ webinar
COP30: Carbon Brief’s second ‘ask us anything’ webinar
Global Goal on Adaptation: Weighing the cow won’t make it fatter
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