All countries can start breaking their dependence on fossil fuels now without needing to wait for new technologies or economic changes, the Brazilian government said on the eve of a global climate summit.
Brazil, host of last year’s U.N. climate conference, on Tuesday presented the world’s first “road map” for phasing out fossil fuels, showing countries could boost their economies and lift their populations out of poverty while breaking the link with coal, oil and gas.
But Joeri Rogelj, professor of climate science and policy at Imperial College London, said that while Brazil’s roadmaps represented a step forward, they were limited. “Roadmaps are valuable, but they fail to clearly indicate the pace of change needed because they lack timelines and key benchmarks,” he said.
“Because of this omission, they still leave much to be imagined about what is needed to achieve the ultimate goal of the Paris Agreement: limiting global warming to well below 2°C, and preferably to 1.5°C, to avoid dangerous climate damage.”
André Corrêa do Lago, Brazil’s president of the Cop30 summit, said the roadmaps aimed to help move the annual UN Cop away from its previous goal of negotiating global deals to tackle the climate crisis and implement goals that had already been agreed. Cop31 takes place this month in Antalya, Türkiye.
“These are implementation documents,” Corrêa do Lago told the Guardian in an interview. “There’s a different group of people who negotiate and who implement. The problem we’ve had in many Cops is thinking that the same people who negotiate might also have to coordinate implementation – that’s not the case.”
He said the roadmaps should be taken up by the ministries of Finance, Transport, Energy and Infrastructure to work on how they could be implemented in each country.
Brazil hosted the Cop30 summit last November in the coastal Amazon rainforest town of Belém, where a bitter row erupted over whether the final set of resolutions should include commitments on fossil fuels. As a compromise, the presidency agreed to develop two roadmaps, one on “moving away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a fair, orderly and equitable manner” and the other on halting and reversing deforestation.
These roadmaps are distinct from similarly named plans from governments that met after Cop30 at a conference in Santa Marta, Colombia, in April to discuss the transition away from fossil fuels. At this conference, nearly 60 countries formed a new “coalition of the willing”, separate from the Cops, to establish their own national roadmaps aimed at phasing out fossil fuels. Several countries have since developed national plans, including Germany, France and the Netherlands.
The roadmaps produced by governments under the Santa Marta initiative are much more specific and prescriptive than those in Brazil, as each is written by the national government responsible for implementing the recommended policies.
The Brazilian roadmaps only present possible steps. They are not binding, they contain no deadlines or steps for actions, and they leave it to countries themselves to “diagnose” their degree of dependence on fossil fuels and select measures to reduce it.
“Each country will have a different pace (to move away from fossil fuels) – it is very important to focus on diagnostics of the countries’ situation,” Corrêa do Lago said. “From these diagnoses, they can choose their (policy) levers and implement the transition.”
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Among the measures suggested by Brazil are that oil and gas producers urgently reduce flaring and venting of gas from extraction sites. Methane is a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide, so this would have an immediate impact. Other measures include countries reducing subsidies for the use or production of fossil fuels and expanding renewable energy production.
The deforestation roadmap highlights the large sums expected to be needed to help poor countries with heavily forested areas like the Amazon, the Congo rainforests and the rainforests of Southeast Asia, threatened by fires and palm oil exploitation.
According to the road map, citing UN figures, about $300 billion a year will likely be needed for forests by 2030, and $500 billion a year by 2050. The amounts currently available are much lower than about $85 billion a year.
At Cop30 last year, Brazil established the Tropical Forest Forever Facility, a fund aimed at preserving forests, which raised around $7 billion from various countries, including a £400 million loan from the United Kingdom.
The road map against deforestation also highlights the importance of regulating trade between forest countries and consumer countries. Currently, there are few trade controls to prevent unscrupulous companies from selling goods from deforested areas.
In some cases, deforestation appears to be tolerated or encouraged by local or even national governments. Indonesia is being sued by civil society groups for “gross negligence” following unprecedented fires in recent months that destroyed swaths of forest and destroyed wildlife habitats, most likely replaced by palm oil plantations.
Brazil was able to publish its roadmaps after its president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, won a fourth electoral term just over a week ago. Over the past four years under Lula, deforestation rates have fallen by around 70%. His defeated opponent Flávio Bolsonaro, son of imprisoned ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, was expected to return to his father’s policy of rampant Amazon rainforest exploitation.
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