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The US withdrawal from the Paris local weather accord for a second time underneath President Donald Trump could have a “huge impact” on efforts to curb international warming, the incoming head of the UN COP30 local weather summit has warned.
André Corrêa do Lago, the skilled Brazilian diplomat and local weather negotiator appointed this week, advised the Monetary Instances that the exit of the US might additionally permit nations resembling China, India and Brazil to take an even bigger function on the earth’s most vital local weather talks.
Trump fulfilled a pledge on his first day in workplace to as soon as once more pull the US out of what he described as an “unfair, one-sided Paris climate accord rip-off”. The US was the primary nation to withdraw throughout his first time period as president in 2017, a transfer reversed by President Joe Biden in 2021.
Many scientists already say the world is approach off observe to satisfy the Paris accord targets of limiting the worldwide common temperature rise to effectively under 2C and ideally not more than 1.5C from pre-industrial occasions. The UN has predicted that the temperature rise will attain 2.9C this century.
Corrêa do Lago mentioned the US pivot “is going to make it much more difficult” to restrict international warming and would “have an immense impact on efforts to keep temperature rises below 1.5C”. Creating nations might step as much as fill the hole, nevertheless.
“The countries of the global south have made immense efforts in their own nations to contain climate change,” Corrêa do Lago mentioned. “Take the case of China. China is constantly bringing forward its objectives, for example, this year it will sell more electric cars than internal combustion ones.”
The FT reported this week that Argentina’s libertarian President Javier Milei, among the many few world leaders invited to Trump’s inauguration, was additionally weighing an exit from the Paris Settlement.
Corrêa do Lago mentioned Argentina, whereas free to make its personal selections, might jeopardise its participation within the newly agreed commerce deal between the EU and the Mercosur bloc of South American nations.
“You have to remember that to be able to benefit from the EU-Mercosur agreement, you have to be a member of the Paris Agreement”.
The 65-year-old veteran diplomat, who has served as ambassador to Japan and India in addition to Brazil’s lead local weather negotiator, additionally faces the duty of discovering methods to plug a trillion-dollar hole in local weather change funding forward of the COP30 to be held within the Amazon port of Belém in November.
“It’s very important that we think far outside traditional thinking on climate finance,” he mentioned, citing studies by former US Treasury secretary Larry Summers and Indian economist NK Singh on the function of multilateral banks and by a G20 group of specialists on “green growth”. “We have to make mainstream investment favour climate [finance].”
Brazil has one of many world’s greenest electrical energy grids, due to considerable hydropower, and has lowered Amazon deforestation sharply underneath the federal government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
However agriculture stays a big supply of its emissions, because the nation is without doubt one of the world’s greatest beef and soy producers.
Environmentalists have additionally criticised Brazil for enhancing oil manufacturing, with the purpose of changing into a prime international exporter by the tip of the last decade.
Corrêa do Lago mentioned Lula had been clear in regards to the want for a “fair transition” away from fossil fuels that might not enhance poverty or damage residing requirements in a nation the place many nonetheless reside under the breadline.
“One of the things we can do in the preparation for COP30 is to restore confidence that climate change can be fought in a rational way.”
Extra reporting by Attracta Mooney in London
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