India, Brazil could play a key role in shaping climate talks: COP30 President-Designate

President-Designate Andre Lago emphasizes developing countries' role in climate change action post-U.S. Paris Agreement exit.

With deepening divisions among countries over trade, the exit of the United States from the Paris Agreement, and multiplying disasters from global warming, the President-Designate of the forthcoming climate talks in Belem, Brazil, Andre Lago, a former Ambassador of Brazil to India, said that this was a time that developing countries, including India and Brazil, could play a greater role in shaping the conversation around addressing climate change.

He stressed, however, that the U.S.’s exit did not imply that Americans as a whole had abandoned the challenge of addressing warming.

“Negotiations involve countries but cities, for example, are where programmes are implemented. There are 22 Governors in the United States that are still committed to the Paris Agreement, and two-thirds of the U.S. economy, a recent report says, is on track. We do not want to anticipate the outcome of COP30 but we will take several steps on the way to achieve progress in finance and other critical areas,” Mr. Lago at a press conference here on Thursday (March 20, 2025).

He stressed that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change — the umbrella agreement that fleshed international action on climate change — ought not to be the only avenue to direct climate action. Institutions, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which are outside the United Nations framework, had to be involved in making climate change “more mainstream”. This, he said, required integrating it more closely into people’s every day lives in the same way as “social” (human) rights were central to people. “Historically, there were people who believed that mitigating [curbing emissions] was more important than adapting [to the consequences] of warming,” Mr. Lago said.

“The challenge always has been that it is more difficult to get money for adaptation than mitigation because it was seen to benefit the developing countries, India and Brazil, for example, as well as the donor country. In adaption, the benefit for the donor country wasn’t so clear. However, now adaptation is being framed as a way that can influence migration. It seems more tangible and seen as solving a real problem. Mitigation looks hazy. So adaption and mitigation are moving closer to one another and the closer they are, the more resources can flow for both,” Mr. Lago said.

At the conclusion of the COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 2024, developed countries only committed to an annual $300 billion by 2035 instead of the $1.3 trillion that was deemed necessary to address the impacts from warming. “Now there is the third damage of Loss and Damage, which is for countries whose development is compromised due to climate change. We have to expand the idea of how to finance,” Mr. Lago said.