The threat of a trade war and rising security tensions alongside the US withdrawal from the Paris climate accord will “drain” resources away from efforts to curb global warming, leading to “civilisation doom”, Brazil’s environment minister warned.
“It is clear that the withdrawal of the Paris agreement of the world’s second-largest emitter, the world’s largest economic and technological power, is a loss. We cannot be deniers — it is a loss,” Marina Silva said.
The confluence of the US withdrawal, new trade tariffs and the resurgence of geopolitical conflicts would have a “triple negative effect” on climate action.
“They may drain resources and they also may hamper the environment of confidence and trust among parties. We have a triple negative effect because the less action we see, the less money we see, resulting in less co-operation across countries,” she said.
This increased the responsibility of countries like Brazil, South Africa, India, China, the EU and the UK, said Silva, who was born in the Amazon. “We will all have to continue climate action.”
Brazil will host the UN COP 30, the world’s most important climate talks in November this year in the Amazon port of Belém.
Countries are now expected to submit updated climate plans for 2035 by the time of the Belém summit, after only a handful met the February deadline set under the Paris agreement, including the UK, Japan and Brazil.
On his first day in office US President Donald Trump pulled the US out of what he described as an “unfair, one-sided Paris climate accord rip-off”. The US also withdrew during his first term as president in 2017, a move reversed by Joe Biden in 2021.
Silva noted that the US also did not ratify the groundbreaking 1997 UN climate conference in Japan, the Kyoto protocol. However, she warned that while the situation may be “similar, it is a very different context, because in the Kyoto protocol the problems were still in the realm of projections, in most cases while now we are already living the reality of the Earth’s temperature changing by 1.5C compared to pre-industrial levels”.
Some scientists already calculate that the world will not meet the ideal Paris accord goal of limiting the global average temperature rise to no more than 1.5C from pre-industrial times. The UN has forecast the rise will reach 2.9C this century unless action is taken to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Silva said the almost 200 countries that were signatories would need to either “implement” their climate pledges or “will face an unthinkable, civilisational doom”.
She was speaking on the sidelines of the World Sustainable Development Summit in New Delhi, where India’s environment minister Bhupender Yadav reiterated the goal of the world’s third-largest polluter for net zero emissions by 2070.
India is among those countries that have not upgraded their targets, as required by the Paris agreement process.
Countries in the so-called global south, such as Brazil and India, face a daunting task in finding ways to plug what is estimated by economists to be a $1.3tn gap in climate change funding.
At the UN COP29 in Baku in November, almost 200 countries agreed that wealthy nations would take the lead in providing at least $300bn in climate finance by 2035 to help developing countries shift to green energy and cope with climate change. But Silva said that may now be in jeopardy.
“This is very serious, because we need $1.3tn to be able to make the necessary efforts for this transition. We are starting from $300bn, but even that is not guaranteed,” she said.
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