Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free
Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world
The US withdrawal from the Paris climate accord for a second time under President Donald Trump will have a “huge impact” on efforts to curb global warming, the incoming head of the UN COP30 climate summit has warned.
André Corrêa do Lago, the experienced Brazilian diplomat and climate negotiator appointed this week, told the Financial Times that the exit of the US could also allow nations such as China, India and Brazil to take a bigger role in the world’s most important climate talks.
Trump fulfilled a pledge on his first day in office to once again pull the US out of what he described as an “unfair, one-sided Paris climate accord rip-off”. The US was the first country to withdraw during his first term as president in 2017, a move reversed by President Joe Biden in 2021.
Many scientists already say the world is way off track to meet the Paris accord goals of limiting the global average temperature rise to well below 2C and preferably no more than 1.5C from pre-industrial times. The UN has predicted that the temperature rise will reach 2.9C this century.
Corrêa do Lago said the US pivot “is going to make it much more difficult” to limit global warming and would “have an immense impact on efforts to keep temperature rises below 1.5C”. Developing nations could step up to fill the gap, however.
“The countries of the global south have made immense efforts in their own nations to contain climate change,” Corrêa do Lago said. “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 few world leaders invited to Trump’s inauguration, was also weighing an exit from the Paris Agreement.
Corrêa do Lago said Argentina, while free to make its own decisions, could jeopardise its participation in the newly agreed trade 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 as well as Brazil’s lead climate negotiator, also faces the task of finding ways to plug a trillion-dollar gap in climate change funding ahead of the COP30 to be held in the Amazon port of Belém in November.
“It’s very important that we think far outside traditional thinking on climate finance,” he said, citing reports by former US Treasury secretary Larry Summers and Indian economist NK Singh on the role of multilateral banks and by a G20 group of experts on “green growth”. “We have to make mainstream investment favour climate [finance].”
Brazil has one of the world’s greenest electricity grids, thanks to abundant hydropower, and has reduced Amazon deforestation sharply under the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
But agriculture remains a large source of its emissions, as the country is one of the world’s biggest beef and soy producers.
Environmentalists have also criticised Brazil for boosting oil production, with the aim of becoming a top global exporter by the end of the decade.
Corrêa do Lago said Lula had been clear about the need for a “fair transition” away from fossil fuels that would not increase poverty or hurt living standards in a nation where many still live below 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.”
Additional reporting by Attracta Mooney in London
Climate Capital
Where climate change meets business, markets and politics. Explore the FT’s coverage here.
Are you curious about the FT’s environmental sustainability commitments? Find out more about our science-based targets here