Climate summits have an unavoidable list of goals, commitments and unfinished processes. In the run-up to a new conference to be held in Belém do Pará (Brazil) starting on November 10, it was the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, who recognized it. “We failed to avoid a temperature rise below 1.5°C in the coming years,” he said in an interview with Sumaúma, referring to the main goal of the Paris Agreement on climate change.
But the situation is not new. The history, since at least the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in the Scottish city of Glasgow, is one of non-compliance and scarce progress, both in Latin America and in the world, as evidenced by a review carried out by this medium.
An example is the famous “exit” of fossil fuels and the increase in generation from renewable energies, agreed within the framework of the World Balance carried out at COP28 in Dubai. For Claudio Angelo, from the Brazilian Climate Observatory, the problem lies in the lack of deadlines and forms of implementing measures around commitments such as the progressive abandonment of fossil fuels and the growth of renewable energy generation. “Nobody or almost no one said what they were going to do to get out of the NDC. Renewables are progressing without simultaneously abandoning fossils, we will have a scenario of addition, not a replacement. Brazil is not a good example, because generation was always renewable,” he analyzes from Brasilia.
NDCs are the nationally determined contributions, the set of voluntary mitigation policies that each country presents to comply with the Paris Agreement signed in 2015. And a common denominator, Angelo explains, is precisely the absence of the commitments obtained in the documents that should guide climate policies.
Although the World Balance, a process by which countries and other actors review their progress towards the objectives of reducing emissions and controlling global warming, together with other initiatives such as the Marrakesh Alliance for Global Climate Action, a platform that links governments, cities, companies and indigenous peoples in order to reduce emissions and strengthen resilience in the face of climate impacts—, they mark the route to complying with the Paris Agreement, this has been very bumpy.
The state of commitments for Belém
The northeastern city of Belém, in the Amazonian state of Pará, will be the home of COP30 between November 10 and 21, in search of new goals and of resuming - theoretically - the lost path towards controlling the climate catastrophe.
An analysis of the Carbon Brief shows that barely a third of the new NDCs mention the fossil fuel exit commitment agreed in the World Balance of COP28. Brazil, for example, mentions the commitment to dispose of fossils, but does not set specific goals or dates for doing so.
The NDCs are, precisely, the instruments where concrete measures should be explained to achieve the commitments made.
The Brazilian case — the country that presides over COP30 — joins that of the other big ones in the region, such as Mexico and Argentina. Although all three have increased electricity generation from renewable sources, it has been more of a complementarity than a replacement, since they continue to invest heavily in fossils.
Of the countries in the region, only Chile and Cuba mention and establish concrete and measurable goals for the release of fossils, as established by an analysis of think thank E3G. Colombia, the only fossil-producing country that subscribes to the voluntary Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, mentions the goal but does not establish concrete measures at the national level.
In its new NDC, Brazil is committed to increasing the participation of clean, renewable and low-carbon technologies and sources in the national matrix.
But despite renewable progress, Brazil's dependence on fossil fuels contradicts its climate policy. The country is among the 10 nations with the largest developed crude oil reserves and plans to increase its gas and oil production.
Crude oil production would total 5.3 million barrels per day (mb/d) in 2030 and would decrease to 4.4 Mb/d in 2034, an increase of 30% compared to 2023. Meanwhile, gas production would jump to 118% in 2031, compared to 2023.
At the same time, Petrobras, the state oil company, has already received an oil exploration permit at the mouth of the Amazon River.
In recent years, it has become customary for each COP to end with a final declaration, of a political nature and containing the main commitments undertaken. However, there are voices that bet that they no longer exist and that implementation mechanisms are applied to give real follow-up to the commitments expressed in previous years.
The POPs have also hosted a series of voluntary commitments by countries, agreed outside the mechanisms of the UNFCCC and, therefore, free from scrutiny within the international climate system.
According to a count from the Ambición COP website, since 2021, Latin America has made 444 voluntary commitments, with Brazil leading the way (45), followed by Chile and Colombia (43 each), Mexico (28) and Argentina (21).
At climate summits, such as the 30th in Baku (Azerbaijan), participating countries accepted and reaffirmed climate goals, some of them voluntary, with little progress. Credit: UNFCCC.
Common Defects
Mexico is experiencing a contradiction similar to that of Brazil. Although President Claudia Sheinbaum has pledged 12.3 billion dollars for renewable generation and 3.6 billion for decentralized photovoltaic production in homes, she maintains a policy of public support for the state Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) and Petrleos Mexicanos (Pemex).
The government has set a goal for Pemex to increase oil production from 1.5 mbd to 1.8 million by 2035, as well as gas production, from 3.8 billion cubic feet (p3) per day to 5 billion m3.
Between 2013 and 2024, the Mexican government provided Pemex with some 140 billion dollars in financial support, of which it allocated 105 billion after 2019, while then-president Andrés Manuel López Obrador slowed down the energy transition.
Sheinbaum, its successor, announced last August the construction of two solar thermal plants in the northwestern state of Baja California Sur, for the generation of more than 100 megawatts.
The Mexican matrix depends on fossils, since in energy production it represents 90% and in electricity production, almost 80%. Renewables provide 21% of the country's electricity generation.
The new Mexican electricity plan considers wind energy additions of 23.5% and solar photovoltaic additions of 44% by 2030. Of that account, the clean energy goal consists of 38.5% by 2030 and 43.7% by 2039.
However, these announcements fall short of Dubai's commitment.
“There are no modalities and application guidelines. We need a clearer interaction between ambition and application, we need to promote it and, based on it, raise ambition. The (Brazilian) presidency of the COP has the challenge of how to move from promise to action,” says Mariana Gutiérrez, manager of Diplomacy and Climate Transparency of the non-governmental Climate Initiative of Mexico, from Mexico City.
On the other hand, in Argentina, the transition has been reversed during the administration of the far-right Javier Milei since 2023, since more than half of electricity came from oil and gas in 2024, while renewables represented 13%.
For this year, Argentina made a commitment to a renewable contribution of 20%.
Unlike other Latin American countries and despite its fossil dependence, Colombia has ambitious transition goals, with the unknown of the progress they will achieve.
Three-quarters of the energy generated depends on oil, gas or coal and less than 5% on unconventional renewables. In electricity generation, hydroelectric plants play the leading role, with 58%, more than a third coming from fossils and the contribution of solar and wind energy is minimal.
The scenarios of Colombia's National Energy Plan 2022 2052 project long-term reductions in fossil fuel production. The Roadmap for a Just Energy Transition reiterates the government's intention to phase out fossil production.
For that purpose, Colombia announced 14.5 billion dollars for the energy transition, including the move away from fossil production.
Solar panels at a restaurant in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. The energy transition to cleaner forms is proceeding slowly in Mexico, due to the lack of promotion policies and insufficient funding. Photo: Emilio Godoy.
In a forest
Other commitments have met the same fate. For instance, deforestation, a voluntary goal adopted at COP26 and repeated at the Dubai summit.
The 2021 Glasgow Leaders' Declaration on Forests and Land Use, which was supported by some 150 countries, is about curbing and reversing forest loss and land degradation by 2030.
The following year, the approach changed to the Alliance of Forest and Climate Leaders at the Sharm el-Sheikh summit (Egypt) and the final declaration of Dubai reflected the objectives of the Glasgow announcement.
But as the recent report “Evaluation of the 2025 Forest Declaration” shows, the compass towards the goal of zero deforestation by 2030 is lost.
By far, Brazil is leading the problem in the region, with a level of 1.89 million hectares in 2024, although the trend has been decreasing since 2021, after the environmental disaster pushed by the administration of the extreme right Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2023).
For Angelo, from the Climate Observatory, the forestry issue is less complicated, but “even the criteria and deadlines, especially funding, are something that needs to be defined” and highlights “the need” for a road map for the release of fossils and zero deforestation, but he questions that “they are not even on the formal agenda”.
It is followed by Colombia, with a level of 200,000 hectares in 2023, more than the previous year. Meanwhile, Mexico has been showing an upward trend since 2020, with 180,000 hectares felling in 2023. In that same year, Argentina lost 130,000 hectares of forest, a downward trend since 2021.
For Mexico's Gutiérrez, COP30 “should be the right time to evaluate progress, correct the course and accelerate the implementation of global commitments.”
A gaseous affair
One of the few climate developments in Mexico City is electric transport, in which the city government has introduced electrical units and three cable bus or cable car lines. Photo: Emilio Godoy.
The fight against methane emissions, especially from the hydrocarbon industry, has also met the same fate as other commitments, voluntary or not.
Since the launch of the Global Methane Commitment at COP28 in Glasgow, agreed by some 150 countries and which seeks to reduce emissions by 30%, below 2020 levels, by 2030, several initiatives have emerged to support that commitment, but still without concrete results, so the goal remains far away.
In 2024, Brazil emitted 21 thousand 882 kilotons of methane, of which 1,889 came from energy production, to rank fourth in the world. A kiloton equals 1 billion tons.
Its NDC briefly mentions the reduction of oil and gas emissions.
Meanwhile, Chile generated 16,384 kilotons in 2022, of which 14% originated in the energy sector. The goal of its NDC is the reversal of growth in 2025.
Argentina, for its part, released 5,430 kilotons into the atmosphere, of which almost a third came from the energy sector, behind the agricultural sector.
Mexico is the tenth polluter in the world, spitting 6,449 kilotons, of which 1,989 came from the exploitation of hydrocarbons.
One of its biggest problems is the burning and venting of gas in hydrocarbon installations, to the point that it reached 5,724 million cubic meters in 2024, with a growth of 4% compared to the previous year, to rank among the nine countries with such practices.
In the region, Colombia is one of the lowest emitters, with 3,641 kilotons, 814 originating from hydrocarbons.
Brazil, Colombia and Mexico support the World Bank's goal of zero gas burning by 2030, but not Argentina.
The United Nations Environment Program has already warned of the seriousness of the problem in a recent report, noting that companies and governments in the world only responded to 12% of the 3,500 alerts for methane leaks that the world body launched in 2024 and that global goals for reducing these emissions are therefore far away.
This report was produced within the framework of Climate Tracker Latin America's COP30 coverage program, with support from Oxfam.
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