ECO 2, SB62
Brazil: Fossil fuels 7 x 1 Mutirão
Few events in Brazil’s recent memory are as traumatic as the 2014 World Cup match, in which Germany beat Brazil by 7 to 1 and eliminated the host country. Today, as climate negotiators start their second day of talks in Bonn, Brazil sets itself up for a different, but no less bitter, loss: its oil sector regulator, ANP, is holding a “doomsday auction” of 172 oil and gas blocks, including 47 in the ecologically fragile Mouth of the Amazon basin.
The same country that has the enormous task of rallying the rest of the world in a “mutirão” to submit 1.5°C-aligned NDCs and achieve the highest level of ambition in Belém, is now contradicting science by aspiring to become the world’s fourth-largest oil producer.
President Lula claims that oil revenue will bring economic development and fund the energy transition. This is counter-intuitive. And Brazilians have no reason to believe him – there has been little development to speak of even after 15 years of relentless exploration of the huge oil deposits. Only 0.06% of fossil fuel revenues in the past seven years has gone to energy transition-related projects.
The burning of oil and gas from the offered blocks could emit more than 11 billion tons of CO₂-equivalent, which is 5% of all the carbon space available to humanity to limit global warming to 1.5°C. Oil extracted from the Mouth of the Amazon basin alone would add 4.7 billion tons of CO₂-equivalent emissions to the atmosphere – this is equal to two years of Brazil’s gross emissions.
Today, ECO stands in solidarity with the strong mobilizations taking place in Brazil. Our message to the Brazilian government: climate leadership is not made of oil or smoke. It is time to stop this madness and to finally listen to Indigenous Peoples, Traditional Communities, and People of African Descent, whose survival is at stake because of the plans for oil exploration along the Amazon coast.
President Lula must understand that his leadership and legacy are at stake. The outcome from Belém must advance a just energy transition, one that finally kick-starts the implementation of the Global Stocktake’s promise to transition away from fossil fuels. By massively expanding oil and gas, Brazil joins the gang of planet-wrecking developed countries like Canada, Norway, Australia, and the United States, which are expanding their production. Corporate profit and government revenues should never outweigh life on Earth. Our future is not for sale. And we won’t keep silent. This is a new crushing loss for Brazil. But this time it is all with own goals.
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No agreement in Plenary. Are you really surprised?
Day two of Bonn dawns…with no agenda agreed. Yet, after the debacle in Baku, anyone surprised that the sticky question of who pays would come back to bite, has their head in the sand indeed!
The question of Article 9.1 and how Global North countries shall provide the financial resources that are owed to the Global South is a substantive issue and deserves due attention. We urge parties to agree on the agenda as soon as possible – and with attention to justice and the obligations of the Paris Agreement – so that we can get to the urgent and essential work of Bonn.
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Rooted in Rights – Tending the Garden of Climate-Just Agriculture
Walking around early-summer Bonn and entering the circular Chamber hall, ECO was reminded of a sustainable permaculture garden. How lucky we are that this is where the first workshop of the Sharm El Sheikh Joint Work on Agriculture and Food Security takes place today! Let us hope negotiators are inspired by these surroundings in their own gardening endeavours, which encompass no less than a future where agriculture and food systems contribute to tackling the climate crisis.
After all, the UNFCCC Secretariat has prepared a diverse programme for the workshop, including civil society speakers and even the chair of the Rome-based Committee on World Food Security – the most inclusive governance body dealing with food and nutrition security. These expert inputs should prepare agriculture negotiators to cultivate good, holistic ideas of mitigation and adaptation that respect the rights of Indigenous Peoples, local communities and marginal and small-holder farmers, as well as uphold the right to adequate food for all. ECO has some ideas to make this garden really stand out: how about prioritising those gender-transformative approaches and agroecological techniques that restore soil health and recycle nutrients? How about considering the entire food system, from production to consumption, and including food loss and waste?
As a seasoned gardener, ECO can see that some pruning will still be required in the Sharm el Sheikh Joint Work garden: negotiators should learn to identify all species of dangerous distractions and greenwashing attempts by Big Ag. This includes vague concepts such as climate-smart and regenerative agriculture, which allow companies to continue their exploitative and polluting business-as-usual. These should be weeded out – without using synthetic pesticides, of course. Once this gardening work is completed, negotiators will hopefully be left with a sustainable, diverse, and nutritious garden based on agroecological principles and open for all to benefit from.
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Dear EU, where is your 1.5°C aligned NDC? A checklist for delegate conversations
The European Union, host region of the UNFCCC talks in Bonn, is overdue to submit its next Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC). A decade after the landmark Paris Agreement was reached, French government leaders are eager to mark the anniversary, yet fail to back a strong and ambitious EU NDC. What happened to the famous #MakeOurPlanetGreatAgain?
Expectations are high for the EU to submit a truly ambitious NDC which sets ambitious, credible targets for 2035 and reflects its role as one of the world’s largest historic emitters and most powerful economic blocs. Key countries such as China or India are closely watching, and so is the whole world. A weak EU NDC will put a core element of the Paris Agreement architecture in jeopardy.
Already in February 2024, the European Commission proposed to cut 90% of its emissions by 2040 compared to 1990 levels, to serve as the basis for the 2035 target. However, this falls short of what the EU’s scientific advisory board recommended. Rather than trying to push for the greatest possible ambition, ECO hears that member states and some European parliamentarians are now lobbying to further weaken the proposal through inclusion of international credits, instead of a fully domestic target, and other “flexibilities” (read: loopholes).
ECO urges delegates from all over the world to use Bonn as a critical and timely opportunity to remind the European Union, its member states (especially France), and Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra of the high expectations towards the EU’s NDC
So dear friends, here is ECO’s check list of three absolute priority asks with which to badger your favorite EU delegates:
✅ The EU would be well advised to adopt a credible target in line with science, of 90-95 % reductions or preferably net zero by 2040, and this should be domestic without reliance on international credits. This would translate into a 2035 domestic NDC target of at least 82 % gross (94 % net) emission reductions.
✅ For reasons of transparency, the EU should include a target system in its NDC which distinguishes a) gross emission reductions (which should be the absolute priority), b) net carbon dioxide sequestration in the land use (LULUCF) sector, and c) permanent industrial carbon dioxide removals.
✅ In response to COP28 Global Stocktake, the world is also anticipating specific dates for when the EU will phase out fossil fuels. ECO suggests: 2030 for coal, 2035 for fossil gas, and 2040 for oil.
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Learn the Lessons of Developed Countries for the first SES Dialogue!
The first Sharm El Sheikh (SES) dialogue workshop takes place today and focuses on developing national financial sectors and supporting the implementation of the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance (NCQG). ECO first wants to remind Parties that the SES dialogue is not the place for attempts to substitute the prime obligation of developed countries to provide support to developing countries to make up for the shortcomings of the NCQG. But other than that, we have one recommendation: learn from the experience of the Global North, you might be surprised!
If you think that a well-developed financial sector is enough to save the planet, think again. It is valuable to reflect on how to shift financial flows, huge proportions of which flow through financial centres like the one next door in Frankfurt, or London, or New York. However, the belief that financial markets will align capital with climate objectives if they are just given the right incentives does not hold true. If it did, countries of the Global North would have already fixed the climate crisis through their disproportionate weight in international financial markets and energy needs. Instead, fossil fuels and industrial agriculture continue to attract vast investment due to political inertia and corporate lobbying pressures.
Current approaches are not delivering.
The EU has, for example, a fairly innovative sustainable finance strategy and set of regulations adopted since 2019, including an “environmentally sustainable” taxonomy and “do no significant harm” criteria, human rights and environmental due diligence, and reporting directives — the expectation that markets will act in public interest is unrealistic. These measures rest on the hope that providing information and price signals will drive capital away from harmful investments. Early results, though, are discouraging. Less than 10% of EU investment funds, most of which lack taxonomy-aligned assets, have verifiable sustainable investment objectives. Banks also fall short: 96% of EU banks are unable to fully identify climate-related financial risks, according to ECB data. This naïve approach is not working within the EU or any other developed economy, where more discipline and regulation are needed to align financial flows with the Paris Agreement. Ironically, the EU is seeking to “simplify” most of these regulations now as they proved “burdensome” for EU financial actors and companies.
ECO’s takeaway: Capital is more interested in profits than the planet. Policy makers, on the other hand, must be more interested in the planet. We therefore recommend that the debate in the SES dialogue be recentred on a core set of principles reflecting a “whole of Art. 2” approach within the context of transformation towards a just international financial system. Public and private finance must be redirected away from fossil fuels and harmful activities, and toward rights-based, inclusive models that prioritize the needs of marginalised communities through strong regulations that respond to the urgency of the climate crisis.
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Download the ECO issue here: https://climatenetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/ECO-17-June-2025.pdf