The 30th session of the Conference of the Parties begins in Belém with the challenge of renewing the global cooperation that characterized Rio 92

The timing of the 30th session of the Conference of the Parties – both meteorologically and chronologically – is very different from the cold, sunny days of the Rio winter that hosted the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, known as Rio 92 or the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June 1992. The sunset on the closing Sunday of Rio 92 was golden and seemed to reflect the glow of widespread hope, as Remember Ambassador Rubens Ricupero, who led the negotiations to finance the conference and is one of the most knowledgeable about international climate policy.

It was a sunny Sunday in Rio with blue sea beaches and parks filled with people from all over the planet. Representatives from Lapland (Finland) to the Amazon, and from the island states of Oceania to the African savannas and forests. One commonality is the hope of making a better world.

The Global Forum, which brought together civil society, received more than 120 thousand people in those days, including the public and participants (more than 30 years ago). It was attended by celebrities of the time, such as Pele, the Dalai Lama, Al Gore, Sting, Jane Fonda, Roger Moore and Shirley MacLaine.

However, Rio 92 took place in an optimistic world, with old tensions waning and anxiety about the future increasing. The Berlin Wall fell just over two years ago, and the Soviet Union disintegrated. Climate projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), established in 1988, indicated bleak prospects for the 21st century. It is about ensuring a better world for future generations.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) is taking place at a time when the Earth’s climate and global politics are changing – for the worse. Scenes like the one in which US President George Bush appeared in the same plenary session with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro are now unimaginable.

Today’s climate is darker and not conducive to reaching agreements. The realistic expectation for COP30 is to keep the process moving forward, despite US interest and the shift of European concerns to wars and many other issues – highlights Ricupero.

COP30 is the daughter of Rio92. But this is happening while the optimism of his predecessors seems merely a memory of a time of naiveté, says ecologist Fabio Feldman, another COP expert and author of the environmental chapter in the Brazilian constitution.

Human-related greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting climate changes have progressed faster than negotiations to contain them. 33 years ago, the goal was to prevent climate change. After three decades of much discussion and little work, they changed the tense of the verb – it was the future; already exists.

What was expected for the end of this century was achieved in its first decades through disasters of drought, extreme heat, cold waves, hurricanes, and devastating rains. Reducing and mitigating emissions remains essential, but adaptation has become a matter of survival.

The future generation, children of the time of Rio 92, have become adults on a planet even less hospitable than expected in the last century.

-We are immersed in extremism. Climate catastrophes, superpolarization, and climate denial are all linked to economic interests. But with COP 30 taking place in Brazil, our expectations are higher than many countries. However, Brazil has very good diplomacy and can make a difference in continuing fundamental discussions to decarbonize the planet – emphasizes Feldman.

Ricupero confirms that Rio92 was the most successful conference in history. However, he points out that the model needs to change:

We have made some progress later, such as the 2015 Paris Agreement, but the model needs to be renewed. Today I’m skeptical about COP. If they settle it, we won’t be thirty. Money will no longer come from countries, but from multilateral and market sources. Today, waiting for countries to make significant contributions is no longer possible.

Three decades later, Rio 92 remains the largest meeting of world leaders in the history of the United Nations, representing 179 countries. He attended the climate summit last Thursday and Friday the 29th.

From the Rio 92 conference came the conventions on climate change (the most important, as 198 countries have signed them, almost all countries), biodiversity and combating desertification; Agenda 21 and Declaration of Principles on Forests. Rio 92 marked not only the culmination of multilateralism, but also a new era for civil society engagement.

Rio92 was the result of five years of negotiations. But there is consensus that the great innovation has been civil society engagement, highlights Maria Neto, executive director of the Climate and Society Institute. From here, the concepts of sustainability and climate change spread.

The Paris Agreement, agreed at COP 21, has contributed to slowing the trend of global warming. According to the World Weather Attribution Analysis (WWA), if the Paris Agreement had not been adopted, the global warming scenario would have been more severe. In 2015, before the agreement, the global average temperature was expected to rise by about 4 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels over the course of this century. With current commitments under the agreement, the world will now be on track for a temperature rise of 2.6 degrees Celsius. It remains dangerous and expensive, but it is not catastrophic.

Rio 92 was a watershed moment, when environmentalism was no longer seen as anti-economic. Concern about climate change linked to human action has reached public opinion, says Karen Oliveira, director of public policy at the Nature Conservancy in Brazil and a member of the Brazil Climate, Forestry and Agriculture Alliance.

On the eve of the start of COP30, the number of NDCs submitted by signatory countries of the Paris Agreement reached 106. Thus, the update of emission reduction targets reached just over half of the 195 signatories of the Paris Agreement.

The 30th session of the COP was born in Belém without the Parents’ Conference having access to it. Its mission is to work as hard as possible and not allow the climate negotiation process to get bogged down in a global moment more turbulent than the waters of the Guama River, which is flooding Belem.

Maria Neto says that Brazil is once again, as it did in Rio 92, taking the initiative to promote the importance of multilateralism:

– The worlds of Rio 92 and COP 30 are very different. But on Belém’s agenda there are opportunities, such as encouraging restoration and combating deterioration. In this sense, the Rio 92 agreements begin to converge.

There are those who see reasons for optimism not in the official negotiations, but in those taking place in parallel.

– This is the right moment to pass the baton to the business sector. Giving greater importance to the sector that generates impact, but also suffers from it. This participation was almost non-existent in Rio 92, but it has matured a lot. The Rio 92 conference was marked by unprecedented participation from civil society. In this case we will see the same thing happening with the business community. I’m very optimistic in that sense. I see unprecedented participation in Brazil in the business world – highlights Roberto Wack, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Instituto Arapão and co-founder of Concertação para a Amazonia.