G20 environment ministers meet in Rio – 10/02/2024 – Environment

The ministerial meeting of the G20 Environmental and Climate Sustainability group takes place this Thursday (3), in Rio de Janeiro. The authorities will meet at the Museum of Tomorrow to prepare a document with guidelines to be sent to the heads of state and government, at the Presidency Summit, in November.

The event takes place in the midst of the fire crisis, which has spread across the country and reached extremely high levels. From January to September, more than 210,000 fires were recorded across the national territory, almost double the number detected in the same period in 2023 (111,000 fires).

The Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Marina Silva, is in the capital of Rio de Janeiro and has been participating in other events throughout the week. She will speak at the opening of the meeting, this Thursday morning, and the agreement should be announced later in the afternoon.

Ministers and vice-ministers from the environmental portfolio of 17 countries, including members of the bloc and invited nations, confirmed their presence, as well as representatives of three international organizations, linked to the UN (United Nations).

The ministerial meeting is preceded by discussions by a G20 technical body, which has been working on the text of the final document throughout the year.

The working group has four thematic axes, defined as priorities by the Brazilian presidency of the bloc: adaptation to extreme climate events; payment for environmental services; oceans; and waste and circular economy.

On the climate adaptation agenda, discussions have revolved around the need to increase financing, especially for more vulnerable nations, according to one of the members of the working group. The current Brazilian situation, with records of fires and after devastating floods that hit Rio Grande do Sul, has been used by the country to highlight the urgency of measures to reduce these impacts.

Not only in the G20, but also in other global forums that deal with this issue, adaptation tends to be one of the most challenging fronts. In addition to being urgent, measures such as adapting infrastructure to climate change are expensive.

Extreme climate phenomena also disproportionately impact developing countries — which, in general, have few resources and emit far fewer greenhouse gases than rich countries.

As a result, debates tend to stall when it comes time to define the amount needed and, mainly, who will pay the bill and who will be able to receive the resources.

The development of mechanisms for payment for ecosystem services (benefits provided by nature that are used by society, such as pollination and climate regulation) resonates with a proposal launched by Brazil last year.

The Lula government intends to launch a global fund for forest conservation by COP30, the 2025 UN climate summit, which will take place in Belém. The idea is to mobilize resources to pay emerging countries for initiatives that protect their tropical forests.

Finally, the agendas of ocean preservation and waste management converge with two important multilateral forums that will be held in the coming months: COP16, the United Nations biodiversity summit in October in Colombia, and the final meetings to define the global treaty against plastic pollution, at the end of November, in South Korea.

“The expectation is that the G20 leaders, represented by the Ministers of Environment and Climate, will be able to reaffirm their commitment to ambitious goals to face the environmental and climate emergency”, says André Aquino, technical coordinator of the G20 by the Ministry of the Environment .

For Maria Netto, executive director of the Climate and Society Institute, the expectation is that the ministerial document will bring more defined principles on financing climate adaptation.

“Adaptation is an important part for civil society and for the most vulnerable countries,” he says. “Payment for environmental services is also an important mechanism. If we can have an agreement in principle [sobre esse tema]it will be very interesting to be able to unlock this mechanism.”

Other topics that are important to the environmental and climate agenda, such as the energy transition and sustainable financing, are worked on in more depth in groups specifically dedicated to them. There is also a task force focused on combating climate change.