As 2024 is declared the warmest year on record and atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has reached its highest level in almost a million years Brazil’s incoming COP30 presidency is shifting from vision to mobilisation.
In a second official letter, COP30 president-designate André Corrêa do Lago unveiled plans for a sweeping, bottom-up campaign of climate action ahead of the UN Climate Conference in Belém, in Brazil’s Amazon region, this November.
“Signs of human-induced climate change reached new heights since the issuance of my first letter to the international community in March,” he wrote.
“The World Meteorological Organisation’s (WMO) State of the Global Climate report confirmed 2024 as the warmest year on record, and the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has reached its highest level in the past 800,000 years. We see clear signals of planetary distress, including ocean heat, sea-ice extents, glacier mass, and sea level rise.”
At the heart of Brazil’s plan is the “Global Mutirão” — a worldwide mobilisation modelled on grassroots, self-organised community action.
Unlike traditional top-down processes, the Mutirão encourages individuals, communities, businesses and governments to present “self-determined contributions” to climate action, “in using their expertise, time, or resources to sustainably address climate challenges, by means of interventions and positive impacts at all levels.”
This is in addition to the nationally determined contributions (NDCs), which are the climate targets that every signatory to the Paris Agreement is required to set and pursue.
“Self-determined contributions” are not pledges for the future, but immediate, tangible projects already under way or poised to launch, Corrêa do Lago wrote.
Examples could include regenerative agriculture by local farmers, youth-led projects installing solar panels in underserved areas, or restoration brigades. According to the letter, these actions must be “collective, immediate and self-driven contributions to a sustainable future.”
The World Meteorological Organisation’s State of the Global Climate report confirmed 2024 as the warmest year on record, and the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has reached its highest level in the last 800,000 years. We see clear signals of planetary distress, including ocean heat, sea-ice extents, glacier mass, and sea level rise.
— COP30 President-Designate André Corrêa do Lago
The presidency stresses that the Global Mutirão will not replace formal negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Rather, it aims to reinforce multilateralism by connecting global ambition with local realities, bridging the gap between policy and people’s lived experience.
“This must be the time when nations and generations come together, combining the wisdom, patience and maturity of the more experienced with the youth’s enthusiasm, idealism and resourcefulness,” Corrêa do Lago said.
Looking ahead to COP30 and beyond, the presidency calls for “upgraded institutions and poly-governance approaches” to meet climate complexity head-on. Emphasising the need to “be the change,” the letter envisions a moment where collective action triggers a “chain of action”.
COP30 marks big milestones: 20 years since the Kyoto Protocol came into force and 10 years since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, of which SA is also a signatory.
COP30 also comes at a time of geopolitical shifts in climate finance.
The US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement under President Donald Trump has major implications for global climate funding, particularly for developing nations.
At COP29, developed nations committed to providing $300bn annually for developing countries by 2035 — far short of the $1.3-trillion that developing nations, including SA, had pushed for.
However, COP29 also introduced the Baku to Belém Roadmap — an initiative aimed at scaling global climate finance to $1.3-trillion annually by 2035 through innovative funding mechanisms. At the time, the details of these mechanisms remained unclear.
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