The Brazilian presidency of COP30, this year's climate summit, called for new global climate governance mechanisms to help nations implement their commitments to curb global warming, according to a letter it released on Thursday.
The summit, to be hosted in the Amazonian city of Belem in November, marks the 10th anniversary of the Paris Accord, when signatories agreed to limit warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels.
Though nations have so far committed to plans that would limit warming to around 2.6 degrees Celsius, many are struggling to get their proposals off the drawing board and to lower carbon emissions enough to stop the planet from heating to catastrophic levels.
According to the letter by the COP30 presidency, "the international community should investigate how climate cooperation could become better equipped to accelerate" implementation.
The proposal was first introduced by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva last November, during the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro. At the time, Lula proposed creating a "United Nations climate change council" to help countries implement commitments they made to address climate change as part of the 2015 Paris Agreement.
"There's no point in negotiating new commitments if we don't have an effective mechanism to accelerate the implementation of the Paris Agreement," Lula said. "We need stronger climate governance."
The proposal has now been adopted by Brazilian ambassador Andre Correa do Lago, who will preside over COP30. Correa do Lago argued that, after decades of debates, the Climate Convention, known as the UNFCCC, has completed necessary negotiations but lacks implementation capacity.
"The UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement don't have the strength or mandate to take this forward, so we're proposing to reconsider how we can institutionally strengthen implementation," Lago told journalists on Wednesday.
The COP Presidency letter suggests that the United Nations General Assembly, not COP30 itself, should be the forum for this discussion.
"Debates at the U.N. General Assembly could explore innovative governance approaches to endow international cooperation with capabilities for rapid sharing of data, knowledge and intelligence, as well as for leveraging networks, aggregating efforts and articulating resources, processes, mechanisms and actors within and outside the U.N.," the letter states.
Sources in the Brazilian government told Reuters that while the creation of a U.N. Climate Council features in Lula's diplomatic discussions with world leaders, immediate results are not anticipated in the short term.
"It's still an initial convincing effort," one source said.
