PRE-COP30
Marina Silva, Minister of the Environment and Climate Change of Brazil, delivered a speech at the preparatory meeting for COP30, held from October 13 to 14, 2025
Good morning to all.
I would like to extend my greetings to:
Ambassador André Corrêa do Lago, COP30 President-Designate;
Ambassador Maurício Lyrio, Secretary for Climate, Energy and Environment at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil;
Ana Toni, COP30 CEO; and
All ministers, vice-ministers, ambassadors, colleagues and partners joining us today.
We begin this second day of the Pre-COP with a fundamental discussion: how to implement paragraph 28 of the Global Stocktake
(GST).
In this regard, the debate necessarily involves reflecting on how to promote, in a just and planned way, an energy transition away from fossil
fuels that engages all countries—producers and consumers alike.
Implementing this transition requires answering a central question:
“How can the world move to end its dependence on fossil-fuel use, as President Lula said in his address at the High-Level Segment of Heads
of State and Government at COP28 in Dubai?”
Although this question is not new, the response requires unprecedented action.
We need efforts that account for differing capacities, varied transition timelines, and the diverse realities of peoples and countries.
Three questions can guide us:
- Where are we starting from?
- What is our destination?
- And what must we do to get there?
We can say the starting point already exists. In the United Arab Emirates, at COP28, the world adopted—for the first time—a decision that explicitly addresses transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, with the aim of accelerating action by 2050.
This is a historic breakthrough. Until COP28, previous decisions avoided mentioning this need directly and clearly.
The decision also calls for phasing out inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies. Today, such subsidies range from US$1.5 trillion to US$7 trillion, depending on the methodology.
By contrast, subsidies and investments in renewable energy are much smaller: around US$170 billion in G20 countries—or about US$500 billion if private investment is included.
If we are clear about the starting point, we must also know where we want to go.
The central commitment from COP28 is to limit global warming to 1.5°C.
And paragraph 28 of the Global Stocktake sets out the intermediate milestones along that path:
- Moving away, in a just and planned way, from fossil fuels;
- Tripling renewable energy capacity and doubling energy efficiency by 2030;
- Reducing emissions of gases beyond CO₂, such as methane;
- Removing CO₂ from the atmosphere, above all through nature-based solutions.
The United Arab Emirates consensus has already given us both the point of departure and the destination. Our greatest challenge is to make this demanding journey possible—justly and in a planned way for all—anchored in public policy, finance, international cooperation, and deep solidarity.
The climate crisis compels us to change before we are abruptly changed by the reality of the climate emergency, which is already affecting us dramatically.
One answer may lie in forms of additionality—initiatives that go beyond what is already under negotiation, adding ambition and innovation.
Allow me a parallel with deforestation.
In 2023, Brazil committed to ending deforestation by 2030. That only became possible because, back in 2003, we chose to establish a consistent, integrated plan that produced a body of public policies aimed at tackling the grave problem of deforestation.
Shouldn’t this experience be considered as we move to implement the GST?
A path in which each country—guided by globally agreed criteria, such as NDCs, and in line with its particular circumstances and national capabilities—would plan its roadmaps away from fossil fuels and from deforestation?
May COP30 help us advance in that direction.
It is an ambitious goal, but commensurate with the challenge of transforming our development models before we are changed by the circumstances already affecting us, as I said earlier.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Following the six Regional Dialogues of the Global Ethical Stocktake—one of the COP30 Presidency’s Mobilization Circles—the message has been clear, recurring and emphatic: it is essential to prioritize both the symptoms and the causes of climate change.
May Belém, ten years after the Paris Agreement, be a new reference point to help us avert, at once, two points of no return: the one caused by climate change, and the point of no return for climate multilateralism itself.
Thank you very much.
See the Portuguese version here.
