UCLA experts: Latest UN climate conference comes at a critical juncture

UCLA experts attending and monitoring the annual U.N. climate conference say that COP30 in Brazil will put a bright spotlight on the new geopolitics of energy and climate change. Countries of the world gather each year to negotiate how to stay on track with the Paris Accords, but this year, the United States has withdrawn from the climate agreement. Meanwhile, the host country of Brazil is playing an increasingly important role in creating financial instruments to conserve tropical forests.

What will U.S. withdrawal mean for other countries' pledges? How are states, provinces and other local entities picking up the slack?

UCLA experts from the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability are tracking and attending the Nov. 10-21 climate conference. Feel free to use their quotes or contact them for interviews on the ground in Belém, Brazil or from Los Angeles before the conference gets underway.

Horowitz is a UCLA environmental law expert and executive director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA School of Law. She can explain how U.N. climate conferences like COP30 work and what is - and isn't - on the agenda for negotiations this year. She will be in Belém.

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"This COP will give us a peek at how the Paris Agreement may function in a world where the U.S. has walked away from any responsibility to make progress on climate change - and, indeed, is headed backwards on climate. The U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement isn't official yet - that will take a few more months to accomplish. But countries' next round of Paris Agreement pledges are due this year, and those pledges are being crafted with the U.S.' request to withdraw firmly in mind. Does the agreement's central architecture still work without the participation of the world's largest historic emitter? We'll have to see."

Gray is a UCLA environmental law expert and project director of the Governors' Climate and Forests Task Force, a project of the Emmett Institute. He can explain Brazil's proposal of a Tropical Forests Forever Facility this year and the contributions of subnational governments and Indigenous leaders to conferences like COP30. He will be in Belém.

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"With climate action stalling at the national level in many parts of the world, leadership at the subnational level is more important than ever. States, provinces and governors themselves will be on the ground in Belém contributing to panels, side events and other discussions. Governors want to highlight shovel-ready investment opportunities to build more sustainable, new forest economies in their territories. I'll be watching how federal officials from Brazil unveil a proposal known as the Tropical Forests Forever Facility or TFFF - a financial tool to conserve tropical forests - as well as how state efforts can be recognized within the TFFF and how it can be leveraged with other approaches to increase funding to protect forests and communities."

Hecht is a UCLA professor of urban planning and the environment, director of the UCLA Center for Brazilian Studies and a member of the Science Panel for the Amazon. Her studies focus on Amazonian development and environment, as well as the history of tropical science. She recently returned from pre-COP30 meetings in Brazil and can discuss development and preservation of the Amazon, environmental practices across the Amazon, forest policy, Indigenous activism and more.

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"Amazonia is one of the key climate tipping points, and should the rainforest flip into a different biome, it would release vast amounts of carbon dioxide and become an emitter instead of an absorber of C02 and methane, with major regional and global effects. Any future has to have Amazonia at its heart because of the major tipping points. Yet the amount of soy acreage replacing the rainforest will expand by more than 3% next year because of the Ukraine war, Chinese demand and the value of soy in Brazil exports. Illegal gold mining in the Amazon is exploding and there is continuing expansion of livestock. The COP 30 has been met in Brazil by a tremendous mobilization of civil society around a range of issues involving climate, but whether this translates into global policy remains to be seen."

"In Brazil, U.S. climate posture is seen as bafflingly revanchist, reflecting some kind of bubbled thought and petrostate politics, backward even by the standards of even Middle Eastern oil states. The general feeling is that the rest of the world will go forward in the developing of transitions and alternatives. Amazonian droughts, rivers drying, explosive fires everywhere and massive flooding in the south of the country mean that climate change, its costs and damages are not abstract issues for Brazilians."