Brazil hopes that a diverse exchange of ideas can find solutions away from the main summit debate, writes Victoria Hatherick
The UN Cop 30 climate presidency's planned climate trade forum on the sidelines of November's conference in Belem, Brazil, is likely to be designed to minimise disruption to core negotiations from disputes over measures such as the EU's carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), which have clouded recent summits. But parties could still press for the issue to feature on the main agenda.
The presidency is planning an "integrated forum on climate change and trade" designed to foster dialogue between government officials on questions such as how to build a fair and common framework for dealing with emissions in trade, and how to define the climate value of specific goods or services, Cop 30 president Andre Correa do Lago told a World Trade Organisation event last week.
The topics evoke the likes of the EU's CBAM, scheduled to become operational at the beginning of next year, and the UK CBAM, expected to launch in 2027. Such measures are contentious because they unilaterally impose a carbon price on imports of goods in covered sectors if an equivalent price has not already been paid in the country of origin, potentially hindering economic activity in exporting countries if they do not transition swiftly to greener production processes.
The EU has maintained that the mechanism can encourage the development of carbon pricing in other jurisdictions, which would allow revenues to flow into domestic coffers rather than to the bloc. But not all countries necessarily possess the capacity to institute such changes, a particular risk for developing nations.
The new forum will be "institutionally distinct" from the UN's climate arm the UNFCCC and the WTO, do Lago said, with the presidency aiming to "insulate" it from the "calculus of concessions and gains" in the main Cop negotiations. This approach appears designed to minimise disruption from such disagreements to the central climate talks. CBAM was a point of contention during Cop 28 and 29, and the adoption of the agenda for the UN's Bonn climate conference in June this year was delayed by a day following disagreements over, among other things, the inclusion of climate-related trade measures.
Non-profit the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) warned after Bonn that "we may face another agenda fight in Belem", as the Like-Minded Developing Countries negotiating group, backed by other developing countries, continued to call for unilateral trade measures to be addressed. The G77 and China during the Bonn talks proposed including unilateral trade measures as a priority area for an existing UNFCCC forum addressing the impact of climate measures, a move opposed by Australia, Canada and the UK, IISD said. And the African Group proposed including unilateral trade measures in the forum's programme, which was opposed by the EU.
‘Laboratory for the unlike-minded'
Do Lago is under no illusion about the extent of the divide. "We're not assembling a coalition of like-minded, we are establishing a laboratory for the unlike-minded," he said of the new forum. "It is the creative friction between diverse viewpoints that will generate ideas that are workable, inclusive and effective, precisely because they have been stress-tested."
The dialogue will be supported by an "expert panel of distinguished academics and experts, equally split between nationals of developed and developing countries", do Lago added, with the aim of steering the conversation "towards the substance of issues, and away from preconceived or previous positions".Climate think-tank WRI's finance programme director Melanie Robinson is cautiously optimistic — "Any ways that countries sit down and work together on how, in a fair way, trade can support the transition, then that's to be welcomed."
