Latin America can lead climate solutions despite challenges
Latin America is a region capable of providing important solutions to the existing climate challenges, although there are still significant obstacles to be overcome in the region.
In an interview with BNamericas, Ricardo Zibas, regional lead partner for corporate sustainability and climate change in Latin America and the Caribbean at the global sustainability consultancy ERM, discussed these challenges, the current landscape and also provided an assessment of the 30th UN climate change conference (COP30), held in Belém, capital of the Brazilian state of Pará, in November 2025.
BNamericas: How do you assess the results of COP30? What can be highlighted as positive and what fell short of expectations?
Zibas: Every COP, when it ends, generates divergent interpretations: there are those who classify it as a success and those who say it was a failure.
The first point to understand is that a COP is a continuous negotiation process. There are COPs with major announcements – such as COP21 in Paris in 2015 – and others that do not have them. But, very often, the major announcement is built up over the course of several previous COPs.
COP30 in Belém was already born challenging for several reasons: a geopolitical scenario quite different from the previous COP (COP29 in Baku), a revisionist wave regarding sustainability and ESG in some regions, and multilateralism under scrutiny, with factions trying to discredit multilateral instruments. In addition, the pre-COP30 agenda was dominated by an issue that should not dominate so much: the logistical challenges of holding a COP in the Amazon.
Even so, in my view, the outcome was positive.
First, because representatives from more than 195 countries attended. So multilateralism is still alive – with limitations, but alive – and the stakeholders were present, signaling that they believe in the process.
Second, the logistical issue was addressed; I didn’t see anything that set it apart from other COPs to the point of becoming a problem.
Some people saw the final outcome from a more negative perspective, saying that the final document does not mention the gradual phaseout of fossil fuels. But that was a complicated expectation, because it was not a topic on the previously negotiated agenda. It came up halfway through, and you do not resolve something of that magnitude in two weeks. That expectation was a bit unrealistic.
Other people, however, saw progress. In addition to the strengthening of multilateralism, there was an active voice from civil society, which in the previous three COPs had been more limited because of the regions where they took place.
At this COP30, there was progress in discussions related to climate adaptation, which has always been something left aside in other COPs, when it was considered that issues related to adaptation were local, while mitigation is global. There was a commitment to increase climate financing for adaptation in developing countries, with efforts to triple it by 2035.
A global framework of adaptation indicators was also approved, the first time with a common matrix to track how and how quickly countries are adapting – an important and little-noticed advance.
Another relevant point of this COP30 was the fact that, finally, there is a forest fund – the Tropical Forest Forever Facility – which raised almost US$7 billion (bn), creating an effective mechanism to assign value to standing forests. This discussion has existed for a long time and has now become a practical mechanism.
Finally, with all that said, no major announcements were expected. It was a COP for implementation and for connecting climate, nature, and people, which had previously been addressed in separate discussions. The location of this COP30 also helped to show the front line of climate impacts and to demystify the Amazon and the city of Belém a bit. In a very challenging scenario, it was extremely positive.
BNamericas: There is a lot of discussion about sustainability commitments by European countries and the United States, among others. However, what can we say about Latin America? Has the sustainability agenda in Latin America advanced or regressed?
Zibas: The climate issue has historically been a discussion between the global North and the global South.
This has already existed since the Kyoto Protocol, in the late 1990s: those who had greater historical responsibility and those who were still developing and would increase emissions.
The world has changed a lot since then. At the Paris COP, the idea emerged that everyone should have commitments, which was difficult for the countries of the Global South to assimilate, because it created the feeling that these countries would have to restrict their access to natural resources before they had reached more satisfactory levels of development.
Then the focus shifted: from “who will make a commitment” to “who will pay for it”. And this, to this day, has not been fully addressed. There is historical responsibility, but differentiated, both in mitigation and in adaptation.
But this runs up against a reality: many countries do not follow a State policy, but rather a government policy. When climate policy changes depending on who is in power, being a government policy, it becomes difficult to maintain continuity in the long term.
In Latin America, for some reason, there is an ideological attachment to the climate issue – as if the climate did not affect everyone.
It’s just that Latin America is much more part of the solution than of the problem.
It is a region that has a competitive advantage in renewable energy, which matters for the energy transition and also for new demands, such as AI, which needs energy and water.
In Brazil, the focus is deforestation and land-use change (agriculture and deforestation), something that is closely tied to our management capacity. In several economies in the Global North, however, the challenge is to change the energy structure – which is more complex in a world where alliances shift and energy security becomes a priority.
BNamericas: Could the trade agreement between the European Union and Mercosur mean that countries in the region that are part of Mercosur would have to take on more obligations so that sustainability becomes a matter of state and not of specific governments?
Zibas: Yes, because these issues transcend ideology and have an economic bias.
Europe wants safeguards on what matters: guarantees of origin; assurance that the products it buys do not come from deforested areas or areas that have undergone land-use change; as well as safeguards on the rights of local peoples. To ensure, for example, that we are not shifting food production to biofuels.
This will not become less strict; it will become more so. So I advocate a pragmatic approach: it is not ideological, it is commercial, economic. Believing it will become less strict goes against the signals.
There are still sectors that have a myopic stance, trying to opt out. Example: the Brazilian agribusiness sector not wanting to be part of the Brazilian emissions compensation system is a mistake – you are throwing away an opportunity. Avoiding participation now creates greater obligations and costs later, because the demands are not going to disappear.
Moreover, for Europe to justify imports internally – in an environment where local agriculture is a strong issue in Europe – it needs these guarantees. And Brazilian productivity is high; it is difficult for Europeans to compete. We cannot give arguments to lose market access due to negligence regarding climate, human rights, and deforestation.
It is the buyer’s prerogative to make these assessments. Many Latin American governments still have not understood this. Betting on a political bias is the wrong path: the bias is economic.
BNamericas: Do you see any sectors in the region that are more advanced in this governance and sustainability journey?
Zibas: The sectors that are most concerned are generally those that have already been under pressure and facing non-tariff barriers for a longer time, especially B2B (business to business).
I see the petrochemical, pulp and paper, and biofuels industries – sectors used to scrutiny in order to access the market. They have more established governance because it is a commercial matter, not a political one.
In commodities, you can even see setbacks – for example, the abandonment of the soybean moratorium in Brazil.
BNamericas: Is this perception that companies from the global south, such as Brazilian ones, are more scrutinized than their peers in the global north real?
Zibas: The basis is empirical, from interviews. Many Brazilian companies would say: “I need to prove that I don’t have deforestation, that I don’t have slave labor,” while that company’s counterpart in Sweden didn’t need to prove it, because the assumption is that this doesn’t exist in the Global North – which is not always true.
So there was a perception of higher transaction costs for companies from the Global South, because they had to prove things that companies from the North did not have to prove at first. This has not changed; speaking of 15 years ago, it has only intensified.
And developments in Europe are moving in this direction of safeguarding what is purchased.
With mechanisms such as CBAM (carbon border tax/adjustment), if a jurisdiction imposes a cost to reduce emissions, it is understood that importing from a country without such a cost gives an unfair advantage; therefore, the same requirements are passed on to those who want to sell. And this type of logic can expand to other dimensions, such as water, etc.
For Latin American exporters, trying to get around this is like trying to cover the sun with a sieve. To participate in the market, they will have to prove safeguards. It is irreversible – and in the Mercosur–EU agreement this is a key point.
BNamericas: With recent elections and other important ones still to come this year, and with geopolitics affecting the region, where is the sustainability trend in Latin America heading: more emphasis on sustainability or less?
Zibas: Historically, since the end of the military dictatorships, Latin America has had a pendular movement: at one moment it goes one way, at another moment it goes the other. This is very clear in Chile and is a general pattern.
There is a tendency for center-left governments to talk more about environmental issues. Governments further to the right, on the other hand, tend to say that environmental safeguards create bureaucracy and reduce productivity – which is not true, because you are only shifting the externality onto someone else.
Clearing forest disrupts ecosystem services and the microclimate, increases flooding and erosion – and you end up spending more later to fix it. It is a short-sighted, short-term view that still predominates in political cycles and in sectors.
BNamericas: How have sustainability topics been perceived in the business environment?
Zibas: In business, I would say it is business continuity. It is not ideology. We already see, in practice, forecasts that certain crops will become unviable in parts of Latin America where they are productive today, such as soy, sugarcane, coffee, and cotton. The climate is changing: more heat, changes in rainfall, water scarcity. Thinking that we will do things the way we always have is a short-sighted and wrong view.
BNamericas: When do you think the region will reach political maturity so that sustainability will no longer belong to a specific political spectrum and will become an issue for society as a whole?
Zibas: Unfortunately, this unity only happens in catastrophes. For example, what happened in the state of Rio Grande do Sul.
(BNamericas note: Rio Grande do Sul was hit by a historic flood in May 2024, which caused damage in almost all municipalities, devastated cities mainly in the state’s metropolitan region, and left nearly 200 dead.)
On that occasion, the environmental issue ceased to be political; the political debate disappeared at that moment.
Unfortunately, we are going to go through more extreme events until the discussion matures. It is a pity, because it was possible to anticipate them.
An example of what I don’t see: adaptation of cities. Every year a city’s infrastructure is destroyed by extreme climate events and rebuilt in the same way to be destroyed again. There is no serious discussion about resilient cities and how to live in this reality. And four-year political cycles, in general, do not address this. I bet we will not see this level of depth in elections in Latin America this year.
The discussion remains confined to niches – scientists, for example, have been sounding the alarm for a long time – but it goes unnoticed until an extreme event makes the economic and social life of a place unviable.
BNamericas: Is there any aspect that I haven’t asked about that you consider important to highlight?
Zibas: Maybe we should reinforce the importance of preserving multilateral spaces (regional and global). What we are discussing is not a problem of one sector or one country. These are issues that go beyond legislatures and national borders. Cause and effect go beyond borders – which are human arbitrariness. It is important to preserve multilateralism to address this as an integrated system: climate, biodiversity, and people. If we lose these spaces, we are left without tools to deal with these issues.
(The original version of this content was written in Portuguese)