Brazil publishes non-binding global roadmap to quit fossil fuels

Brazil published two documents on Tuesday that it presents as the world's first global roadmaps for moving away from coal, oil and gas and for halting deforestation. They set out steps any country can begin now, the government said, without waiting for new technology or economic change.

The roadmaps are not binding. They contain no deadlines or milestones, and they leave it to each country to assess its own dependence on fossil fuels and choose which policies to apply.

André Corrêa do Lago, the Brazilian diplomat who presided over Cop30, said the documents are meant to shift the annual UN climate talks from negotiation towards implementation. "There is a different group of people that negotiate and that implement," he told the Guardian. He said finance, transport, energy and infrastructure ministries should take them up.

Brazil hosted Cop30 in Belém, in the Amazon, last November. A dispute over whether the final resolutions should mention fossil fuels ended in a compromise: the presidency would produce two roadmaps, one on "transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner" and one on deforestation.

Suggested steps include cutting the flaring and venting of gas at oil and gas extraction sites, reducing subsidies to fossil fuel production and use, and expanding renewable generation. Methane is a greenhouse gas 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, according to the Guardian, so curbing releases from wells would have an immediate effect.

Joeri Rogelj, a professor of climate science and policy at Imperial College London, said the roadmaps are "valuable but fall short of clearly indicating the pace of change needed" because they include no timeline or key benchmarks. Without those, he said, they leave open what is required to meet the Paris agreement goal of limiting warming to well below 2C and preferably 1.5C.

The deforestation roadmap cites UN figures estimating that about $300bn a year will be needed for forests by 2030 and $500bn a year by 2050, against roughly $85bn a year available now. It points to the Tropical Forests Forever Facility set up at Cop30, to which the UK contributed £400m and other countries about $7bn combined, and to the scarce checks on trade in goods grown on cleared land. It notes that local or national administrations have in some cases appeared to condone deforestation; Indonesia is being sued by civil society groups for "gross negligence" over fires that cleared forest, most likely for palm oil plantations.

A separate initiative has produced more prescriptive plans. At a conference in Santa Marta, Colombia, in April, nearly 60 countries formed a coalition outside the UN process, and Germany, France and the Netherlands have since published national phase-out plans.

Cop31 opens in Antalya, Turkey, this month. Brazil published the roadmaps just over a week after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won a fourth term. Deforestation rates fell by about 70% over his previous four years, the Guardian reported. His defeated opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro, had been expected to return to the policies of his father, Jair Bolsonaro.