The first few days of the 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference, the COP-29, which runs until November 22 in Baku, Azerbaijan, threw into stark relief the pressure being exerted by powerful agribusiness sectors to undercut the ambitions of Brazil’s Climate Plan. This document, which the Lula administration has been working on since 2023, will serve as a guide for the country to implement its new target for reducing the gas emissions causing the Earth’s temperature to rise. One agribusiness goal is to hollow out President Lula’s promise of achieving “zero deforestation,” which would include both illegal deforestation and authorized deforestation under the Forest Code.

On November 13, in Baku, the document detailing the new Nationally Determined Contribution – or NDC, as the target to cut emissions is known – was delivered to Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It makes room for “legal” deforestation to continue, which based on expert opinions is incompatible with ending the destruction of Brazil’s biomes – a caveat that was contested by Environment and Climate Change Minister Marina Silva. When commenting on the document, she did, however, indirectly recognize the conflict: “The Brazilian government is committed to zero deforestation, and this process will be combined on two fronts: the fighting we do and zero tolerance for illegal deforestation, and the dispute for the Brazilian development model not to include destruction of its forests,” she said, repeating minutes later that “it’s the dispute for a new development model that keeps the forest standing.”

The Climate Plan, which will be finalized around July 2025, outlines a strategy for Brazil to reach 2050 with neutral emissions, in other words, without theoretically emitting more greenhouse gasses than Nature is able to absorb.

Agriculture is at the center of the document for two reasons. First, the plan will establish when and how the country intends to end or significantly reduce the deforestation currently classified as “legal.” It will also indicate the changes necessary for crop and livestock operations to reduce their emissions. These emissions currently account for 28% of all the atmospheric pollution generated by Brazil, a percentage second only to the 46% of emissions caused by destroying native biomes – done precisely to expand crop areas and, especially, pasturelands, in the broader trend of expanding agricultural frontiers. Some types of agricultural activity also contribute to removing carbon, the main greenhouse gas, from the atmosphere, but in order for these types of activities to be large enough to matter, there needs to be a rapid and overall shift in financing and industry practices.

Although the Climate Plan is not final, calculations to determine Brazil’s new target were done while the plan was being drafted. With the official submission of its NDC, Brazil is ahead of a deadline set by the Paris Agreement on climate change stipulating February 10 as the last day for all the countries to submit their goals to reduce emissions by 2035 – current targets cover the period up to 2030. It is an ever-present topic in the negotiations at Baku and will have repercussions at COP-30, which Brazil is hosting in Belém. The scope of the new targets – and clearly their fulfillment – will determine whether the planet’s rising temperature can be contained to 2 degrees Celsius or, ideally, 1.5 degrees, in relation to the period before the Industrial Revolution. According to the World Meteorological Organization, the average temperature from January to September 2024 was 1.54 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, leading to catastrophic droughts and rainfall and providing an idea of what can happen if this trend continues in the coming years.

In 2023, at the COP-28, in Dubai, the Brazilian government championed “Mission 1.5,” proposing a bigger commitment to this limit on the rise in temperature. In the final Dubai agreement, the countries promised to work toward this target. They also committed to “enhanced efforts towards halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation by 2030.” As the host of the COP-30, Brazil has promised to introduce another ambitious climate target and set an example for other countries.

The new Brazilian target’s numbers were released, without any details, on Friday, November 8, in a press release from the president’s office, after Brazilian representatives had already packed to leave for Baku. For the first time, Brazil didn’t submit a specific net emissions target for 2035, but rather a range, with a minimum and maximum threshold of emissions to achieve. Net emissions – the indicator considered in the Paris Agreement – subtract carbon absorbed by Nature, such as by protected forest areas or regenerating forests, from total emissions.

If the maximum amount were cut, Brazil would reach 2035 with 850 million metric tons of carbon gas equivalent emissions – a calculation that accounts for all greenhouse gasses, including methane released through cattle digestion. If they are reduced by the minimum, this number would grow to 1.05 billion metric tons. Proportionally, this would put a reduction between a bottom limit of 59% and a top limit of 67%, compared to 2005 emissions, which totaled 2.56 billion metric tons.

Both Environment Minister Marina Silva and Vice President Geraldo Alckmin, who represented President Lula when the conference kicked off in Baku, insisted the target is “extremely ambitious.” “The fact that a range was submitted doesn’t mean the focus is not on 67%,” Marina said. “We have more than a number; here we have a new paradigm for our country’s economic and social development.” In general, environmentalists stress that hitting the highest target is essential. Ana Toni, the climate secretary at the Environment Ministry, said the decision to adopt a range reflects uncertainties in the international scenario, the results this has on the country’s investments, and ongoing technological changes. “Brazil wants to hit the high target, except there are uncertainties, and the government is not so irresponsible as to fail to consider the uncertainties,” she said. The 44-page document submitted to the UN says that Brazil’s Nationally Determined Contribution, or NDC, “goes far beyond what could be expected based on the country’s historical responsibility for global temperature rise.”

In September 2023, prior to the COP-28, the Lula administration had given the UN its revised target for reducing emissions by 2030. In the document, the country said it had “chosen to go even beyond existing laws and policies and commit to reach zero deforestation by 2030.” At the time, this language was understood as a commitment to ending illegal and “legal” deforestation – referred to as “zero-zero.” Lula has talked about “zero deforestation” without qualifiers. At a COP-28 meeting with civil society, for example, he said that “when we undertook the commitment that we will reach zero deforestation in 2030, it’s because it’s a matter of faith, it’s a political matter, it’s a matter of compromise”.

According to Beto Mesquita, a member of the strategic group at the Brazil Climate, Forests and Agriculture Coalition, a group of over 400 companies and industry organizations, Lula’s comments left no doubt. “Our understanding is that the current administration is committed to zero deforestation by 2030. Period. Not illegal deforestation, but deforestation,” he said. “One point for discussion, which we haven’t even given much importance to, is whether this is absolute or net zero, that is, whether we’ll have some residual deforestation, but offset by advances in actions to regenerate and recover native vegetation,” adds Mesquita, the director of forests and public policies at the BVRio organization.

The document delivered in Baku says Brazil “will continue to respond positively” to the commitment signed in Dubai to end deforestation, but it distinguishes between the two ways to destroy Nature: “The policies related to the Climate Plan foresee coordinated and continuous efforts to achieve zero deforestation, by eliminating illegal deforestation and compensating for the legal suppression of native vegetation,” the text reads. “This will require not only strengthening and deepening existing command and control measures, but also instituting positive economic incentives for maintaining forests on private rural properties.”

The Climate Observatory feels that by proposing a zero deforestation target based on compensating farmers, the government is saying that Lula’s promise to end the destruction of the country’s biomes by 2030 will not be fulfilled. Yet Marina Silva again insisted: “Our goal is zero deforestation, as President Lula announced at the COP in Egypt [in 2022], when he had yet to take office. But it was also a campaign promise that he made a point of reiterating when he gave his victory speech.” For the authorities who are advocating for an ambitious target, the fact that Lula made a final decision has prevented a worse outcome, in light of the division that set in when the government was discussing the Climate Plan.

In advance of the COP, biologist Bruno Brasil, the director of sustainable production and irrigation at the Agriculture Ministry, told SUMAÚMA “the target Brazil has established now is to have zero illegal deforestation by the end of this decade.” As he understands it, “this is the government’s interpretation.” Bruno Brasil, who followed the Climate Plan’s creation under the ministry led by Carlos Fávaro (a member of the Social Democratic Party and a former Mato Grosso senator), said the document under discussion works with different scenarios for reducing the deforestation permitted by the Forest Code, starting in 2030. “What’s on the table is that Brazil can create public policies for economic incentives to reduce legal deforestation, that is, to compensate producers who have excessive [preservation areas] and are willing to forego suppression of this vegetation,” he explained.

People with an eye on the Climate Plan’s creation have seen scenarios with plans for reducing “legal” deforestation starting in 2025, with successive reductions until 2035. In one of the scenarios, the remaining deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest and the Cerrado – around one-third of the current area – would be offset by restoring native vegetation. The Climate Observatory says there were three scenarios for 2035: one that anticipated an end to all kinds of deforestation, another reducing “legal” deforestation by just 25%, and a third where only illegal deforestation would be eliminated. Based on the Observatory’s calculations, the first option wouldn’t be included in the Nationally Determined Contribution, or NDC, submitted. Scientist Paulo Artaxo, a professor at the University of São Paulo and a member of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, agrees.

The Climate Plan is being formulated by the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Climate Change, which consists of more than 20 ministries and is coordinated by the president’s chief of staff, Rui Costa, who regularly aligns with Carlos Fávaro, his colleague in the Agriculture Ministry. The Environment Ministry holds the executive secretary role. The plan will have a strategy to adapt to climate change, which is already open to public consultation, and another for “mitigation” – the technical word for lowering emissions. It is in the mitigation strategy that the differences lie.

The strategy will include goals to reduce emissions in seven sectors, including agriculture, energy, industry, and forests. The ministers responsible for these areas will be responsible for making the plan, now within the official target the government has handed the UN – in which case, the forests would be left to the Environment Ministry. Pressure from agribusiness organizations against “zero-zero deforestation” began to build in September, when 13 leaders sent a letter to Climate Secretary Ana Toni. Representatives from organizations like the Brazilian Beef Exporters Association and the Brazilian Tree Industry said the Climate Plan’s focus “needs to be on the illegal [type]:” “Before resolving illegal deforestation, it’s impossible to condemn plant suppression duly authorized by national law,” they said.

In another, more detailed letter sent in October by representatives of 10 organizations, now including the Brazilian Agribusiness Association, they proposed that the government invert the process and that each economic sector submit their own targets for reducing emissions. The letter alleged a risk that the Climate Plan could “place disproportionate weight on certain sectors.” Referring to the scenario of zero “legal” deforestation, the letter said “the details, premises and actions on which this data is based are unknown.” It also demanded that carbon removal from planted forests (which supply the paper, packaging, and furniture industries) be considered in Brazilian emissions projections. Yet the carbon removed by these grown-to-be-felled forests accounts for little overall.

Some of the organizations signing these letters belong to the Brazilian Coalition on Climate, Forests and Agriculture, but Beto Mesquita said the climate emergency has left no time for the country to choose which sort of deforestation to fight first. He notes that there are millions of hectares of degraded pastureland (authorities mention between 40 to 50 million) that could be used for agriculture. “We don’t need to open up so much area,” said Mesquita.

The government has no intention of amending the Forest Code, especially because with the current Congress, this could result in a worse law. Mesquita nevertheless suggests the first step to reducing legal deforestation is to end what he calls the “spree” of Vegetation Suppression Authorizations. These permits are written into the Forest Code and are granted by state governments, without any preconditions or monitoring. “What we see today, especially in the Cerrado, is a sort of ‘you ask for it, you get it,’” he said. “The ag gang like to say it’s their right [to deforest], but that’s not what the Forest Code says. You can have this right, but to use it, you have to comply with a set of requirements. When you put most of this authorized deforestation under a microscope, you’ll find minor irregularities and major illegalities.”

In the document delivered to the UN, the government says it is implementing actions “to increase transparency and integration” of data on Vegetation Suppression Authorizations, to “differentiate between legal and illegal deforestation” and “plan effective control strategies.”

At the root of this tug-of-war is the fact that, since the Paris Agreement was approved in 2015, the effort to lower Brazilian emissions has depended on combating illegal deforestation, especially in the Amazon Rainforest – which is how it was interpreted even during the four years under far-right Jair Bolsonaro. Pollution from other sectors, like agriculture and transportation, which still mostly use fossil fuels, is not subject to any control. Yet these sectors will have to contribute much more for Brazil to make good on its promise of being carbon-neutral by 2050.

For example, the methane released in 2023 from cattle digestion alone totaled 405 million metric tons of carbon gas, which exceeds Italy’s total emissions and accounts for 64% of agricultural emissions. Last year, the cattle herd reached a record 238.6 million individuals, exceeding Brazil’s human population.

In August, the Climate Observatory introduced its proposal for a target to reduce emissions by 2035, planning to eliminate practically all deforestation, both illegal and “legal,” in 2030. If this scenario were achieved, direct activities from farming crops and livestock – such as cattle ranching or growing soybean crops – would then be responsible for the largest portion of greenhouse gas emissions in the country. Yet, in contrast, the sector could make a massive contribution to removing carbon gas from the atmosphere by adopting new technologies and practices.

These include restoring and converting degraded pastures into land for crops, implementing integrated crop, livestock and forest systems, replacing synthetic fertilizers with biological methods to make earth more fertile, and spreading no-till farming, a system where the stems and roots of plants like soybeans and corn are not ripped out, nor is the earth tilled before sowing new seeds, meaning less of the carbon stored in the soil is released. The Observatory argues that its proposal is a plus for agriculture, since these removals would then be accounted for officially, which is currently not the case.

The document given to the UN says the country “will continue to demonstrate that it is possible to sustainably expand agricultural production while guaranteeing food security and energy security through the sustainable production of biofuels.” According to the document, to do this the government will rely on “fundamental transformations,” including the conversion of degraded pastures into crop areas and by boosting systems that integrate livestock, crops, and forests.

The incentive for low-carbon agriculture is set forth in the Agriculture Ministry’s ABC+ Plan, which was implemented based on the first Climate Plan, in 2009. One problem, however, is that the line of financing in the ABC+ Plan is still small. For 2024 to 2025, it corresponds to just 1.9% of the Harvest Plan, a government program subsidizing agriculture with lower interest rates, which totals R$ 400.59 billion during this same period.

Forest engineer Renata Potenza, with the Institute for Forestry and Agricultural Management and Certification, or Imaflora, coordinated the work on agriculture in the climate target proposed by the Climate Observatory. She defends the idea that the entire Harvest Plan be geared toward low-carbon agriculture, except for a few lines of credit, such as the line used to purchase machinery. “We’re going to have to mess with the issue of incentives, subsidies, for the sector to really be able to start mobilizing to make this change,” says Potenza. In addition, she says, implementation of the ABC+ Plan needs to be better monitored, so the money actually goes to practices compatible with environmental balance. “Today this is a huge bottleneck.”

Bruno Brasil, at the Agriculture Ministry, said the post-2030 scenario offers “excellent opportunities” for agriculture, including increased production of biofuels and the chance to receive payment for environmental services. He explained that the ministry is “trying to incentivize” sustainable practices for crops used in biofuels, like corn and sugarcane, like the use of biological fertilizers, for instance. Bruno Brasil mentioned other ongoing initiatives, such as the National Program to Convert Degraded Pastures, which plans to recover 17 million hectares.

Nevertheless, Renata Potenza would like to see more emphasis on financing integrated and agroforestry systems, which have “less impact” on the environment. This means that regenerated pasture areas need to be used in systems that combine cattle farming with the planting of food. Beto Mesquita stresses that agricultural credit from private banks also needs to encourage good environmental practices. He mentions another Forest Code instrument whose implementation is delayed, which is an analysis of the Environmental Registry of Rural Properties. Farmers self-declare their entries in the Environmental Registry of Rural Properties and it is up to the states to verify whether their statements on compliance with the code are factual. Ruralist states don’t check, out of either a lack of interest or malice. This year alone, the Harvest Plan began to offer advantages to farmers whose Environmental Registry of Rural Properties had been analyzed.

Agribusiness has an interest in the greenhouse gasses removed as part of its activities being included in Brazil’s official emissions inventory, done by the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry. A technical group was created to improve this accountability. Yet ag organizations have been complaining about the model used in the Climate Plan to forecast scenarios on emissions and removals for each sector. The computer model, made using a program called Blues, was built by the Alberto Luiz Coimbra Institute of Post-Graduate Studies and Research in Engineering at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. The government sees it as the best Brazilian science in this specialized field.

However, the fundamental problem is that the letter sent by ag organizations in October also rejects the decarbonization proposals made in the Climate Plan, including reducing the cattle herd and the use of fertilizers releasing a pollutant gas known as nitrous oxide. The signatories are also averse to the idea of reducing monoculture areas and expanding integrated systems. “Monoculture systems are the overwhelming base of domestic grain production, planted forests, fruit crops and perennial oilseeds based on economic factors that require scale,” they allege.

This type of discussion is not exclusive to Brazil. Last year, the technical stocktake of the Paris Agreement already recommended the “intensification of sustainable agriculture,” which means not increasing land use, stopping deforestation, and freeing areas for reforestation and restoration of ecosystems. This year, a report from the UN Resources Panel suggested reducing consumption of red meat and ultraprocessed foods. Another document from the Economic Commission of Food Systems, consisting of scholars from different countries, calculated the hidden costs to health, biodiversity, and the climate from an agrifood system based on monocrops, synthetic fertilizers, and concentrated livestock farming, finding that they exceeded this system’s economic value.

Right before the COP in Baku, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, the FAO, released a study along the same lines, measuring the environmental, social, and health impacts of current food systems. On November 11, the day the COP kicked off, the FAO office in Brasília published a report showing that in Brazil these costs are US$ 427 billion annually, mostly due to environmental damage.

While the topic has been the subject of side talks at the climate conferences, it is not on the main agenda. Nonetheless, it is possible that this will change, as was the case with fossil fuels, which are the biggest culprit behind climate change globally, but which spent decades outside of decisions with any international legal effect. In 2023 alone, at the Dubai COP, the countries promised to “transition away from fossil fuels.” The Brazilian target document for 2035 says the country “will respond to the call” from Dubai on this point, promising to reduce the use of fossil fuels in transportation and industry and replace them with electrification and “advanced biofuels.” Yet in the new Nationally Determined Contribution, Brazil doesn’t mention reducing fossil fuel production. It says it “would welcome the launching of international work for the definition of schedules for transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner.” The topic of the schedule is on the agenda in Baku, without much perspective for advancement – Azerbaijan is dependent on oil exports and the world’s largest producer, the USA, has just elected Donald Trump, a climate change denier.

A working group at the Climate Convention known as the Sharm el-Sheikh group discusses agriculture from the standpoint of adapting to climate change, but it is not concerned with ag’s role in greenhouse gas emissions. This year, the COP should approve the group’s creation of a portal to keep records on advances in national policies for low-carbon agriculture. Azerbaijan, the host country, and the FAO have launched the Harmoniya initiative, to “facilitate and support the transformation of food systems.” The initiative intends to reconcile the different declarations on the topic that were already approved at the Climate COPs, including one on “sustainable agriculture,” which Brazil signed last year. These declarations are political documents where groups of countries express their intentions, but they have no value as international law.

The main topic at the COP-29 is directly connected to the degree of ambition in the emissions reduction targets the countries must submit by February. This is the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance, also known as the NCQG. It is the money that, in theory, materially rich countries that have historically been polluters should disburse to other countries for their efforts to lower emissions – the more financing, the more ambitious the targets can be. The new financing goal would have to start at a level of US$ 1 trillion per year for now, reaching US$ 1.3 trillion in 2035, 13 times more than the US$ 100 billion promised at the 2009 climate conference. This US$ 100 billion supposedly only materialized once, in 2022 – even so, it was in a sum that included loans and private investments.

The USA and Europe have already been trying to grow the donor base, or rather, to split the burden with today’s other big polluters, particularly the biggest one, China. Trump’s election has made negotiations trickier, since he has once again promised to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement. Trump will only take office in January, but he could unravel everything negotiated by the team sent to Baku by Joe Biden. There are signs the Europeans intend to hold off on deciding a new financing goal until the Belém COP, which would be terrible for Brazil. According to one Brazilian diplomat, the Baku COP is happening at the “most challenging geopolitical time” since the pre-World War II period – with Russia’s war on Ukraine, Israel’s war on Gaza, and internal conflict in Sudan, not to mention the United States’ growing hostility toward China, which is shared by some European nations.

The World Resources Institute, an international organization, calculated the proportion of climate finance that each country should be responsible for globally, based on their historical emissions and level of income. Based on this calculation, the USA would need to pick up 42% of the tab, followed by China and Germany, at 6% each. Despite having a military budget of nearly US$ 1 trillion, this ecological debt is unlikely to be paid by the American government. In Brazil, agribusiness is also clamoring not to pay its share.

COP-29 coverage by SUMAÚMA is done in partnership with Global Witness (@global_witness), an international organization working since 1993 to investigate, expose, and create campaigns against environmental and human rights abuses around the world.