November’s COP30 climate talks are expected to place further pressure on countries to increase their ambition following the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) advisory opinion in July. The Court’s opinion made clear the obligations of states regarding the climate crisis. Climate finance will also be top of the agenda as delegates gather for the talks in Belém, Brazil, from 10 to 21 November.

‘I expect to see much more around state responsibility and liability following the ICJ opinion, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights [IACHR] opinion, which looks very specifically [at] corporate responsibility,’ says Lisa DeMarco, who’s a COP veteran and Chief Executive Officer of law firm Resilient. ‘More state responsibility is going to be very much on the table – [but] whether and how that gets implemented and enforced is another matter.’

The ICJ opinion will probably drive the COP process in terms of the response measures and adaptation workstreams, she adds, citing comments made by the COP President, André Corrêa do Lago, about the need to enhance state responsibilities.

With November’s conference being referred to as the ‘the climate adaptation COP’, Clara Pacce Pinto Serva, Vice-Chair of the IBA Business Human Rights Committee, says she expects the talks to work on a pathway to address both the climate crisis as well as the people affected.

And with the IACHR opinion also recognising the role of Indigenous knowledge, Serva highlights that the Belém talks are expected to have the highest representation of Indigenous peoples at any COP, with around 3,000 delegates expected to attend in total.

‘I don’t expect the COP to have detailed discussions about how to integrate human rights into climate change and climate adaptation, but I do think that the Brazilian government is trying to integrate the two issues,’ says Serva, which is partly shown by the wider civil society participation expected at COP30.

She hopes that the ICJ and IACHR opinions help reset the negotiations and influence diplomacy and implementation. ‘We see a global scenario where multilateralism is being challenged […] but I don’t think it was a coincidence that the two [opinions] came so close to one another,’ she says. ‘We are at a point now where we need to state what was once obvious.’

DeMarco says that the challenges to multilateralism arising from the trade wars sparked by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs will take on ‘a disproportionate role at COP behind the scenes.’ However, she adds, a ‘coalition of willing’ jurisdictions – including Australia, Canada, the EU, Japan and possibly China – will also play a significant part at the talks, countering the reticence of the US on climate matters.

The perennial issue of climate finance is also expected to loom large at COP30. Here, Brazil has been pushing its proposed Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), which is designed to fund the conservation and restoration of tropical forests via payments to countries. The TFFF is intended to launch at COP30, with the World Bank appointed trustee and interim host of the facility, to which Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has pledged $1bn.

Apart from the TFFF, the other significant finance item is the so-called Baku to Belém Roadmap, intended to chart a pathway towards mobilising the $1.3tn of annual climate finance agreed at the 2024 COP talks in Azerbaijan by 2035.

Fernanda Stefanelo, an officer on the IBA Environment, Health and Safety Law Committee, explains that financing mitigation measures are high on the agenda. These measures include the use of carbon market mechanisms, such as the trading of internationally transferred mitigation outcomes (ITMOs) under Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement, as well as initiatives to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD), she says.

‘We have a lot of opportunities for companies or countries to invest in Brazil, in projects related to REDD, carbon credits in general, or new kinds of initiatives,’ says Stefanelo, who’s a partner at Demarest Advogados in São Paolo. ‘The idea of this COP being here […] is to not only discuss the federal government’s point of view, but also to give an opportunity to the states located in the Amazon region where the COP will be held, to try to raise more funds for jurisdictional projects.’

With some of the early Article 6.2 deals starting to move into implementation, this will help clarify the process of corresponding adjustments – whereby the host country’s NDC is reduced by an amount equal to the ITMOs generated – and show other states the value of the mechanism, says Saines. ‘Getting through this first wave of experience and resolving these issues in a transactional context is really helpful, and I think we’ll see some examples of that coming out at COP,’ he says. ‘Not enough, but some.’

Having good data will help measure progress and the benefits of Article 6, he adds, as will more availability and transparency around NDCs. This will assist countries in weighing up whether to progress with ITMOs or not – and to find their balance of not overselling, while still ensuring that opportunities to decarbonise and attract finance ‘aren’t left on the table’, says Saines. ‘The Paris Agreement is a complex international treaty – people desire to make it simple, but there is some element of complexity that is unavoidable [in order] to get it right,’ he adds.

The IBA is facilitating a side event at COP30 entitled ‘Practitioners of law advancing climate mitigation and adaptation through pro bono and beyond’. It will take place on 20 November at 1130 local time in Side Event Room 3. Please contact emily.morison@int-bar.org for more information.

The author would also like to thank the IBA’s Legal Policy & Research Unit for their assistance with this article.

Header image: Rafael Henrique - stock.adobe.com