00:00Mr. President, thank you for joining COP30, your presidency.
00:04What would your greatest wish be for this COP?
00:07Well, I have lots of wishes for this COP, obviously.
00:11And I think that we, essentially, is to change the perception about why COPs exist.
00:19I mean, they are useful, they are having an impact,
00:22but at the moment, I think that the perception is a bit the opposite.
00:26So we need to fight that, and we need to show that COPs have not only achieved already a lot,
00:33because we have avoided temperature to go above 4 degrees,
00:38as science was indicating before the Paris Accord,
00:44and also that we have enough things that we have negotiated
00:48to be able to start acting much more quickly, and we need to act very quickly.
00:55How heavily is it weighing on this COP that the U.S. is not sending any high-level officials
00:59and that the U.S. has pulled out of the Paris Agreement,
01:02which obviously takes a year, so it hasn't fully gone into effect yet, but it's there?
01:06Yes.
01:07Well, the Paris Accord was designed for the U.S. to join.
01:11So, because the U.S. had not joined the Kyoto Protocol,
01:15so the international community designed an agreement that the U.S. could join.
01:22And so, it's obviously very unfortunate that the U.S. is not in.
01:26But, as many actors in the U.S., very important people in the U.S. say,
01:31it's the American government that is not present.
01:34It's not the American economy.
01:35And so, if you take, for instance, the governors that continue to follow the Paris Accord,
01:43these governors represent around 60% of the American GDP.
01:49So, U.S. will be present through local politicians, governors,
01:57but also through business, science, universities, etc.
02:02So, the U.S. is at the COP,
02:05but we would have preferred if the American government was also there.
02:11Speaking of dollars,
02:13the Baku to Belém roadmap was to turn $300 billion into $1.3 trillion of funding.
02:20Will you have concrete plans by the end of this COP for that to happen?
02:24Well, we will have, I think, strong indications of what we need to do to get there,
02:30which is already a lot,
02:32because there is no magic.
02:36I wish there was, by the way.
02:37But there is no magic.
02:39And so, we, but we know the,
02:42some of the steps that we have to start taking now.
02:47So, that's a bit what the report, the roadmap is going to show,
02:52is that there are things that, if we start now, will make a huge difference.
02:56You have said this will be the first implementation COP.
02:59What do you mean by that?
03:00What will we come out of this COP saying is going to be done
03:03in order for the gap,
03:04which is now expected to be 2.7 or 2.8 degrees in 2030,
03:08not two, not one and a half,
03:10for that to start to happen?
03:12Yes, I think many COPs already said that they announced that they were implementation COPs,
03:18which was legitimate at the time.
03:20But now we have a strong argument,
03:22which is that 10 years after Paris,
03:25we have already negotiated what was considered the essential elements of the Paris Accord.
03:32So, we have everything in place to act and we only have that now.
03:37So, this is the first year in which we can really say that we can go ahead and do things
03:44because we already have the mandates to do it
03:47and we already have the rules to be able to do it as planned in the Paris Accord.
03:53It's taking place in Bel-Am,
03:54a place that knows poverty, knows deforestation,
03:57knows the vicious cycle between the two.
03:59What message do you think that sends in terms of, you know,
04:03developing countries needing to concentrate on human welfare
04:06as well as lowering emissions, lowering the green premium?
04:10Yeah.
04:10I think that by choosing Bel-Am,
04:13President Lula wanted really this to be the cup of truth.
04:19And that's what he's saying.
04:20The truth is that developing countries still have enormous hurdles in front of them.
04:25The truth is that we all agree that we have to preserve forests,
04:30but it's a very complex challenge
04:34and we are going to offer some paths to try to overcome that.
04:41And the truth also is that the developing world is ready to do more,
04:47but the developing world is waiting to have better conditions
04:51to get resources to do what needs to be done.
04:55But I think that if we have this positive spirit,
04:59and as President Lula insists so much that it should be the cup of the truth,
05:04I think we're going to conquer again a trust in the cups,
05:10a trust in multilateralism,
05:12and a trust that we are doing the right things.
05:14To that point on multilateralism,
05:16should we anticipate a cover decision at the end of this cup?
05:19Will there be something that you can come out and present
05:22in two and a half weeks' time after all the negotiations?
05:26Look, as a developing country that has a considerable diplomatic tradition,
05:33we believe very much in transparency
05:36and we want countries to feel absolutely convinced
05:41that we are listening to their concerns.
05:43And many countries don't like the idea of the cover decision.
05:47Now, the circumstances may change during the negotiation
05:51because, as you know,
05:53the cups have a very unexpected way of evolving.
06:00So anything is possible,
06:03but we are not at all planning to have a cover decision.
06:08We are going to try to have agreements
06:10based on the negotiations that we have agreed
06:15that we should have at the cup.
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