Donald Trump stopping the US from taking action over the climate crisis while labelling it a “con job”, will only see nations like China take up the mantle instead, the chief architect of the landmark Paris climate treaty has told The Independent.
Christiana Figueres, the Costa Rican diplomat who devised the roadmap to tackle global warming that was adopted around the world 10 years ago, paints an optimistic picture of the progress made since, despite political support for climate policies fragmenting in Europe, and carbon emissions continuing to rise year-on-year.
Speaking to The Independent in Belém, Brazil, where the latest UN climate conference – Cop30 – has just begun, Figueres laughs out loud at the suggestion that Trump’s anti-climate agenda could somehow hold back the rest of the world, particularly when it comes to clean and renewable energy. She cites China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, but also the biggest producer and consumer of low-carbon energy.
“What the US has done is a choice; it is a sad choice, but it does not stop the advance of all others who are on the [clean energy] track,” Figueres says. “All it has done is open up the space hugely for China, who are completely delighted that they don’t have any substantial competition.”
Figueres’ approach is credited with building bridges between nations, which were key to navigating tough negotiations that eventually accomplished the seminal agreement between 195 countries to limit global warming to “well below 2C”, while striving for 1.5C.
Her view is shared by André Corrêa do Lago, the Brazilian diplomat in charge of the Cop30 conference, who has also cited China while addressing reporters in Belém. “China is coming up with solutions that are for everyone, not just China,” he said. “Solar panels are cheaper, they’re so competitive [compared with fossil fuel energy] that they are everywhere now. If you’re thinking of climate change, this is good.” The current executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Simon Stiell, added on Monday: “Those opting out or taking baby steps face stagnation and higher prices, while other economies surge ahead.”
Ahead of Cop30, countries were supposed to submit new interim emission reduction pledges for 2035, an aspect of the Paris Agreement known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), but only around 60 managed to do so in time. The latest “Emissions Gap” report from the United Nations Environment Programme then found that, based on those NDCs, global emissions are set to fall by around 12 to 15 per cent compared to 2019 levels by 2035, while the reduction needed to keep global warming to 2C is 35 per cent. To keep warming to 1.5C, it is 55 per cent.
Figueres, who was formerly the secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), sees this less as a case of countries under-delivering, but more one of under-promising – and says that she is “very confident” that countries are going to exceed their stated targets.
“These NDCs are a political calculation of what [nations] think they can say on an international, public level, and they are not a representation of what is really going on domestically,” she says. It is logical for countries to be “exceedingly conservative” in their public-facing goals given all the political contexts that they have to face up to, she adds – not least when you have the threat of international trade tariffs from the US if you are seen to be overly pro-climate.
“Take China as an example,” Figueres continues. “For the more-than-30 years I have worked in climate diplomacy, they have always under-promised and over-delivered, which is the result of a cultural trait where they strive for integrity and humility, and which is very different to what we are used to.” The latest China promise to cut emissions 7 to 10 per cent by 2035 might have been judged disappointing, but Figueres says it is a “serious under-promise” as a result of pressure from Washington, which “does not represent the reality” of what is going to happen.
The new climate pledges come as the latest data suggests that the push for clean energy is in rude health, driven by booming renewables sectors in China, as well as in Europe. Eighty per cent of new electricity demand growth is now being met by renewables, which has been driven by a 90 per cent fall in the cost of solar panels, a 90 per cent fall in the cost of energy storage, and a 70 per cent fall in the cost of onshore wind technology over the past decade. Back in 2015, less than 1 per cent of cars sold were electric, Figueres adds – but now it is more than one fifth.
“I knew the ratification of the Paris Agreement would unleash action on decarbonisation. But I would definitely have been surprised had you told me 10 years ago how quickly we would be advancing in clean energy,” she says,
None of this is to say that the 69-year-old seems delusional about the state of climate action. She acknowledges, for example, that serious work still needs to be done to wind down the fossil fuel economy if we are to meet our climate targets. Another key point of contention over the next two weeks of climate negotiations will be around the amount of money provided by rich countries to help developing ones address climate change. According to Figueres, overseas aid cuts announced this year came “at a really bad moment”, given the impacts of “runaway climate change” – something that is ironically only going to create more “climate migrants” and increase the security threat that budget savings are supposed to be addressing.
What needs to happen now is for rich countries to work to improve investment conditions in developing countries, so that foreign direct investment can drive climate resilience in developing countries. The opportunity is there to be seized: “70 per cent of the global renewable energy potential is held in developing countries, and 50 per cent of the minerals for the transition,” she says.
Figueres also sees any of the rolling back of climate policies being witnessed in the UK and elsewhere as less a fundamental undoing of the consensus on the climate crisis, and more a political failure from progressives to keep control of the narrative.
“If we look under the hood of what is going on, we realise that [the vast majority] of the global population is extremely concerned about climate change, and they want their leaders – whether they be sub-national, national, or corporate leaders – to engage seriously with the issue,” she says. “People see how climate change is affecting their everyday lives, and they know it will certainly affect the everyday life of their children and other generations to come.
“Let us understand that there is a very carefully orchestrated resistance and battle against progress, but it is absolutely clear that that is not reflected in the public interest or will.”
Figueres’ comments come as eight in 10 people globally said that they support government investment in wind, solar and nuclear, according to a survey from nonprofit Potential Energy Coalition, which interviewed 21,000 nonpartisan participants across 10 countries.
The big issue at the moment in the climate movement is a failure to present narratives that can captivate people, believes Figueres. “We in the climate space speak and message in terms of how many tonnes or what is the degree? Is it a 2030, 2040, or 2050 target? We tend to communicate in metrics and numbers that mean nothing to normal human beings,” she says.
Figueres is working to address this messaging problem herself through a think tank, Global Optimism, which is seeking to drive new climate narratives through a variety of partnerships, projects and gatherings – and she is also back at the UN’s flagship climate summit for the first time since Cop26 in Glasgow in 2021, pushing the climate-positive narrative at a long list of events, as well as on platforms that include a daily podcast called Inside COP.
A recent episode saw UK climate and energy secretary Ed Miliband share similar views on the apparent disconnect between what politicians argue on climate in the UK, and what the public really wants.
“The Westminster view, that there is massive revolt among the British people on climate net zero, is not correct. I think what’s happening – domestically and globally – is that the opponents of this agenda are trying to manufacture … a consensus of a backlash,” he said. “[Nigel] Farage and his cronies have an incredibly patronising view of my constituents. They say, let’s reopen the coal mines. I’m in an ex-mining constituency. Nobody ever says to me, ‘Let’s reopen the coal mines.’ They say to me, ‘Where are the good jobs that we used to have?’”
Figueres hopes that hosting Cop30 in the Brazilian Amazon could help improve the lot of one such area, which is land-use and nature.
“[On clean energy] we have an exponential curve increasing beyond any imagination, but here we have an exponential curve that is missing,” she says. There are big hopes that the flagship forest protection mechanism launched by the Brazilian presidency at Cop30 – called the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF) – will help drive progress in this area, by offering countries compensation to protect their forests from a central fund (which the UK “sadly” did not contribute towards, says Figueres).
Returning to the issue of Trump and the US, Figueres says the current president won’t be in the White House forever, and there are plenty of US officials in Brazil to make up for Trump’s absence. More than 100 US leaders are set to attend the latest round of climate talks, with everyone from California governor Gavin Newsom to the mayor of Phoenix Kate Gallego, turning up in Belém. “These people know that there is a democracy in the United States,” says Figueres.
“Eventually, the White House will come back into the reality of the world, and they don’t want to be completely out of this race,” she adds.
This article was produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project
