From Belém to COP31: Is the Climate Battle Shifting from Negotiating Targets to Negotiating Implementation?

By Habib Maalouf

From Negotiating Targets to the Question of Implementation

International climate negotiations are no longer focused solely on how much greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced, or on the extent of commitment to limiting global warming to 1.5°C. More than a decade after the Paris Agreement, the confrontation has shifted towards a more complex question: How can commitments be implemented? Who bears the costs of implementation? And why have initiatives outside the United Nations-led negotiation process become more dynamic than the traditional mechanisms of the Conferences of the Parties?

This is the shift Brazil is seeking to capture through the Belém Mission 1.5 initiative, which it launched as President of the thirtieth Conference of the Parties (COP30). On the surface, the initiative appears to be a voluntary process aimed at supporting the implementation of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs). At its core, however, it opens the door to a new phase of international debate about the relationship between climate ambition and the means of implementation, and about the role that a COP presidency can play in steering global climate action.

"More than a decade after the Paris Agreement, the confrontation has shifted towards a more complex question: How can commitments be implemented? And who bears the costs of implementation?"

The Arab Position on the Belém Initiative

In a position paper recently prepared on this issue, the Arab negotiating group stresses that the initiative must remain a voluntary process aimed at removing obstacles to implementation, and must not evolve into a new negotiating track or a mechanism for assessing countries' levels of ambition or holding them accountable. This position reflects an early recognition that political initiatives launched by COP presidencies may, over time, acquire political weight beyond their non-binding nature.

The launch of Belém Mission 1.5 did not emerge in a vacuum. Since the adoption of the Global Stocktake at COP28, followed by the agreement on the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance at COP29, it has become clear that the greatest challenge is no longer the formulation of new targets, but the translation of commitments into policies, investments, and actionable measures. Brazil therefore chose "enablement" as the central theme of its initiative, in an attempt to move from the phase of pledges to the phase of implementation.

Enablement: Between Ambition and the Means of Implementation

However, the concept of "enablement" is not neutral. For industrialised countries, it may mean improving national policies, accelerating the energy transition, and raising ambition. For most developing countries, particularly Arab countries, enablement begins with providing finance, transferring technology, building capacities, respecting the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, recognising the historical responsibility of developed countries, and ensuring that developing countries are not burdened with additional obligations without the necessary means of implementation. This is why the Arab group's position paper repeatedly reaffirms that climate justice is not merely a political slogan, but an essential condition for the success of any implementation process.

The paper presents a comprehensive Arab perspective that goes beyond simply commenting on the initiative. It connects the 1.5°C goal with sustainable development, poverty eradication, finance, adaptation, technology transfer, and national sovereignty. It also rejects any approach that gives mitigation absolute priority at the expense of adaptation, stressing that Arab countries are among the regions most exposed to rising temperatures, water scarcity, and pressures on food security, and that adaptation needs will increase with every additional rise in average global temperatures.

Energy and Technological Neutrality

On energy, the paper presents a clear position rejecting the restriction of solutions to a single technology or pathway. It calls for a "technology-neutral" approach encompassing renewable energy, energy efficiency, carbon capture, utilisation and storage, low-emission hydrogen, and other options, while emphasising every country's right to choose the energy mix that best suits its national circumstances. This approach also clearly reflects a defence of the interests of fossil fuel-producing countries, although it is presented within a discourse linking energy security to development and climate justice. This position is largely consistent with civil society position papers issued over the past three years, with some distinctions. Civil society does not support spending enormous sums on carbon removal and storage technologies, instead calling for their replacement with more nature-based technologies, the localisation of environmentally friendly technologies, and the recognition of technology transfer as a form of compensation from developed to developing countries.

Unilateral Climate Measures and Trade

Civil society also shares the Arab negotiating group's position regarding the economic implications of unilateral climate measures, such as border carbon taxes and climate-related trade restrictions. The group considers that these policies could become protectionist instruments that harm developing countries and undermine confidence in the multilateral system. At this point, climate negotiations move beyond a purely environmental discussion to an economic and trade debate that affects the future of international relations.

COP31 and the First Political Test

The most important question, however, is no longer what happened in Belém, but what will happen next. If COP30 resulted in the launch of the Belém Mission 1.5 initiative, COP31 will be its first real political test. Some will call for it to become a permanent platform for monitoring implementation and perhaps assessing levels of ambition, while developing countries will seek to preserve its voluntary nature and limit its role to supporting implementation and providing the necessary means of enablement.

COP31 may therefore become the setting for a new debate and confrontation, different from those that dominated the past decade. The central question will no longer be: Should we uphold the 1.5°C goal? Rather, it will be: How can this goal be maintained without compromising the principles of justice, and who will pay the cost of achieving it? While the world has succeeded in agreeing on targets, it has not yet succeeded in agreeing on how to distribute the burdens and resources required to achieve them.

Could the Initiative Become a Political Reference Point?

For this reason, Belém Mission 1.5 can be viewed as the beginning of a new chapter in the history of climate negotiations. It may remain merely a voluntary platform for exchanging experiences, as the Arab group wishes, or it may gradually develop into a political reference point that influences the assessment of countries' climate performance, a prospect about which many developing countries have reservations.

Defining the Next Phase of the International Climate Regime

In any case, COP31 appears unlikely to be merely the next conference after Belém. It may instead be the conference that defines the character of the next phase of the international climate regime. If previous years witnessed struggles over targets, the coming years may witness a more complex struggle over implementation, finance, technology, and justice. These issues will ultimately determine whether the 1.5°C goal remains achievable or becomes an increasingly distant aspiration. This is particularly significant given that some argue the world already reached the 1.5°C threshold last year and that it is too late to reverse course. The accelerating pace of climate disasters, worsening year after year, may itself force a reconsideration of the entire framework of negotiations, shifting attention towards the need to transform the dominant model of civilisation that has contributed to these disasters.