Latin America arrives at this year's UN climate summit with less political support for the agenda promoted a year ago in Brazil.
Although many Latin American countries showed greater cohesion at COP30 in November 2025, held in the Amazonian city of Belém, than in previous years, these alliances advocated for increased ambition in areas such as energy transition, combating deforestation, and climate finance.
However, since then, some leaders who played a key role in promoting this agenda have left their posts, undermining the prospects of a unified regional voice.
In Colombia, a president was elected who promised to increase oil production and develop hydraulic fracturing, which is a sharp departure from the previous administration's initiative to phase out fossil fuels. The new government of Chile revoked over 40 environmental decrees in its first months and cut funding for its Ministry of Environment and International Agreements, including the Escazú agreement. The Bolivian government, under President Rodrigo Paz, dissolved the country's Ministry of Environment in August.
Brazil is a notable exception. The fourth term of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who took office instead of the Bolsonaro administration, restored the government that oversaw COP30, albeit with fewer regional allies than a year ago. Nevertheless, even Lula faced criticism for supporting fossil fuel exploration in the Amazon basin.
Andrés Gómez, Director for Latin America at the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, told Dialogue Earth: 'We have a completely different political situation compared to a year ago. Ultra-right governments are interested in the idea of exploiting everything on their territories.'
COP31 opens in Antalya this Monday, November 9, under the chairmanship of Turkey, with Australia leading the negotiations. The summit will resume the unfinished work of Belém: two action plans—one on phasing out fossil fuels, the other on halting deforestation—as well as a call for increased climate finance.
Ana Toni, former COP30 Executive Director, expressed optimism, telling Dialogue Earth: 'I am quite confident that the momentum created at COP30 will continue at COP31.'
Turkey presented the summit as a 'COP of implementation,' focusing on supporting countries in meeting their climate plans. The vast majority of Latin American countries submitted updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement in the last two years. However, Argentina, Guatemala, and Haiti have not done so.
According to the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries are obliged to develop a plan for their efforts to reduce national emissions and adapt to the effects of climate change. These obligations are called NDCs. NDCs are submitted every five years, and subsequent versions must be more ambitious than previous ones (the so-called 'ratchet mechanism'). Collectively, these national targets must constitute a coordinated global effort to mitigate the severity and impact of climate change.
As the host of COP, Turkey can choose the central theme of the agenda it wishes to promote, and it has chosen electrification. COP31 Chair, Murat Kurum, proposed a voluntary global goal—to increase the share of final energy demand met by electricity from slightly over 20% (as of June 2026) to 35% by 2035.
On energy issues, Latin America is close to the world average for electrification: electricity accounts for about 20% of its final energy consumption. However, its grid is much cleaner than most countries', as 65% of electricity came from clean sources in 2025.
Extraction has become politicized in several countries. Debates over hydraulic fracturing became an important topic in Colombian elections, where the successful candidate Abelardo de la Espiñe captured fossil fuels as a path to prosperity.
Alejandra López, Director of Climate Diplomacy at the regional analytical center Transforma, believes that electrification can help take climate action out of the political arena in the region. She noted: 'Electrification, mobility, energy security, job creation, public transport—these are agendas that are neither political left nor right, and they don't sound ecological.'
Brazil, as the chair of COP30, sought to include specific commitments on deforestation and phasing out fossil fuels in the summit's final document last year. However, disagreements between governments led to these points not passing negotiations. The country announced that it would prepare two voluntary action plans and present them in Turkey. One concerned phasing out fossil fuels, the other deforestation and sustainable forestry. These documents are not binding but can serve as a basis for national governments to follow.
South America lost more forests than any other region in the world between 2015 and 2025, averaging 4.1 million hectares per year. This was caused by activities such as agriculture, livestock farming, and infrastructure development. Nevertheless, there have been successes, including deforestation in Brazil currently being at its lowest level since 1998.
Nevertheless, the region is also increasing fossil fuel extraction: last year, oil production grew by 20%, mainly due to Guyana and Brazil. Countries across the region, including Argentina and Brazil, are also actively seeking opportunities to expand oil and gas production.
Referring to the current instability in the Strait of Hormuz, Toni argued that phasing out fossil fuels is not just a climate issue: 'It is an economic problem, it is a political problem, it is a sovereignty problem.'
The final package of COP30 provided for the mobilization of about $1.3 trillion in climate finance for developing countries annually by 2035. Countries agreed to triple adaptation financing by this year compared to the 2025 level. Based on the Glasgow target of about $40 billion annually, this amounts to approximately $120 billion.
However, critics note that the COP30 promise lacks a clear baseline and does not specify who is responsible for increasing funding. Tarie Gbadegesin, CEO of Climate Investment Funds, told Dialogue Earth: 'The world urgently needs adaptation finance to prevent and prepare vulnerable communities for disasters and slow-onset climate change impacts.' She added: 'Developing countries currently receive adaptation finance that is 12–14 times less than what they need.'
Last year, Brazil also launched the Amazon Fund. This fund is intended to pay countries for forest conservation, and its collection target is $10 billion by 2026. Almost $8 billion has been received so far. This is still far from the $125 billion capital expected by the fund's sponsors, but additional commitments may be announced this year.
For the region, the question of who pays and under what conditions is also important. Latin America and the Caribbean received 17% of international climate finance between 2016 and 2020. Most of these funds came as loans, not grants, which increased the already heavy debt burden. In some countries, debt servicing now exceeds spending on sectors such as health and education.
At climate COPs, Latin American countries negotiate individually and in various blocs, unlike other regions such as Africa, which votes and lobbies together. Most nations belong to several such groupings based on common interests and positions. All countries in the region have long been part of the G77 and China—a coalition of developing countries acting within the UN system. Meanwhile, the bloc including Chile, Colombia, and Panama forms the Independent Association of Latin America and the Caribbean (AILAC). There is also Grupo Sur, a bloc mainly comprising Southern Triangle countries, as well as the Bolivarian Alternative to the American System, which gained prominence in the late 2000s.
María Fernanda Souza, Uruguay's Director of Climate Change, emphasized: 'The possibility of Latin America and the Caribbean negotiating together has a strength that surpasses any possibility we could have by negotiating separately.'
The result of these various groupings is that Latin America is divided in negotiation matters. Experts argue that regional cohesion, like that demonstrated by Africa, allowed its countries to achieve more effective results.
María Fernanda Souza, Uruguay's Director of Climate Change and Vice Chair of the G77, told Dialogue Earth that the inability to negotiate as a bloc 'has had and continues to have costs' for Latin America. She continued: 'I cannot point out why we cannot be more united.' She added: 'The possibility of Latin America and the Caribbean negotiating together has a strength that surpasses any possibility we could have by negotiating separately.'
Fernanda Souza notes that the interests of southern states, heavily dependent on livestock and agriculture, differ from the interests of Caribbean island states, which suffer from climate change and desperately need money for adaptation.
However, López believes there are separate issues where Latin American countries should set aside political differences and unite. She named climate finance as such an issue for COP31: 'Since there are no major disputes, they can agree more easily.'
Toni believes the division existed long before recent political shifts in the region: 'Even when different types of governments were in power, we never truly spoke with one voice.' She rejected the idea that the region is too diverse to coordinate, pointing to Africa, which votes together and also includes many small island states. 'I think it is always possible, and I think it is desirable,' she said.
López fears that Latin America's low-profile participation at COP31 will carry this weakness over to COP32, which will be held in Ethiopia: 'At the moment you single out Africa as a special region—a particularly vulnerable region—[there are those who are excluded from the universe of 'we matter, we are vulnerable']. That is Latin America.'
