Yesterday, August 5, LACLIMA hosted the event “The State of Climate Implementation” as part of São Paulo Climate Week 2026. The meeting brought together representatives from government, academia, the justice system, civil society, and international organizations to foster debate and propose effective actions to address the main challenges involved in turning climate commitments into public policies and concrete action.

Through panels and thematic roundtables, the event promoted cross-sector dialogue on topics including climate governance, finance, adaptation, implementation, and the impacts of recent advisory opinions issued by international courts.

At the opening of the event, former Minister of the Environment Marina Silva called for a transformation of Brazil’s development model, arguing that implementation is not a stage that begins now, but rather a process already underway in the country, from efforts to combat deforestation to the economic instruments developed in recent years. Even so, she argued that current efforts are still insufficient and framed the challenge around three fronts: mitigation, adaptation, and transformation.

“It is not enough to mitigate, it is not enough to adapt. We need to transform the country’s development model,” she said.

According to Silva, this transformation depends on three pillars: vision, process, and structure, as well as metrics that Brazil has yet to develop, such as effort indicators capable of showing how each public policy is being translated into action during the implementation phase. Without these tools, she argued, ambitious plans risk failing to deliver concrete results.

Rui Caminha, President of the Alumni Association of the University of São Paulo Law School, which hosted the event, recalled in his remarks that the 1992 Earth Summit, a landmark event from his childhood, had made it seem as though the world was entering a secure path toward climate protection.

“Years later, it feels like a path of two steps forward and one step back. It is a somewhat exhausting historical march, but one that we obviously cannot abandon.”

Panel addressed political, institutional, and regulatory challenges to accelerating climate action in Brazil

Moderated by Caroline Rocha, Executive Director of LACLIMA, the first panel, titled “Political, Institutional and Regulatory Challenges to Accelerating Climate Action in Brazil,” brought together different yet converging perspectives on the issue.

Paulo Artaxo, Full Professor at the Department of Applied Physics of the University of São Paulo’s Institute of Physics, argued that mitigation and adaptation are necessary but insufficient if the underlying system remains unchanged.

“There is no point in mitigating and adapting, reaching net zero, and maintaining an economic system based on the overexploitation of natural resources, income concentration, and social injustice,” he said.

Thaynah Gutierrez, Climate and Environmental Racism Advisor at Geledés – Black Women’s Institute, stated:

“I do not believe that, at this moment, we should assume that we are transitioning from the mitigation agenda to the adaptation agenda. What we need is for both to move forward in parallel and in a balanced way.”

She also emphasized that Black and peripheral communities are among those most affected by extreme climate events and argued that adaptation resources must reach the communities that are already developing solutions within their territories.

From the perspective of Rodrigo Agostinho, biologist, lawyer, and former President of Ibama, Brazil has yet to resolve basic issues such as sanitation and urban drainage while already facing more costly and complex adaptation needs, alongside strong lobbying forces in the National Congress.

“We need serious, concrete regulation, with deadlines, clear dates, strong communication, and transparency. We need a robust climate change strategy that is not based solely on the agenda of the next COP or the next Climate Week,” he argued.

From the philanthropic sector, Carmynie Xavier, Climate Policy Specialist at the Institute for Climate and Society (iCS), highlighted the mismatch between the nature of available funding and the time required for implementation.

“When it comes to implementation, the resources that are generally available tend to be short-term,” she observed, also calling for greater attention to the role of institutions such as audit courts.

Brazil’s role in the multilateral landscape was addressed by Isabela Rahal, Program Manager at the Climate Emergency Collaboration Group (CECG), who cited Brazil’s leadership in discussions around the TFFF (Tropical Forests Forever Facility), a forest finance mechanism.

She also offered a critical reflection on the climate philanthropy sector itself:

“We, as philanthropy, need to stop jumping to what we call the next shiny thing. Now it is electrification, then it will be another major topic of the moment, but we need to look at the long-term goals and consistently build the path toward them.”

“We need a national project, and for that we must bring together academia, philanthropy, civil society, and government institutions.”

This is how Flávia Bellaguarda, Advisor to Brazil’s Ministry of the Environment for COP30, summarized what she sees as an even broader and more fundamental challenge. According to Bellaguarda, implementation is the moment when international agreements need to cascade down to the domestic level, respecting the specific realities of each municipality and territory rather than relying on generalizations.

Closing the panel, Andréia Coutinho, Director of the Brazilian Center for Climate Justice (CBJC), shifted the discussion toward communication. She highlighted the difficulty of translating scientific evidence into accessible narratives, as well as the continued absence of socio-environmental communication from journalism curricula.

“All the discussions here have touched, in some way, on the climate crisis as a field of inequality. But there is an earlier, or parallel, challenge: informational inequality.”

Panel 2 addressed advisory opinions and the transformation of climate law

Moderated by Gabriel Mantelli, Climate Policy Coordinator at LACLIMA, the panel “Climate Law in Transformation: Recent International Advisory Opinions and Their Impacts on Governments, Businesses and the Justice System” discussed the effects of three recent international advisory opinions issued by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and the International Court of Justice on governments, businesses, and justice systems.

Ana Maria Nusdeo, Full Professor at the University of São Paulo Law School, advocated for polycentric governance, with coordinated action across different levels and among state and non-state actors.

“For this proposal of polycentric action to work, it depends on coherence. Given major power disputes, polycentrism can also become something filled with contradictions and inconsistencies,” she said, citing greenwashing and double standards as examples.

Alberto do Amaral, Associate Professor at the University of São Paulo Law School, focused on the advisory opinion of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and highlighted the developments arising from it.

“This opinion focuses on the need to protect vulnerable groups, such as coastal populations, rural communities that depend on ecosystems, children, and Indigenous Peoples. It recognizes nature as a rights-bearing subject and addresses an extremely important issue, which is the idea of regional jus cogens,” he stated.

André Castro Santos, Technical Director at LACLIMA, highlighted what the three advisory opinions have in common and what this means in practice for Brazil.

According to him, although they are distinct advisory opinions, they converge on one particularly relevant point: action against climate change should be regarded as an actual obligation rather than a promise.

“They reinforce the mandatory nature of these measures and establish non-compliance as an internationally wrongful act, which may result in state responsibility.”

Solange Teles da Silva, Professor at Mackenzie Presbyterian University, opened her remarks by asking whether climate law itself is undergoing transformation or whether law as a whole is changing.

She noted that although advisory opinions are not binding, they help determine the content and scope of legal norms and highlighted one resulting obligation that she considers particularly important.

“I would like to point out an obligation that I believe is fundamental: the obligation of states to combat climate misinformation. This is a crucial and fundamental obligation,” she said, stressing that people’s behavior only changes when they understand what is at stake.

Thales Machado, from Conectas Human Rights, noted that the Paris Agreement has not been sufficient to curb investments in fossil fuels, as the world’s 65 largest banks continue to invest trillions of dollars in the sector.

In this context, he argued, the Inter-American Court’s advisory opinion carries particular weight.

“It is no coincidence that this advisory opinion is perhaps more rights-based. It goes into detail on some of the issues we consider so important, such as the rights of Indigenous Peoples and traditional communities, and the recognition of traditional knowledge on an equal footing with scientific knowledge,” he said.

Discussion continued through thematic roundtables on energy, innovation, adaptation, and climate finance

The event then moved into five simultaneous thematic roundtables designed to explore specific areas of the implementation agenda in greater depth:

“Energy and Security,” moderated by Luísa Blanchet (E+ Energy Transition);

“Innovation and Technology Transfer,” moderated by Vitor Ido (USP Law School);

“Adaptation, Resilience and Disasters,” moderated by Thiago Acca (FGV CeDHE);

“Subnational Implementation,” moderated by Marina Bragante (São Paulo City Councilor);

and “Climate Finance,” moderated by Caroline Prolo (Fama re.capital).

Closing: visibility, mainstreaming, and creating opportunities

Alice de Moraes Amorim Vogas, Program Director at the COP30 Presidency, closed the event with three reflections for the next decade.

The first was the need to give climate issues permanent visibility, rather than allowing attention to depend on COPs or disasters.

The second was a challenge directed at the climate community itself.

“The historical tendency is to think that we need one more instrument, one more plan. But ultimately, what we need is to mainstream the climate perspective across all policies,” she said.

The third was to recognize the climate agenda as a source of opportunities, capable of creating jobs and addressing the country’s structural inequalities.

According to Vogas, Brazil already knows how to combat deforestation. The next choice is whether the country will assume leadership across the broader climate agenda.