Meeting at Environment Ministry to discuss Brazil's COP30 outcomes

A meeting was held at the Environment Ministry, attended by Minister Tamara Elzein, Brazilian Ambassador Tarcisio Costa, and members of the team of negotiators representing Lebanon, who participated in COP30 last November in Belem, Amazonia.

One of the topics discussed during this meeting was Lebanon's participation in climate negotiations, especially since the country was among those that submitted a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), which serves as an updated review of its climate action.

COP30 was supposed to be the meeting where all members presented more ambitious targets to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, but few revised NDCs were submitted.

For the environment minister, interviewed by L’Orient-Le Jour, the revision of the Lebanese NDC “proves our commitment to this process, and could make it easier for us to access funding” from climate funds.

“In our long-term and low-emissions development strategy [revealed a few months ago during a major conference at the Grand Serail with several ministers], we calculated that the investment needed to finance it is $11 billion, but in a country moving from one crisis to another, we have to rely much more on international funding” than on other types of financing, she said.

Elzein also announced that, as part of restructuring the Ministry, a new climate office is planned.

For his part, Ambassador Costa reviewed the results of the climate summit, particularly on forests and reforestation, noting that COP30 "helped revive trust in collective solutions that put humans at the center."

Climate negotiations, now in their 31st year, suffered a setback after the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, when he withdrew his country from the Paris Agreement, the only existing global agreement to fight against climate change, adopted in 2015, and from the U.N. agency for climate (UNFCCC).

Nevertheless, negotiations continue every year with several key meetings, the main one being the COP at the end of the year.

In its presentation, the Lebanese negotiation team highlighted the country’s contribution to the talks in Belem and the benefits it derived.

According to Léa Kai, climate change consultant with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), a partner of the Ministry in this field, Lebanon is "ready" to seek climate funding. "We know the impacts of climate change at home and have therefore set our priorities, so we are halfway there," she explained to L’Orient-Le Jour.

Regarding COP30, Kaï emphasized that one of the main battles was "pushing for a recognition of the needs of countries affected by conflicts [because of the environmental consequences of wars], a sensitive and controversial topic that is now part of the discussion, even if there is much work to do."