From The Hague to Belém, Brazil and the Netherlands are turning climate ambition into practical cooperation.
The September 2025 issue of Diplomat Magazine reported on the celebration of 203 years of Brazilian Independence, hosted by the Embassy of Brazil in The Hague. The theme of this year’s celebration naturally centred on the COP30 UN Climate Change Conference, held in Belém, in the state of Pará. The National Day reception offered a concrete way to link diplomatic tradition with a global priority, bringing together partners, stakeholders, and friends of Brazil around the shared understanding that climate action is inseparable from development, innovation, and social inclusion. The presence of the Netherlands’ Climate Envoy, Prince Jaime de Bourbon de Parme, underscored that this agenda is also a bilateral one—grounded in mutual trust and sustained dialogue.
This shared commitment was clearly visible once again at COP30. On 6 November, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva welcomed Prime Minister Dick Schoof to Belém for the leaders’ segment of the conference.
The negotiation phase of COP30 took place in Belém from 10 to 21 November 2025, with closing plenaries held on 22 November—marking a historic return of the UN climate process to Brazil. Brazil previously hosted the 1992 Rio Summit, which gave birth to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, as well as the Rio+20 Summit in 2012. Hosting COP30 in the Amazon region represents Brazil’s political commitment to placing forests, people, and sustainable solutions at the heart of global climate governance. It also reflects Brazil’s successful experience implementing the Paris Agreement through credible national policies and active international cooperation.
In that spirit, Brazil used COP30 to advance initiatives focused on moving beyond negotiated text and toward concrete implementation. The Netherlands engaged actively in these efforts.
Protecting Tropical Forests
On forests, Prime Minister Schoof announced the Netherlands’ formal participation in the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), with a contribution of USD 5 million to its initial phase. The TFFF embodies a practical idea: mobilizing predictable financial resources to help keep tropical forests standing, in ways that align climate stability, biodiversity protection, and sustainable development.
Accelerating the Energy Transition
On the energy transition, the COP30 Presidency rallied governments and industry leaders behind the “Belém 4X” commitment—an effort to quadruple the use of sustainable fuels by 2035 compared to 2024 levels. High-level representatives from Brazil, Canada, Italy, Japan, and the Netherlands reiterated their support for this objective, emphasizing the role of sustainable fuels in decarbonizing hard-to-abate sectors.
Strengthening Wildfire Resilience
The Netherlands also joined collective action on wildfire resilience. The Call to Action on Integrated Fire Management and Wildfire Resilience—signed by 50 countries and three international organizations—includes the Netherlands among its supporters. In a decade marked by increasingly frequent and transboundary extreme events, this cooperation is critical: it promotes prevention-oriented strategies, strengthens early warning and preparedness, and reinforces the principle that no country can confront climate-driven cascading risks alone.
Climate Action with a Human Face
The Netherlands endorsed the Belém Declaration on Hunger, Poverty and Human-Centred Climate Action, developed jointly with the Board of Champions of the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty. The Declaration affirms a core truth: there is no climate resilience without social justice, and no sustainable development without the guarantee of the human right to food.
Defending Science and Information Integrity
Another key outcome of COP30 was the defence of science-based climate action in the public sphere. The Netherlands endorsed the United Nations Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change, reinforcing a shared commitment to trustworthy information as a foundation for effective climate policy and democratic accountability.
The message from COP30 is clear: ambition must translate into delivery. For Brazil, the next steps involve advancing implementation across mitigation, adaptation, finance, and nature-based solutions, while continuing to strengthen national climate governance and international partnerships that deliver real-world results.
For Brazil and the Netherlands, the path ahead is also distinctly bilateral. Cooperation will deepen in areas such as clean energy, sustainable fuels, resilient infrastructure, and nature protection, alongside joint engagement in multilateral processes where both countries can help build bridges between regions and perspectives.
From its base in The Hague, the Embassy of Brazil looks back on COP30 with confidence in the direction Brazil has set—climate action rooted in social justice, guided by science, and advanced through partnerships that deliver.
