This article is part of a Synergies series on climate and trade curated by TESS titled Addressing the Climate Crisis and Supporting Climate-Resilient Development: Where Can the Trading System Contribute? Any views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of TESS or any of its partner organizations or funders.

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As I join you at the WTO Public Forum, I am told this is the first time a COP President-Designate visits the Organization.

I believe our reunion is timely. As the Indian poet puts it, “depth of friendship does not depend on length of acquaintance.” I come to affirm the trade community as a partner in humanity’s mutirão against climate change.

I am also pleased to give this partnership its first platform: the Integrated Forum on Climate Change and Trade, a flagship initiative from our COP30 Action Agenda. It’s built on the simple case that trade matters for the transition to a more sustainable, prosperous and inclusive economy.

Trade is a transmission mechanism. It carries solutions and knowledge across borders. It drives down costs by enabling economies of scale. In the last fifteen years, the cost of solar power fell by ninety percent; onshore wind is now two thirds cheaper than fossil fuels. This progress was made possible by supply chains that reach across oceans and continents, that connect people and projects and their diverse strengths and needs. UNCTAD valued trade in so-called “green goods” at 1.9 trillion dollars in 2022. The IEA notes that clean‑tech markets alone could triple in value to over USD 2 trillion within a decade.

Trade is also a lever for turning climate ambition into action. With finance and technology as both critical enablers and critical constraints of climate action, trade can bring in the resources countries need. It can make projects bankable by securing revenue flows. It can distribute the opportunities of the transition widely and fairly, so that they reach the many and not just the few.

Systemic gains such as these are built on a foundation of collaboration. With the COP30 Action Agenda guided by the outcomes of the first global stocktake, we will fulfill its call for cooperation across the international economic system. Belém’s trade priority is to see past our differences and act on what we share.

The Integrated Forum on Climate Change and Trade will be a carefully constructed architecture enabling our delegates to explore untried solutions and approaches. This means facing the difficult questions: how do we build a fair and common framework for dealing with emissions in trade? How do we ensure that policies with hybrid dimensions lead to proportionate policy outcomes? How do we define the climate value of a specific good or service? How do we address the growing challenge of the ever-expanding global digital economy? Answering these questions requires collective intelligence and cross-cutting expertise.

The reunion we are having today will itself be a feature of this exercise. Climate and trade have been discussed in silos for too long. The challenges we face do not fit neatly within the boundaries of a single knowledge domain. “Power,” Hannah Arendt reminded us, “corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert.” To accomplish this, we will seat climate and trade experts side by side, with a mixed mandate and a hybrid thematic scope. Only together we will find the solutions to move us closer in both regimes.

Let me be clear about our purpose. The Forum’s mandate is not to produce binding outcomes or legal text. Its value will be measured differently: in the quality of the ideas it generates and in the trust it fosters. We are insulating this process from the calculus of concessions and gains, so that we can focus entirely on the calculus of what is possible and necessary.

This is why we have designed the Forum to be institutionally distinct from both the WTO and the UNFCCC. I invite you to think of it as an upstream tributary; a source of fresh thinking that feeds into the two mainstreams of our multilateral system. Its role will be to explore ideas and gather critical mass behind mutually empowering solutions, free from the constraints of formal proceedings. By providing them with the intellectual and relational capital they need to succeed, it can best support the decision-making work of both organizations.

Let me also be clear that this will be an open conversation. Participation will not require pre-commitment to a common vision document; only a shared conviction in the value of dialogue itself. We are not assembling a coalition of the like-minded; we are establishing a laboratory for the unlike-minded. We believe in the power of dialectics. It is the creative friction between diverse viewpoints that will generate ideas that are workable, inclusive and effective precisely because they have been stress-tested. As Heraclitus said, “out of discord comes the fairest harmony.”

That harmony is not built by ideas alone. A simple truth is that solutions are built by people. This is why the core of this exercise will be a dialogue among government officials—the same people who lead trade and climate negotiations. The common ground they build together in this space is the same ground on which formal understandings can later stand.

But they will not deliberate in isolation. We envision this Forum as a public square where all relevant work will converge. Participants will be informed and challenged by the work happening across our global community, including by stakeholders outside their usual orbits: the OECD, BRICS, the Climate Club, regional organizations. We will build upon the foundation of existing knowledge, but engaging with an idea will not imply endorsement. By debating these diverse inputs on their merits, we will generate our own comprehensive feedback for these stakeholders and give our contribution to humanity’s collective thinking.

To ensure this dialogue is both informed and focused, it will be supported by an Expert Panel of distinguished academics and experts, equally split between nationals of developing and developed countries. Ahead of each meeting, the Panel will inform participants on the state of the art of the relevant topic. The objective is to steer the conversation towards the substance of issues and away from preconceived positions. The Panel will direct our focus to the specific angles where the most value lies, will ensure our energy is spent on building solutions together.

All these design elements, the interdisciplinary approach, the independent structure, the balanced expert guidance, serve one goal: to change the structure of our conversation. This Forum aims to move us from the diagnosis of problems to the design of solutions. It is a dedicated effort to shift from an exclusive focus on litigating the “what” to start collaborating on the “how”. 

At its heart, this is a shared space to ask the questions that move our communities forward. As George Bernard Shaw wrote, “You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?’” This Forum is where we will ask, “Why not?” Why not a sustainable global trade system that supports ambitious climate action and inclusive development? Why not a just transition that lifts every nation? Let us have the boldness to ask these questions and the ingenuity to build the answers together.

Thanks to many of you here, we do not start from scratch. For years, the WTO, through its Committee on Trade and Environment; its Trade and Environmental Sustainability Structured Discussions; and its active engagement at successive COPs, has been bringing the climate and trade communities closer. Pioneering work has also been done by UNCTAD and by the Azerbaijani COP29 Presidency with the BICFIT Dialogue. 

Let me conclude where I began: with our reunion. Multilateralism is more than a system of rules; it is a political expression of a timeless human truth: that we create our shared world through speech. It is in the space between us, in the act of dialogue, that we turn our individual perspectives into a common reality. In the Integrated Forum, we will demonstrate that the difficult work of speaking and listening is our greatest collective strength, for it allows us to understand, engage and deliver. Let us show that the enduring solutions are those we build together.

While our final agenda is still taking shape, I can share the currents of interest we're seeing from our initial consultations. There is a clear and shared desire to move into the granular, technical work of building the common architecture for a sustainable global economy. The energy is concentrating on the foundational elements, the shared language and the common tools, that we will all use to find our way to the transition ahead.

First, we are hearing a call to address the question of climate criteria. The word “green” has come to mean too many things, and too little. The world is more complex than simple labels. We need shared approaches about how to define and verify the climate value and environmental performance of products, processes and services. It’s about creating a common grammar for our policies and our economies, so that we can design trade rules that reward environmental action, distinguish green from greenwashing, avoid unfair barriers to trade, and build the trust upon which collaboration depends.

Second, to trust one another, we need transparency, and transparency requires shared understanding in how we measure our impact. This is the work of carbon accounting. Different countries and industries have different methodologies for carbon accounting, and the Forum will take upon itself to convene experts to map these approaches, understand their equivalencies, and build bridges between them. We will, in essence, draw a Rosetta Stone: a shared reference allowing us to read one another’s work and have confidence in the integrity of results even when our approaches differ. This is a necessary step for building the integrated, low-carbon markets of the future.

Third, we must focus on the role of trade in accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels. The urgency is unmistakable. As Shyam Saran, the distinguished Indian diplomat, wisely said, “Climate change-related disasters, and rising costs of adaptation, would surpass any gains from a delayed transition away from fossil fuels.” We need to address, in very practical terms, how trade can accelerate the global deployment of renewable energy technologies, from solar panels to batteries. This means looking at supply chains, at standards, and at how we can foster the partnerships needed to scale up manufacturing and drive further down costs globally. But this new economy must be fairer than the old one. We need an honest conversation about the critical minerals that power this transition, about how to ensure that developing countries can share in the new era of prosperity we mean to create. This is how we achieve a true triple-win: delivering for the climate, for development and for our people.  

These three areas—climate criteria, carbon accounting and energy transitions—are not easy questions, but they are the right ones. They are the building blocks for a new paradigm of cooperation. They are technical, they are complex and they require the kind of integrated expertise our Forum is designed to provide. We are confident in our ability to unlock progress.

Thank you, Ambassador Patriota, and thank you to my fellow panelists for this enriching exchange. What I've heard today reinforces my conviction that we are moving into a new phase. The conversation is no longer about whether the trade and climate agendas are linked, but about how we can align them in a fair manner to serve our shared goals. The perspectives from the WTO, the private sector, and our partner governments all point to the same conclusion: there is a clear demand for a dedicated, pragmatic space to do this work.

But let us remember why this work is so urgent. I want to leave you with the stark warning of the UN Secretary-General, who told the world: 

“The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived. The air is unbreathable. The heat is unbearable. And the level of fossil fuel profits and climate inaction is unacceptable. Leaders must lead. No more hesitancy. No more excuses. No more waiting for others to move first. There is simply no more time for that.”

This the critical decade to take action before action becomes reaction – when we have the chance to shape our climate future rather than respond to its consequences and spiraling costs. It is time to match words with deeds. We cannot afford to leave one of the most powerful levers for global transformation—the international trade system—on the sidelines. Let the trade and climate communities face this task in the Integrated Forum on Climate Change and Trade. Let us pull this lever together. Thank you.

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Ambassador André Aranha Corrêa do Lago is COP30 President-Designate.

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Synergies by TESS is a blog dedicated to promoting inclusive policy dialogue at the intersection of trade, environment, and sustainable development, drawing on perspectives from a range of experts from around the globe. The editor is Fabrice Lehmann.

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