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Igor Patrick

China has reportedly declined, for the time being, to make a financial contribution to Brazil’s flagship rainforest protection mechanism, arguing that developed nations should take the lead in global climate financing.
The position, reported by Brazil’s newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, frustrated hopes in Brasília that the world’s second-largest economy would become a major early backer of the Tropical Forests Forever Facility, or TFFF.
Chinese negotiators told their Brazilian counterparts that Beijing supported the fund in principle but referred to the idea of “common but differentiated responsibilities”, according to the report, which cited people involved in the negotiations.
The concept, enshrined in the UN climate framework since 1992, holds that wealthy nations should bear the primary burden for financing and emissions reductions because they built their prosperity on fossil fuels.


That argument has long guided China’s approach to international climate talks. Since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, Beijing has argued that its developing-country status exempted it from donor obligations. It has often resisted joining multilateral funds as a donor, preferring to say that its role lies in domestic emission cuts and technology transfers rather than direct financing.
The same reasoning appeared again at Cop30 in Belém. Chinese Vice-Premier Ding Xuexiang told delegates that “developed countries must take the lead in cutting emissions, honour their financial commitments and provide stronger technical and capacity-building support to developing countries”.
Launched during the summit, the TFFF is the centrepiece of Brazil’s agenda. The fund is structured as a permanent endowment to pay countries that keep tropical forests intact. It combines public and private investment, with Brazil, Indonesia, Norway, Portugal and France among the first contributors. The target is US$125 billion, of which US$5.5 billion has already been pledged.
China praised the initiative but kept its distance from the list of donors. People familiar with the discussions said Beijing’s delegation supported the idea politically but stopped short of financial commitments.
Last week, Brazilian Finance Minister Fernando Haddad reacted to questions about why China was not announcing an investment by defending the need for patience.
“Each country has its own pace,” he said in Belém. “This project is still in its early stages. Even for us, it took two years before we could make Brazil’s first pledge.” He said China’s interest in the fund was genuine but that joining such a mechanism “was not a trivial matter”.
The Chinese Embassy in Brazil did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the refusal to invest in the TFFF.
China’s cautious stance came just days after its State Council released a white paper titled “Carbon Peaking and Carbon Neutrality: China’s Plans and Solutions”.
The document, issued on Saturday, set out Beijing’s road map for reaching peak carbon emissions before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060.
It repeated the same principle that Chinese officials invoked in Belém, stating that China would act “in line with the principle of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities”.
The 78-page document described what officials called the world’s most comprehensive carbon reduction framework. China has built the largest renewable energy network and the fastest-growing base of solar, wind and hydropower capacity, according to the report.
The paper also connected Beijing’s domestic climate goals to its diplomacy, noting that the Belt and Road Initiative has shifted toward greener priorities, with clean energy and infrastructure projects in more than 100 partner countries.
By restating the “common but differentiated responsibilities” principle, the white paper portrayed China as a developing nation acting within its means while pursuing ambitious climate targets.
It said Beijing sought to build “a fair and rational global climate governance system for win-win results through cooperation” and had shown “the highest possible ambition” in its national climate plan.
For Brazilian officials, that argument might have been technically defensible but politically inconvenient.
As the host of Cop30, Brazil had invested significant diplomatic capital in making the TFFF a crucial part of the summit’s legacy. Securing China’s participation would have given the fund not only financial heft but also symbolic weight, bridging the divide between developing economies and established powers.

But not all is lost. A source told the Post on Monday that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva planned to ask Xi Jinping directly for financial support during the G20 summit in South Africa later this month.
Lula hoped to move the conversation beyond public endorsements and secure a concrete investment, one aide said. The same request, according to the aide, had already been raised when he met Ding Xuexiang on Wednesday in Belém.


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China won’t back Brazil rainforest fund, points to rich nations’ lack of support: reports

An angler fishes across from the Wujing Power Station in Shanghai. China won’t back Brazil’s key rainforest initiative for the time being. Photo: AFP

China’s Deputy Prime Minister Ding Xuexiang and Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva meet in Belem, Brazil. Photo: AFP

Cop30: the world’s moment of truth

Illustration: Craig Stephen

A drone image shows the Amazon rainforest and the city of Belem in the background ahead of Cop30, at Ilha do Combu, Brazil on August 10. Photo: Reuters

An aerial view of a former cattle ranch being reforested in the Amazon region near Mae do Rio, Para, Brazil in 2024. Deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon have halved. Photo: AFP

China, India and Brazil set to steer global climate change agenda at Cop30

US President Donald Trump holds up a sign reading “Trump Digs Coal” in 2017, the year he first pulled out of the Paris Agreement on climate change. Photo: AFP/Getty Images/TNS

A ministerial preparatory meeting in Brazil, on October 13 ahead of the Cop30 climate summit. Photo: Reuters

A herder cools off his cattle in a river during a hot day in Peshawar, Pakistan, last month. Pakistan is among the countries likely to be worst hit by heatwaves, research shows. Photo: EPA

Activists demand climate action along a 7-metre inflatable capybara outside a Cop30 venue in Brasília on Tuesday. Photo: AFP

A solar farm in western China’s Qinghai province in July. China achieved its wind and solar capacity target six years ahead of schedule last year. Photo: AP

Asia confronts new climate reality at Bangkok summit amid global setbacks

Philippine Coast Guard personnel walk past a fallen electric post toppled at the height of Severe Tropical Storm Bualoi, during clearing operations in Romblon town, central Philippines on September 26. Photo: Philippine Coast Guard / AFP

A man rests under a water misting system to cool down on a hot day in Tokyo on September 6. More than 100,000 people in Japan were sent to hospital this summer with heat stroke. Photo: AFP

Women sit on a hill overlooking the Suralaya coal power plant in Cilegon, Indonesia. Photo: AP

A Buddhist monk and local residents wade through a flooded street in Songkhla province last year. The World Bank has warned Thailand could lose between 7 and 14 per cent of its GDP by 2050 to “floods, heat stress, water shortages and coastal erosion”. Photo: AFP

Climate change made damage from Super Typhoon Ragasa significantly worse, study warns

The storm caused extensive damage, estimated to cost billions of US dollars, in southern China. Photo: Xinhua

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A deadly dust storm blankets Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar in March 2021. Mongolia experiences dozens of sandstorms every year, with the most severe occurring in the spring and early summer. Photo: Xinhua

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Beijing says wealthy countries should shoulder more responsibility as Lula prepares personal appeal to Xi at the G20 summit in South Africa


Beijing says wealthy countries should shoulder more responsibility as Lula prepares personal appeal to Xi at the G20 summit in South Africa.


China won’t back Brazil rainforest fund, points to rich nations’ lack of support: reports

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Beijing says wealthy countries should shoulder more responsibility as Lula prepares personal appeal to Xi at the G20 summit in South Africa

Beijing says wealthy countries should shoulder more responsibility as Lula prepares personal appeal to Xi at the G20 summit in South Africa