On Thursday morning (13), Guilherme Bastos, coordinator of the Agribusiness Study Center at Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV Agro), participated in the event Transparency and Responsible Trading, held at the Instituto do Homem e Meio Ambiente da Amazônia (Imazon) space during COP30. The session, organized in partnership with Norway's International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI), explored pathways toward more transparent and sustainable international trade, bringing together representatives from global organizations.
Participants included representatives from the Norwegian Embassy, Imazon, Instituto Clima e Sociedade (iCS), IPAM, Imaflora, World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Amigos da Terra, World Resources Institute (WRI), and other institutions.
During his presentation, Bastos highlighted a project developed in partnership with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science (CAAS), which will be funded by NORAD. The initiative aims to create a research platform to share results of joint analyses between teams and institutions, focusing on promoting sustainable routes for soy and cattle.
“At the event, we clarified that the idea is not to define or replace trade protocols, but rather to assess and review existing ones, as well as provide technical support for creating new protocols to promote these routes. This way, we closed an important scope: validating actions between the two countries to foster these sustainable routes,” said Bastos.
The researcher also presented other initiatives aimed at platform transparency, such as the alliance with the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) and CCarbon/USP, which seeks to clarify emission and removal factors in tropical agriculture. Another point addressed was coordination among research institutions and think tanks, such as the Agriculture and Climate Intelligence Network (RIAC), supported by the Instituto Clima e Sociedade (iCS), forming a network focused on agroclimatic intelligence that is generating studies on the relationship between agriculture and climate change.
Additionally, Bastos presented the Climate Risk Center project, an evolution of a study funded by the Instituto Clima e Sociedade (ICS), which analyzed the impact of climate change on second-crop corn productivity. The proposal now is to expand to other crops, allowing estimation of climate change impacts in monetary terms in case of inaction.
“This will provide a clear picture of the need for public and private policies to promote changes in agricultural practices, as well as expanding rural insurance,” he explained.
Finally, Bastos emphasized the importance of compensation for environmental services provided by rural producers, especially for surplus legal reserves. This compensation serves as an incentive to prevent expansion into areas they could legally exploit. For this, market signals are needed, starting with Brazil-China exchanges, with government and Chinese consumer incentives to promote these measures.
As an example, he mentioned the China-Beef Protocol, which establishes the import of cattle slaughtered under 30 months of age. This protocol brought economic, technical, and environmental benefits to Brazilian farms, as China was willing to pay more for cattle slaughtered under these conditions.
“With increased supply, this premium has decreased, but it still exists. This is an example of how economic incentives can accelerate sustainable changes,” he concluded.
Full coverage of Fundação Getulio Vargas’ participation in COP30, including agendas, exclusive content, and contributions from the institution’s researchers to global climate action, is available on the FGV Climate Agenda Platform. The opinions expressed in this publication are the sole responsibility of the contributing researchers and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Fundação Getulio Vargas.