Introduction

Historically, regional organizations in Latin America have dealt with climate change only marginally. This is not a complete surprise given the role of the regional level in the discussion and implementation of social policies, but it contrasts with the centrality of this topic at the bilateral and multilateral levels of the (foreign) policymaking of Latin American countries and their participation in international regimes and agreements (Bianculli & Ribeiro Hoffmann, 2016). Despite the recent period of ‘paralysis’, Latin American regional organizations have been very active in the region in the last decades, and over time most of them have incorporated the language of sustainable development and have planned activities in related topics under the umbrella of environmental issues, such as the management of natural resources and environmental education; some have considered or incorporated socio-environmental conditionalities and impact assessment requirements in the allocation of funding as well as in trade agreements with third parties. However, there are very few analyses of these initiatives and their effects. Considering the perspective of a renewed cycle of regionalism ahead and at the same time the rapid deterioration of ecosystems in Latin America and the Caribbean (WMO, 2021), it is vital to deepen the understanding of the possibilities and limitations that regional organizations can play in addressing the challenges of climate change. This chapter aims to contribute to this objective by discussing the role of key regional organizations in the region, namely, the Southern Cone Market (MERCOSUR), the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), the Forum for the Progress and Integration of South America (PROSUR), and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).

The first section of the chapter maps and analyses the norms, agendas, and initiatives implemented by these regional organizations in the field of the environment and climate change. The second section compares the aims and achievements of these regional organizations, as well as the key actors promoting and hindering further commitments. The final section reflects on the findings and elaborates recommendations based on the premise that climate change should be a key area in a new cycle of regionalism following the period of paralysis and disintegration that culminated in the end of the decade of 2010s. The empirical research draws on the secondary literature and official documents and makes use of the concepts of path dependence and unintended consequences from historical institutionalism (Pierson, 1996; Skocpol Pierson, 2002) to understand the trajectories and promises of Latin American regional organizations to tackle environment challenges and climate change.

Latin American Regional Organizations’ Environmental and Climate Change Normative Framework and Agendas

MERCOSUR

MERCOSUR was created in 1991 by the Treaty of Asunción, concluded by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Venezuela became a full member in 2012 but was suspended in 2016. Given its territorial conditions, one would expect that the organization would have incorporated commitments in environment from early on: Brazil alone has ca 65% of the Amazon Forest; member states have some of the biggest reserves of water, including the Aquifer Guaraní, and the rivers Amazonas, de la Plata, Paraná, and Paraguay. The thousands of kilometres of coast also make the region key to the fishery management, and the Andean Mountains are one of the richest areas in biodiversity (Vergara, 2022). The Asunción Treaty refers to the environment in its Preamble, as part of its objectives: ‘Considering that the expansion of the current dimensions of their national markets, through integration, is a fundamental condition for accelerating their processes of economic development with social justice; Understanding that this objective must be achieved by making more effective use of available resources, preserving the environment, improving physical interconnections, coordinating macroeconomic policies and complementing the different sectors of the economy, based on the principles of gradualness, flexibility and balance’.Footnote 1 Albertin de Morais et al. (2012) note that this wording could have provided the legal basis for the creation of an environment regulatory framework to MERCOSUR, but there was no consensus for further commitments then. Stuhldreher (2012) also calls attention to underlying disagreements: ‘the difficulties of coordination became evident when the Additional Protocol to the Treaty of Asunción on the Environment was not agreed upon and was not supported by Argentina’ (p. 196).

These authors argue that the motivation for the gradual inclusion of environmental matters in MERCOSUR came from the engagement with the multilateral level and the realization of the UN Conference on the Environment and Development in Rio, in 1992. In this sense one of the first documents addressing the environment was the ‘Canela Declaration of the Presidents of the Southern Cone Countries Prior to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development’ (Declaração de Canela dos Presidentes dos Países do Cone-Sul Prévia à Conferência das Nações Unidas sobre Meio Ambiente e Desenvolvimento) from 1992.

In 1994, the Common Market Group (GMC) created, through GMC Resolution 22/92, the special meeting on the environment (Reunión Especializada del Medioambiente (REMA)) with the objective of analysing the environmental legislation of its member states and adopting measures to environmental protection. GMC Resolution 62/93 tasked the REMA to develop a timetable for the elimination of nontariff barriers related to the environment. In 1994, REMA elaborated the Basic Directives for an Environmental Policy in MERCOSUR (Diretrizes Básicas), approved by the Common Market Group (CMC) as Resolution n° 10/1994. After the establishment of the permanent institutional structure of MERCOSUR by the Protocol of Ouro Preto, in 1994, MERCOSUR created the Subgroup of Environment (Subgrupo de Trabalho em matéria ambiental (SGT) n° 6) and extinguished REMA.

In 2001, a key legal instrument was approved, the ‘MERCOSUR Framework Agreement on Environment’ (Acordo-Quadro do Meio Ambiente) (Decision CMC n° 2, 22/06/2001), establishing the objective of achieving environmentally sustainable social economic development and stating the commitment of member states to implement the international agreements and ratify the Rio Declaration and Agenda 21. The 2001 Agreement established the objective of harmonization of national legislation, but not the creation of supranational regulation. Moreover, it defined a sectorial approach to cooperation in the following: sustainable management of natural resources (wildlife, forests, protected areas, biological diversity, biosafety, water resources, fish and aquaculture resources, soil conservation), quality of life and environmental planning (basic sanitation and potable water, urban and industrial waste, hazardous waste, dangerous substances and products, protection of the atmosphere/air quality, land use planning, urban transport, renewable and/or alternative sources of energy), environmental policy instruments (environmental legislation, economic instruments, education, information, and communication, control instruments, impact assessment, accounting, management of companies, technologies, information systems, emergencies, valuation of environmental products and services), and environmentally sustainable productive activities (ecotourism, sustainable agriculture and cattle ranching, corporate environmental management, sustainable forest management, sustainable fishing) (op.cit., 369).

In 2003, the meeting of MERCOSUR Environment Ministers (Reunião de Ministros do Meio Ambiente do Mercosul (RMMAM)) was created (CMC Decision No. 19/03) upgrading the political cooperation to the ministerial level. The Ministerial Meeting and the SGT6 are until today the key institutions dealing with the environment and climate change in MERCOSUR. Currently the SGT6 has eight ad hoc groups: Ad Hoc Group on Environmental Waste Management and Post-consumer Liability, Ad Hoc Group CyMA (Competitiveness and Environment), Ad Hoc Group on Combating Desertification and Drought, Ad Hoc Group on Environmental Goods and Services, Ad Hoc Group on Biodiversity, Ad Hoc Group on Air Quality, Ad Hoc Group on Environmental Management of Chemicals and Substances, and Ad Hoc Group on the SIAM, the Integrated Information System.Footnote 2 In 2004 the Additional Protocol to the Framework Agreement on the Environment was established (CMC Decision 14/04) with the objective of guiding cooperation projects and assistance in the case of environmental emergencies (Protocolo Adicional em Matéria de Cooperação em Emergências Ambientais).

Despite the existence of this normative and institutional framework, Stuhldreher (2012) argues that regionalism, especially after the 2000s, had a negative effect in the environmental agenda. The lack of priority given to environmental issues such as in the 2004–2006 Work Program (CMC/Dec. N° 26/03) is a case in point. She states that it has no expression or transversal mention of the environmental commitments in economic and social policies and focused rather on cooperation programs in Science and Technology and physical and energy integration (Stuhldreher, 2012, p. 197). In fact, despite the change of approach in MERCOSUR with the ‘pink tide’ from a trade driven to a post-liberal perspective and the development of a social agenda in areas such as education and health, the environment and the climate change agenda were not prioritized in the organization (Briceño-Ruiz & Ribeiro Hoffmann, 2015).

Stuhldreher (2012, 196) also claims that only in the context of the preparations for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development Rio+20 and the Cancun Summit on Climate Change some advancements were possible: during the X Meeting of Ministers of the Environment, in 2009, guidelines were proposed for a cooperation project on adaptation to climate change, and during the XI Meeting, in 2010, it was agreed to draft a common document on the progress made since Rio 1992, as well as to encourage social movements to contribute with proposals. Monteiro et al. (2021, 4) also highlight the positive role of the preparations of global-level meetings to the establishment of commitments at the regional level, especially since 2015 with the establishment of Agenda 2030, the Sustainable Development Goals, and the Paris Agreement. Vergara (2022, 175) shows that MERCOSUR member states increased their participation in multilateral treaties and agreements in the last decade and are all now signatories of several mechanismsFootnote 3 and that despite problems of implementation, in 2017, a renewed interest could be perceived in the topic of climate change, with the issuing of the ‘MERCOSUR Special Declaration of the Member and Associated States on the Commitment to the Paris Agreement’ and the ‘MERCOSUR Declaration on the Agenda 2030’ (op.cit., 177). This renewed interest was, however, deeply affected by the crisis of Latin American regionalism triggered by the end of the pink tide and the COVID-19 pandemic as discussed below (Nolte & Weiffen, 2020).

In addition to the effects of its member states’ participation in multilateral frameworks, the interregional negotiations with the EU have also influenced MERCOSUR’s commitments and agenda on climate change, as explored by Diz & Oliveira, and Castiglioni in this volume. The concept of sustainable development and the idea of environmental conditionality in Chapter 20 of the text of the EU-MERCOSUR agreement concluded in 2019 has been controversially debated in both regions (Sanahuja, 2020; Monteiro et al., 2021; Do Amaral & Martes, 2021), but it has not been ratified until the moment of this writing.Footnote 4

UNASUR

The Constitutive Treaty of the Union of South American Nations (Tratado Constituinte da União das Nações Sul-Americanas) was concluded by 12 states (Argentina, Bolivia, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guiana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela) in Brasília, on 23 May 2008, and entered into force on 11 March 2011. Its formal institutional structure includes the Council of Heads of State and Government, the Council of Chancellors (Ministers of Foreign Affairs), the Council of Delegates, 12 Ministerial Councils, a Pro-Tempore Presidency, and a Secretary General. Climate change and the environment were not prioritized in this structure; there was no Sectorial Ministerial Council addressing these themes directly despite transversal references. Piñeros et al. (2020, 124) argue that in addition to that, the Initiative for the Integration of South American Regional Infrastructure (IIRSA) was incorporated into the South American Council for Infrastructure and Planning (COSIPLAN) in 2011, whose purpose was the development of connectivity infrastructure along the Amazon region, as well as with the use of resources and water sources for its execution, with no considerations to the environment.

Despite this negative assessment of UNASUR’s activities in the area of environment and climate change, Piñeros et al. (2020) argue that Article 3 of its Constitutive Treaty has elements that support and guide the environmental discussions among the member countries, especially in l. ‘(g): protection of biodiversity, water resources and ecosystems as well as cooperation in disaster prevention and in combating the causes and effects of climate change and effects of climate change’. They also argue that one of the most important advances in the environmental agenda of UNASUR was the approval of the ‘Guidelines for the elaboration of a regional agenda for the sovereign management of natural resources and their use for the integral development of South America’, after the VI Summit of Heads of State and Government, 2012, but that it is indicative of the environmental issues considered a priority by UNASUR, namely, the mining sector, the hydrocarbon (energy) sector, and water resources (op.cit., 132), also evidenced in a publication with CEPAL from 2013.Another important benchmark was Secretary General Ernesto Samper’s declaration at the Paris Conference, in 2015, defining UNASUR’s strategic priorities in the area of environment and climate change, including the ratification of the Kyoto Agreement, the promotion of sustainable development through the transformation of production models, and the fulfilment of the COP21 objectives (op.cit., 132).

To summarize, UNASUR’s agenda in environment and climate change was not ambitious and was clearly hindered by its contradictions. De Oliveira, Campello, and Diz (2016, 254) argue that despite positive effects of the organization activities, the absence of a common framework of environmental protection and a sound methodology to measure the impact of IIRSA/COSIPLAN infrastructure projects, for instance, led to negative effects to the environment in the region. With the process of politicization since 2016 and the shutdown in its headquarters and homepage, UNASUR became paralysed, a situation that might change with the announced return of Brazil in April 2023.

PROSUR

The establishment of PROSUR in March 2019 is directly linked to the paralysis of UNASUR. The election of centre and centre-right Presidents in Latin American countries marked the end of the ‘pink tide’ and a new agenda for the region, in which the isolation of Venezuela was instrumental. In this context, the Declaration of Santiago for the Renewal and Strengthening of South America (Declaración de Santiago para la Renovación y el Fortalecimiento de América del Sur) was concluded by Argentina (Mauricio Macri), Brazil (Jair Bolsonaro), Chile (Sebastián Piñera), Colombia (Iván Duque), Equator (Lenín Moreno), Guiana (Ambassador George Talbot), Paraguay (Mario Abdo Benítez), and Peru (Martín Vizcarra). In the meeting at Santiago del Chile were also present representatives from Bolivia (vice-chancellor Carmen Almendra), Uruguay (vice-chancellor Ariel Bergamino), and Suriname (Ambassador Edgar Armaketo in Cuba), who did not sign the declaration though; Suriname was incorporated in 2022, the same year the Chile left PROSUR.

The Declaration established PROSUR’s main objectives as:

  1. 1.

    to strengthen and prioritize dialogue among participating countries to build a space for coordination and cooperation for greater integration and coordinated action in South America;

  2. 2.

    Promote the integral, inclusive, and sustainable development of participating countries to achieve greater well-being, overcome poverty, greater equality of opportunities and social inclusion, access to quality education, citizen participation and strengthening of freedoms and democracy.Footnote 5

The institutional structure was set by the Operating Guidelines (Liniamientos para o Funcionamento da PROSUR), approved on the 25 September 2019, by the Ministers of External Relations of the participating countries, and includes a Presidential Summit, the Meeting of Foreign Ministers, and Sectorial National Coordination as focal points for cooperation. The Santiago Declaration established five thematic areas of cooperation in 2019: infrastructure, energy, health, defence, security and combat of crime, and disaster risk management.

Piñeros et al. (2020) argue that climate change transversalities were incorporated in the areas of infrastructure and energy, but not in other associated issues such as the automotive sector and public transportation and consumer habits of waste disposal, and that the ecological problems associated with activities such as mining, oil extraction, and large-scale agriculture are minimized or reduced to the search for best practices, without a structural discussion of the effects of extractive development models. Furthermore, he argues that in the area of disaster and risk management, emphasis is placed on promoting research, development, innovation, and entrepreneurship to increase the efficiency of disaster risk, but little is said about the risks and disasters caused by economic activities that require a fundamental transformation. The environment also does not appear in the areas of defence, citizen security, and health. As an example, the security approach prioritizes transnational organized crime, illicit trafficking of drugs, etc. but does not include crimes such as trafficking and exploitation of native species, illegal mining, illegal logging, or the prevention and prosecution of crimes against authorities and environmental defenders (op.cit., 144–145).

The Declaration from the 2nd Presidential Summit, which took place on 12 December, 2020, added the area of Environment and Sustainable Development to PROSUR. A Working Group Environment was created to lead work in this area, that issued a ‘Sector plan for the Environment and Sustainable Development thematic area’ (Plan sectorial del área temática Medio Ambiente y Desarrollo Sostenible)Footnote 6 as a result of the work conducted in 2021.Footnote 7 These meetings were facilitated by the Inter-American Development Bank and the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development of Colombia in its role of Sectorial Coordinator of the Pro-Tempore Presidency. The Plan defines three subgroups, with objectives and lines of action: sustainable consumption and production patterns (SDG 12) and promotion of the bioeconomy; sustainable transport infrastructure, and environmental education, and highlights that Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Perú, and Paraguay participated more actively in the work. Not much could be found in terms of implementation of these objectives, as the region was severely reached by the COVID-19 pandemic in this period. The exit of Chile of PROSUR in 2022 and Brazil in 2023 and prospects of the revival of UNASUR have raised the question about the continuity of this organization, in a reverse process in the period when it was created.

CELAC

CELAC was established in December 2011 by the Declaration of Caracas, concluded during the simultaneous Summits of Latin America and the Caribbean on Integration and Development, and the Rio Group. CELAC includes all 33 countries from the LAC region and is defined as a mechanism of dialogue and political concertation based on consensus and the convergence of common interests to deal with common challenges. Bonilla and Álvarez (2013, 9) define CELAC as ‘a deliberative space guided by the foreign policy of Latin American countries, characterized by issuing foreign policies without hegemonic pretensions, rooted in a discursive tradition that assumes logics of non-intervention, peaceful settlement of disputes, democratization of the international order and very strong images of anti-hegemonism’, also as ‘a mechanism for the construction of identities and strategic spaces in world politics world politics’ (ibid, 8). In addition to the inclusion of Cuba and rapprochement between the subregions of South and Central America and the Caribbean, CELAC symbolizes a turning point in Mexico’s foreign policy and a closer engagement of this country with regionalism in the LAC region, so far focused on NAFTA. In addition to Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela were key drivers of the process, the latter especially, with the intention to create an alternative to US-led initiatives such as the Organization of American States (OAS) for the region to engage with the world collectively. In this sense, CELAC has established dialogues with both China and the EU early on (Ribeiro Hoffmann, 2021; Bonilla & Herrera-Vinelli, 2020).

In terms of its structure, CELAC established six main bodies, all of them taking decisions by consensus: Summit of Heads of State and Government, Meeting of Foreign Ministers, Presidency pro tempore, Meeting of National Coordinators, Specialized Meetings, and the Enlarged Troika, including the previous and subsequent presidencies pro tempore and one CARICOM member state. CELAC does not have an official website, but according to the information available at SELA’s website,Footnote 8 it has no specific institutional mechanisms or agenda to deal with cooperation in the environment or climate change. These topics are, however, addressed in CELAC declaration and action plans issued by the Pro-Tempore Presidencies.Footnote 9 There is also evidence of joint statements and positions at the multilateral level such as the statement by Costa Rica at the UNFCCC COP20 in Lima in 2014 and preparations to the 2015 Paris Summit. The 2015 EU-CELAC Action Plan includes sustainable development, environment, climate change, biodiversity, and energy as significant areas of cooperation; see Castiglioni in this volume.

The most recent Action Plan from the Argentinian Pro-Tempore Presidency for 2022Footnote 10 established environmental cooperation as one of its 15 priorities. The main objective of the cooperation is to support the evaluation and follow-up of the regional reality based on the monitoring framework of the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda. Among the strategies set to achieve this objective are the promotion of regional dialogue platforms to foster the exchange of experiences and good environmental practices of international cooperation programs; the commission of a study on the state of the art and the main challenges facing the region in environmental matters to ECLAC, as well as a study quantifying the region’s needs to finance its transition to a low-carbon and climate-resilient economy and to implement its national climate change and biodiversity policies; the establishment of regional dialogues that bring together staff responsible for international environmental negotiations and in charge of implementing environmental policy at the national level, in order to exchange experiences and best practices; and the promotion of synergies among the different regional forums such as the LAC Forum of Ministers of the Environment and the MERCOSUR Working Subgroup on the Environment, among others (Plano de Ação da Presidência Pro-Tempore Argentina 2021, item 11, pp. 6–7).

Comparing and Assessing the Role of RIOs in Tacking Climate Change

The mapping exercise of this paper provides information for a comparison of the agendas and activism of key regional organizations in Latin America in the areas of environment and climate change. From the point of view of historical institutionalism, (regional) institutions acquire certain characteristics over time that must be taken into consideration when assessing their potential effects: ‘historical institutionalists take time seriously, specifying sequences and tracing transformations and processes of varying scale and temporality’. Historical institutionalists likewise analyse macro contexts and hypothesize about the combined effects of institutions and processes rather than examining just one institution or process at a time. Taken together, these three features – substantive agendas, temporal arguments, and attention to contexts and configurations – add up to a recognizable historical institutional approach (Pierson & Skocpol, 2002, 3). The concept of path dependence is particularly relevant: it ‘can be a faddish term, lacking clear meaning, but in the best historical institutionalist scholarship it refers to the dynamics of self-reinforcing or positive feedback processes in a political system – what economists call “increasing returns” processes’ (Skocpol & Pierson, 2002, 6). This concept is also important to conceptualize the conditions under which change (and inertia) occur; ‘Historical institutionalists also employ timing and sequence arguments to focus on conjunctures – interaction effects between distinct causal sequences that become joined at particular points in time’ (op.cit., 8). Institutions are developing products of struggle among unequal actors and, differently from rational approaches to institutions, lead to non-intended consequences, ‘even where actors may be greatly concerned about the future in their efforts to design institutions, they operate in settings of great complexity and high uncertainty. As a consequence, they will often make mistakes’ (op.cit., 14).

It was beyond the objectives of this chapter to do a systematic application of historical institutionalism to comparatively assess the aims and achievements, strengths, and weaknesses of Latin American regional organizations in the area of environment/climate change, but based on the previous mapping, summarized in Table 1 below, two main arguments are advanced: (1) Latin American regional organizations, in particular, MERCOSUR, UNASUR, PROSUR, and CELAC do not have robust legal and institutional frameworks in the areas of environment and climate change despite variance in terms of mechanisms and focuses; (2) regional organizations have had negative effects on the environment and climate change agenda due to their underlying concepts of development and related economic activities. Path dependences and unintended consequences have therefore characterized the patterns of engagement and the attempts to include stronger environment and climate change commitments.

Table 1 Main regional normative on the environment and climate change
Full size table

Regional organizations created in the first wave of regionalism such as MERCOSUR and post-pink tide such as PROSUR have a pro-free trade agenda and did include strong (socio-)environmental impact assessments and mitigation mechanisms in their original normative. Despite the gradual inclusion of commitments in several subthemes, the environment and climate change are (still) framed as secondary to trade liberalization and have had therefore negative effects on the climate change agenda. MERCOSUR upgraded the political profile of decision-making with the creation of a Ministerial Meeting in 2003 and has addressed the topic of climate change more directly such as in the 2017 Declaration, and PROSUR added a 6th objective and a sound Sectorial Plan in 2021, but implementation is uncertain, as the region was deeply affected by a crisis of regionalism in the late 2010s, aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Organizations created during the pink tide and post-liberal and post-hegemonic periods, such as UNASUR, and the renewed ‘Social MERCOSUR’ adopted alternative approaches to development but the focusing on big infrastructure projects without effective mechanisms to mitigate (socio-)environmental impact have also incurred in negative unintended effects.

Finally, CELAC has included references to global-level commitments such as the SDGs, the Agenda 2030, and the Paris Agreement. While this organization does not have mandatory instruments, it can play an important role in establishing broad consensus in the region and with its external partners, particularly valuable in the current context of crisis of global-level multilateralism. As stated in its most recent Action Plan, CELAC encourages the synergies among the different regional forums such as the Forum of Ministers of the Environment of Latin America and the Caribbean, and MERCOSUR’s Working Subgroup on the Environment (SGT6). The Forum of Ministers of the Environment of Latin America and the Caribbean was established in 1982 and is held every 2 years. The Forum does not take place in the context of a regional organization, but it is considered the most representative and political meeting in the region and works closely with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).Footnote 11

Another relevant question is to understand who are the main actors pushing and hindering these agendas, including domestic and external state and non-state actors. It was seen that the participation of LAC countries in multilateral debates and negotiations such as the UN conferences (Stockholm 1972+, Rio 1992+) and the conferences of the parties (COPs) of the UNFCCC and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CDB) were relevant positive drivers, or favourable contexts for domestic and regional dynamism, even if often with results below the expectations. Studies about global cooperation in the environment and climate change have emphasized the role of epistemic communities (Haas, 1992, 2015).

Epistemic communities are defined as ‘networks of knowledge-based communities with an authoritative claim to policy-relevant knowledge within their domains of expertise. Their members share knowledge about the causation of social or physical phenomena in an area for which they have a reputation for competence as well as a common set of normative beliefs about what actions will benefit human welfare in such a domain’ (Haas, 2015, 4–5). Still according to Haas, epistemic communities are often interdisciplinary, and their members must share principled and causal beliefs that provide a value-based rationale for social action and analytic reasons and explanations of behaviour, offering causal explanations for the multiple linkages among possible policy actions and desired outcomes, respectively. Moreover, they must have common notions of validity and a common policy enterprise.

Stuhldreher (2012) argues that the absence of epistemic communities has been a problem for the incorporation of a strong climate change agenda in MERCOSUR: ‘Outside academia, the environment often lacked its own voice, unlike the economic and social interests expressed by the private sector, trade unions or other social organizations represented in parliaments’ (p. 200). She also calls attention to the lack of clear leadership by Brazil or Argentina given the powerful role of agribusiness sectors, despite quite strong civil society: ‘The case of Brazil is particularly interesting as it makes explicit its own conflicts around national sovereignty and the State’s power to dispose of natural resources in order to sustain economic development, on the one hand, and global co-responsibility in environmental matters mobilized especially around the Amazon, on the other. The paradoxes faced by the Brazilian state are evident here: the more it seeks to profile itself as a power with regional leadership, the greater are the expectations of the international community, so that the country is confronted with the need to assume a pioneering role in South America and to comply with ecological and social standards’ (op.cit., 201). These paradoxes were also analysed in the literature on Brazilian foreign policy and of other so-called rising states and represent a further challenge to the Latin American regionalism (Esteves et al., 2019).

Conclusions and Recommendations

The current regional historical context includes a possible ‘new pink tide’ (Farthing, 2023), the revival of UNASUR and CELAC, the realization of the 3rd EU-CELAC Summit in July 2023 after 8 years, and the possible conclusion of the EU-MERCOSUR agreement until the end of 2023. The broader global historical context includes uncertainties given the geopolitical competition between the US and China, and the war in Ukraine. This critical juncture could provide a space for a renewed regional approach to the environment and ambitious agenda to address climate change in Latin America. The leadership of Brazil under the new government of President Lula might provide an additional driver to overcome path dependencies and position the climate change agenda in a top priority of regional politics and regional organizations. Initiatives such as the empowerment of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change and the creation of a Ministry of Indigenous Peoples both led by Amazonian-born leaders, Marina Silva, and Sonia Guajajara, respectively, are cases in point.

The assessment of Latin American regional organizations’ agendas and mechanisms to address climate change presented in this chapter could be expanded to include other regional organizations such as the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO), a less studied organization in the literature of comparative regionalism but that has a concept of sustainable development and could play a key role in the Amazon region (Nunes, 2016; Filippi & Macedo, 2021), in addition to the Forum of Ministers of the Environment of Latin America and the Caribbean and the more traditional Andean Community (CAN), the Central American Integration System (SICA), and the Caribbean Community/CARICOM.Footnote 12 That said, and based on the analysis here developed of MERCOSUR, UNASUR, PROSUR, and CELAC, it is possible to highlight some recommendations for a renewed regional agenda for environment and climate change.

In terms of institutions and processes, it would be desirable to increase the participation of local states and non-state actors in the discussions and decision-making processes in the format of experts’ councils and advisory boards. Epistemic communities could be fostered by the promotion of dialogue among experts, policymakers, and regional bureaucrats. The inclusion of socio-environmental conditionalities both at the regional and interregional levels is also seen as desirable as concepts of sovereignty and non-intervention must be softened if environment and climate change challenges are to be taken seriously. The concept of autonomy is more flexible and traditionally addressed in the literature and foreign policy approaches of Latin American countries (Miguez, 2022; Briceño-Ruiz & Simonoff, 2017; Fortin et al., 2021); it can accommodate better the claims of the global south to address historical and structural imbalances with the necessity of acknowledging interdependence and a sense of common fate at the global level. Finally, the complex current regional architecture that includes several organizations with overlapping mandates and membership should be taken into consideration and generate a division of labour. Organizations including trade liberalization such as MERCOSUR and PROSUR should harmonize their commitments. Political dialogue and consensus building (concertación) can take place in all levels, but CELAC should be the key aggregator of interests and positions at the global multilateral level and interregional relations with third partners such as the EU given its broader membership.