Paraguay’s President Skips UN Climate Conference

The Weekly Post | 10.11.25

Santiago Peña at COP28 in Dubai. (Photo: Agencia IP)

TOP STORY

COP out

COP30 is officially underway in the Amazonian city of Belém. A decade on from the Paris Agreement, this year’s UN climate conference urgently seeks to renew the global pact on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Also on the table is the need to funnel billions of dollars in adaptation financing towards developing countries like Paraguay, who contribute relatively little to global heating but face worsening drought, flooding, and extreme temperatures.

Yet Paraguay’s participation in the negotiations looks set to be minimal, Consenso reports. President Santiago Peña was absent from a top-level opening summit convened by Brazilian president Lula on Friday, as were the leaders of Mexico, Uruguay, Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, China, India and the United States. Asunción will be represented at the talks beginning today by environment ministry MADES. A full list of the Paraguayan delegation was yet to be publicly released at time of writing, although previous years have seen heavy representation by agribusiness and none for Indigenous groups.

COP30 will seek to renew the faltering international agreement on restraining global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, which the UN warns is becoming “virtually impossible”. An emerging additional focus is on protecting tropical forests via a $125bn fund. But geopolitical tensions, especially over Venezuela, are dividing the region at this critical moment.

THE PARAGUAY POST ANALYSIS:

Peña normally jumps at the chance to fraternise with foreign dignitaries. Last week saw him host a “historic” multi-day trip by the Prince of Monaco, whose population (38,000) barely outstrips that of Villarrica. But alongside ideological differences with Lula, the climate is low on his government’s agenda: despite Paraguay being one of Latin America’s most exposed countries to global heating.

The Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative ranks Paraguay 101st out of 180 countries for overall climate vulnerability: better than Central American and Andean nations, but worse than Chile or Uruguay. According to the IPPC, Paraguay forms part of the “Southern Cone Drylands” cluster, where temperature extremes are projected to increase fastest in South America. Under a mid-range emissions scenario, the mercury will rise on average by between 2.5 and 3.5 °C by 2050.

The World Bank identifies the beef, soy, corn and cotton agro-export sectors as a key vector for vulnerability via drought: agriculture accounts for 30 percent of GDP and more than 40 percent of jobs. Low water levels will not only affect shipping – the Paraguay and Paraná Rivers carry some 80 percent of the country’s foreign trade – but reduce generation and revenues from the Itaipú and Yacyretá hydroelectric dams. Life will become unbearable in swathes of the country without air conditioning: further eroding Paraguay’s rapidly dwindling energy surplus.

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POLITICS

Municipal movements

• Last night, Daniel Mujica was proclaimed mayor of Ciudad del Este in a landslide. The hand-picked candidate of Miguel Prieto – who was removed as mayor in August after a corruption probe, triggering new elections to see out the final year of his term – romped to victory with 68.5 percent of the vote versus 28.3 percent for Colorado Party candidate Roberto González Vaesken. “When the opposition unites, we can win wherever,” Prieto told cheering supporters. “I promise you, in 2028 we’ll win the presidency.”