June 3, 2025

COP30: Climate change and population adaptation

ILM columnist Mike Redwood explores the challenges of climate adaptation, urban design and leather’s role in a shifting world ahead of COP30 in Brazil.

I have never heard of Carlo Ratto or attended a Venice Architectural Biennale and, although it seems impossible that I will make it, this year’s is the one I want to visit. For Carlo Ratto has made climate and population adaptation central to this year’s event.

We really must recognise how much of our small planet is a built environment. When I joined the Pittards Tannery in the mid-1980s and asked my team to join me in looking at the potential impact of big global changes, I was told it was foolish to think society would accept a change in the British landscape. But change it has, just as it has done for thousands of years, as our ideas ever evolve about how and where to live, travel, holiday, eat, work and entertain ourselves.

On top of the direct impacts of human activity, we now struggle to deal with the indirect consequences such as biodiversity loss and climate change. Over the winter months where I live, we had floods; more than in living memory. Yet now, as we enter June, we are watching crops failing after three months without meaningful rain; some parts of the United Kingdom already have drought warnings, and everyone is being careful.

COP30 in Brazil

COP30 is being held this year in Belém, Brazil. I first visited Belém in 1978 to visit a new tannery and found a delightful city. In 1886, it was visited by the famous British tanner Charles Booth, who also established the Booth Group Shipping Line and pioneered the first passenger-cargo steamer service between Europe and the Amazon.

Charles Booth was heavily involved in the design and building of the Manaus harbour, towing some pontoon parts across the Atlantic from the UK – one of the biggest early developments (the more recent airport was another) that created such huge change in Amazonia; for both good and evil.

The Brazilian diplomat André Aranha Corrêa do Lago will lead November’s meeting, and the leather industry will be involved because the rather “colonialist” EUDR law on forest products still names leather as a derived product. Deforestation and the Amazon will be a major subject, including forest protection, zero deforestation by 2030 and nature-based solutions. Other areas will include fossil fuels and emissions reduction, just transition and adaptation and resilience.

No doubt the representatives in our industry, who have done so well to produce and develop the Leather Manifesto and get involved in higher-level discussions with governments and powerful NGOs, will be ahead in their thinking. This is essential, as the U.S. withdrawal from support of climate change actions and renewable energy has empowered other countries to slide on commitments.

It is not clear what the U.S. administration really believes about climate – other than weather changes are not man-made – or what its expectations are that future technological discoveries might save the planet. Perhaps live on Greenland, or Mars, but as Ratto is reported as saying, we would probably prefer to stay on Earth whatever the conditions than go to Mars: so, adaptation is essential.

This means that as well as the short-term battles over government wrong thinking about leather, the industry must learn more about animal husbandry and develop some opinions. Grass-fed cattle and feedlot cattle are not always poles apart, but with opinions polarised it is hard to ascertain the truth. In some parts of the world, grass-fed involves bringing animals in during the winter months, whereas in other areas, or with different breeds, cattle get despatched to the high terrains to live and give birth on their own. Like climate change, this is complicated stuff: the industry will need guidance.And we should remember that it is often the smaller, more dispersed, regenerative farmers whose hides are the least economical to fit into a collection system, so are getting lost to the tanning industry; feedlot hides are always gathered. Once the smaller abattoirs cannot sell or even get hides collected, they will buy hide shredders to put them into a rendering chain instead.

There are some major points involved. Temperature is rising faster in Europe than elsewhere and is already impacting animal husbandry in the south. We are seeing frequent years with 1.5°C average temperature rises, but a slip to 2°C will pull in major raw supplying countries such as Australia and the USA. New questions will be asked about our food supply and priorities for land.

Livestock and trees

Livestock and trees work well together, with the trees giving welcome shade and livestock improving the soil and helping with carbon sequestration. Corrêa do Lago will know of the 2016 paper by de Oliveira Silva et al. showing that increasing beef production using cattle to improve the quality of the grassland Cerrado could lower Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions. But actions of the previous administration imperilled this, and the potential climate benefits of more efficient grazing and beef production in Brazil remain largely unrealised.
Well-managed grasslands, especially those planted with Brachiaria grasses, can sequester significant carbon in the soil, reducing overall emissions. The paper demonstrated the Cerrado to be largely in poor condition, requiring grazing.

If deforestation is halted and pasture productivity is increased, beef production could help lower Brazil’s national emissions by maximising carbon storage in grasslands. At one stage, Brazil’s national climate plans included targets to restore degraded pasture and promote integrated crop-livestock-forest systems by 2030, indicating a shift toward more sustainable management.

There are similar situations to be found throughout Africa where proper pasture management—avoiding overgrazing, abandonment or fires—would make a big climate contribution. So, if this faltering Brazilian approach can be resurrected and maintained, everyone will gain.

Deforestation is about reducing emissions and restoring ecosystems, as is the adaptation and resilience being shown in Venice. How do we adjust urban living to create a thriving community rather than just box-check water fountains and tree planting; and where will leather fit to support these new resilient ecosystems?

Michael Redwood

Leather chemist, writer, and advisor on responsible leather manufacturing and material strategy. This article was originally written for ILM.