At COP30 in Belém, the Climate High-Level Champions, together with WBCSD and the Group of Negative Emitters (GONE), announced the launch of the CDR Mutirão—a new, multi-year collaboration platform designed to accelerate carbon dioxide removal (CDR) implementation across governments, businesses, and hard-to-abate industries. For the first time in UNFCCC history, carbon removal now has a formal place within the COP Action Agenda, marking its arrival as a critical component of the global climate response.
Why Now: A Critical Moment After 1.5°C Overshoot
The launch of the CDR Mutirão coincides with another global milestone of grave significance: the world’s remaining room for 1.5 °C has tightened to virtually zero The latest UNEP Emissions Gap Assessment makes clear that a temporary overshoot of the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C long-term warming limit is now considered virtually inevitable, likely starting within the next decade. CDR is indispensable for addressing overshoot, and therefore achieving Paris-aligned pathways, both to counterbalance residual emissions and to enable long-term net-negative trajectories. Yet most global benchmarks remain fixed on 2050 or 2100 horizons. These distant timelines do not produce the near-term decisions, investments, and learning required today.
Without rapid advancements in the next five years, CDR will remain underdeveloped, high-cost, and lacking the enabling conditions to scale in line with science-based pathways. The Mutirão directly addresses this gap by anchoring attention on the urgency of 2030 and the need for cross-sector collaboration to unlock learning curves, investment readiness, and market alignment.
What the CDR Mutirão Is: A Collective Effort for Implementation
Rooted in the Brazilian concept of mutirão—continuous mobilization through collective effort—the CDR Mutirão is designed as a structured architecture for shared learning and coordinated acceleration. It consists of three Launchpads, each focused on one of the core domains required for rapid CDR scale-up:
1. Voluntary Private Sector Demand Launchpad (WBCSD)
A cohort-based program enabling companies to make their first “learning purchases,” build credible CDR strategies, and send early demand signals to the market. The Launchpad provides business tools, capacity building, and a peer-learning environment to support adoption of removals within net-zero plans.
Dr. Jennie Dodson, Senior Director at WBCSD, said:
“We are very excited to be part of the Plan to Accelerate Action on Accelerating Carbon Removals. Through this effort, WBCSD will establish the Carbon Removal Launchpad to mobilize corporate demand for high-integrity removals. The Launchpad will create a platform for peer learning, joint procurement pilots, and standard-setting — accelerating the integration of CDR into company net-zero strategies. And critically, it will help companies build balanced removals portfolios across both nature-based and technological pathways, supporting integrity, durability, and long-term value.”
2. Government Policy & Regulation Launchpad (GONE & partners)
A structured space for national and subnational governments to discuss policy pathways and enable knowledge-sharing on topics of critical interest such as policy integration, all in order to establish enabling conditions for scale to turn ambition into action.
Asser Berling Rasmussen, Director of International Relations in the Danish Ministry of Climate, Energy, and Utilities:
“The Group of Negative Emitters (GONE) recognizes that achieving net-zero and subsequently net-negative emissions hinges on the integration of CDR at scale—not as a substitute for mitigation, but as an essential complement. Yet, global CDR deployment still remains limited, often constrained by inadequate financing and political uncertainty. GONE is a group of leading countries at the forefront of national net-negative emissions commitments and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) innovation, coming together to accelerate the needed coordination of global efforts.”
3. Industrial Integration Launchpad (Industry partners)
A technical and strategic forum supporting hard-to-abate sectors—construction, wastewater, biomass, mining, waste processing—to explore direct integration of CDR pathways into industrial facilities, value chains, and waste streams.
Together, the Launchpads create a multi-stakeholder engine for acceleration, bridging companies, policymakers, and industrial actors in a shared implementation effort.
Anchored in the 2030 CDR Implementation Target
The Mutirão supports the 2030 CDR Implementation Target, inspired by and drawing directly on existing near‑term ambition frameworks including the Mission Innovation CDR Mission, the Energy Transitions Commission’s Paris‑aligned pathways, and the High‑Level Champions’ Breakthrough Targets. These efforts collectively highlight the need for substantial deployment of both conventional nature-based removals and novel durable removal pathways by 2030. Each is critical and complementary, with nature-based systems providing rapid drawdown and co-benefits, while durable technological pathways supply the long-term, high-integrity storage essential for net-zero and net-negative transitions.
While the Mutirão does not set a prescriptive global number, it is firmly rooted in the scientific and policy consensus that the world must achieve meaningful, measurable progress on both nature-based and technological CDR this decade. The target therefore serves as a unifying frame for the kind of cross-sector action required before 2030 to remain Paris-aligned.
While the Mutirão does not set a prescriptive global number, it is firmly rooted in the scientific and policy consensus that the world must achieve meaningful, measurable progress on CDR this decade. The target therefore serves as a unifying frame for the kind of cross‑sector action required before 2030 to remain Paris‑aligned.
Exponential Growth: An Essential Trajectory
The Mutirão is informed by the scientific consensus that the world must move from millions to billions of tonnes of durable removals by mid-century—requiring exponential growth over the next 15–20 years.
Johan Falk, CEO & Co-Founder of the Exponential Roadmap Initiative, said:
“The science is clear: to get from today’s millions to the billions of tonnes of removals needed by mid-century, we need exponential growth starting now. The CDR Mutirão creates exactly the cross-sector collaboration engine required to accelerate learning, deployment, and market formation with integrity. We’re proud that the Removals Action Guide can support this effort, and we look forward to helping drive the exponential trajectory needed to keep 1.5°C within reach.”
A First for the COP Action Agenda — Paired with the Global Carbon Harvest Coalition
The CDR Mutirão launches alongside the Global Carbon Harvest Coalition, which will coordinate large-scale agricultural field trials, harmonized MRV development, and methodological readiness for market inclusion. Together, these represent the first-ever formal integration of carbon removals into a COP Action Agenda, marking a major turning point for the field.
Launch at COP30 and the Road to 2026
The CDR Mutirão was introduced at the COP30 Action Agenda session in the Blue Zone gathering leaders across sectors to outline its vision. All three Launchpads will begin full multi-year programming in early 2026, with annual reporting and collective progress milestones through 2030.
The Road Ahead
The CDR Mutirão aims to shift CDR from a future aspiration to a present-tense implementation challenge, building the peer communities, tools, and coordinated action needed to drive meaningful progress in the next five years.
Chris Sherwood, Secretary General of the Negative Emissions Platform (NEP), which hosted the first ever CDR pavilion at a COP in Belem, sees the timing of the new collaborative platforms launch in bigger picture terms: “CDR has taken its place in the central agenda of global climate action. This is an important step forward. While the challenges ahead remain daunting, the CDR Mutirão, which turns collective ambition into collective action, will help us grow CDR to the required scale and thereby begin to undo the damage done to our planet for generations.”
