This second panel discussion on Day 2 of the two-day COP30 event, Delivery on Human Needs in the 21st Century, focuses on accelerating solution provider within a human-needs–driven climate agenda. Speakers emphasise shifting away from narrow emissions-reduction frames toward flourishing lives, highlighting start-ups as key actors in delivering better futures. The discussion covers innovation, the critical role of cities, and the need for purpose-driven entrepreneurship. Brazilian, Indian and Swedish perspectives illustrate challenges and opportunities in scaling climate and social-impact solutions, including regulatory barriers, capital gaps, ecosystem fragmentation, and the necessity of cross-sector collaboration. Participants stress the importance of demand-driven approaches, local context, adaptation and resilience, and new tools to bridge start-ups with corporates, governments and territories. Purpose, sustainability and scalability emerge as core attributes for successful solution providers, with calls for global cooperation and action to support emerging-market innovators.
Speakers
· Rosana Jamal, Co-founder and board member investor, Unicamp, BAITA
· Pedro Camarote, Technical advisor, GIZ Brazil
· Vanessa Ware, Key Partner Manager, Ignite, Sweden
· Manoj Kumar, Founder, Social Alpha
· Marco Duso, Partner, EMEIA Sustainability Leader, Strategy & Transactions, EY-Parthenon
Chaired by Dennis Pamlin, Executive Director, FL4ALL & Senior Advisor, RISE.
Dennis Pamlin
· Frames the session around human needs, flourishing lives, and avoiding “fossil-free versions of old systems.”
· Highlights findings from the new report showing Brazil’s potential to export gigaton-scale solutions and improve over one billion lives.
· Critiques traditional climate approaches focused on guilt, backward-looking reductions, and deterministic pathways.
· Stresses startups’ role in shifting systems—energy, mobility, food, culture—and urges open-ended, future-oriented innovation.
· Emphasises purpose, passion, and meaningful societal contribution as drivers for entrepreneurs and youth.
Marco Duso
· Notes that COP discussions increasingly centre on real-world solutions rather than negotiations.
· Argues that local governments and cities are crucial climate actors as national ambition weakens.
· Warns against deterministic net-zero scenarios; innovation pathways are unpredictable and must stay open.
· Cites differing technology trajectories (e.g., batteries accelerating; hydrogen struggling).
· Encourages countries and organisations to build on unique capabilities such as Brazil’s bioeconomy strengths.
Rosana Jamal
· Explains three core metrics for successful start-ups: purpose, sustainability / financial resilience, and scalability.
· Describes the difficulty of scaling solutions across regions with different regulations, environments and market conditions.
· Notes that customers often are not ready for innovation unless clear operational value exists.
· Emphasises the need for patient capital, careful international expansion, and strong soft-landing processes.
· Highlights the growing importance of AI across sectors and the need for cross-disciplinary talent and university alignment.
Vanessa Ware
· Explains Ignite Sweden’s demand-driven matchmaking model connecting start-ups with corporates and municipalities.
· Highlights cases where start-ups helped cities reduce unnecessary investments or scale social-impact services.
· Notes the value of unexpected matchmaking, revealing hidden needs and new markets for start-ups.
· Stresses visibility of both solutions and needs, and the value of adaptive approaches in new cultural contexts.
· Shares insights from multi-stakeholder needs-identification exercises, showing municipalities are often more ready to act on citizen-centred innovation.
Manoj Kumar
· Emphasises innovation for adaptation and resilience, especially for smallholder farmers and micro-enterprises in the Global South.
· Highlights that climate impacts are already severe for vulnerable populations and require contextualised solutions.
· Describes India’s full-stack “lab-to-deployment” innovation architecture, driven by entrepreneurs rather than traditional intermediaries.
· Argues that climate action is shifting from global conferences to ground-level implementation.
· Notes the misalignment of global capital, which still flows primarily to mitigation and industrial decarbonisation rather than adaptation.
Pedro Camarote
· Describes Brazil’s Climate Innovation Hub and its focus on climate-tech start-ups, especially those impacting the Amazon.
· Identifies barriers including regulatory complexity, capital mismatch, ecosystem fragmentation and lack of self-identification among climate-tech founders.
· Stresses the importance of connecting big-city innovation infrastructure with territorial innovators.
(Audio translations and summaries by ChatGPT 5.1)