UN climate summit kicks off in Brazil's Amazon with hopes for action despite US absence

Belem (Brazil) | World leaders descending on the United Nations annual climate summit in Brazil this week will not need to see much more than the view from their airplane window to sense the unfathomable stakes.

Surrounding the coastal city of Belem is an emerald green carpet festooned with winding rivers. But the view also reveals barren plains: some 17 per cent of the Amazon's forest cover has vanished in the past 50 years, swallowed up for farmland, logging and mining.

Often called the “lungs of the world” for its capacity to absorb vast quantities of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that warms the planet, the biodiverse Amazon rainforest has been increasingly choked by wildfires and cleared by cattle ranching.

It is here on the edge of the world's largest tropical rainforest that Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva hopes to convince world powers to mobilise enough funds to halt the ongoing destruction of climate-stabilizing tropical rainforests in danger around the world and make progress on other critical climate goals.

Organisers are hoping this year's Conference of Parties — known less formally as COP30 — will yield commitments of money and action to support the goals laid out at previous such meetings, billing it as the “Implementation COP.” But they'll have to overcome reduced participation from the world's biggest emitters as the heads of the world's three biggest polluters — China, the United States and India — will be notably absent.

These tensions are on display as a preliminary leaders' gathering gets underway on Thursday before formal UN climate talks kick off next week.

US absence looms over leaders' meeting

President Donald Trump, who withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords the same day he entered office, won't send any senior officials. China will send its deputy prime minister, Ding Xuexiang.

That leaves the rest of the summit's leaders — including UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and French President Emmanuel Macron — to confront not only the consequences of an intensifying global climate crisis but a daunting set of political challenges.

Advocates and diplomats have raised concerns that the absence of the US — which has at times played a key role in convincing China to restrain carbon emissions and securing finance for poor countries — could signal a more global retreat from climate politics.

“Trump's stance affects the whole global balance. It pushes governments further toward denial and deregulation,” said Nadino Kalapucha, the spokesperson for the Amazonian Kichwa Indigenous group in Ecuador. “That trickles down to us, to Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, where environmental protection is already under pressure.” Trump's close ideological ally, President Javier Milei of Argentina called human-caused climate change a “socialist hoax,” threatened to quit the Paris Agreement and pulled Argentine negotiators out of last year's summit in Azerbaijan as part of what he described as a reassessment of climate policy.

Brazil illustrates climate dilemma

Lula, who has presented himself as a champion of climate diplomacy and has been widely praised for reducing deforestation in the Amazon, is hoping to use the conference to push forward action on key climate goals, in contrast to the summits of the past two years that drew legions of oil, gas and coal executives to the major oil-producing nations Azerbaijan and the United Arab Emirates.

He's expected to launch on Thursdays an initiative called the Tropical Forests Forever Fund, which aims to support more than 70 developing countries that commit to rainforest preservation.

The official COP website describes the initiative as a “permanent trust fund” that would generate about USD 4 from the private sector for every USD 1 contributed.

“We will go past the negotiation of rules to implementation,” Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira told reporters late Wednesday. “It will be the moment when global leaders face with honesty the challenge of climate change.” But Brazil is also a major oil producer, and contradictions abound. Despite his climate bona fides, Lula has drawn outrage over his decision to grant state oil firm Petrobras a license to explore oil near the mouth of the Amazon River.

“I don't want to be an environmental leader,” Lula said Tuesday. “I never claimed to be.”

Logistical headaches for Brazil

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A town of 1.3 million inhabitants, Belem had just 18,000 hotel beds before its preparations to host the conference, which typically draws tens of thousands of delegates, environmentalists, company executives, journalists and other members of civil society.

Foreign officials and journalists scrambled to reserve rooms as prices surged to surreal heights. Some booked spots on one of a few docked cruise ships brought into a nearby port for the occasion.

Public schools, military facilities and even the local Internal Revenue Building have been outfitted with air-conditioning and bunk beds to become makeshift hostels. The more adventurous or frugal participants can pay USD 55 a night to crash in hammocks in a facility that normally caters to cats.

“Some two-legged creatures deserve our generosity, too,” Eugênia Lima, the 59-year-old owner of a local cat hotel that stopped accepting feline guests to seize on spiking demand during COP30. “I am very proud that the world will be looking at us this month.” Belem's by-the-hour “love motels” have also cashed in, luring civil servants and climate scientists to rooms that would otherwise host prostitutes or couples in need of privacy. Usually USD 10 an hour, most love motels are charging COP30 guests USD 200 per night.

Activists find a forum for protest

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Large-scale marches, sit-ins and rallies are essential aspects of annual UN climate talks, but the previous three summits have taken place in autocratic nations that outlaw most forms of protest.

Egypt, the UAE and Azerbaijan complied with UN rules that facilitate pre-approved protests within a walled-off part of the venue not subject to local laws.

Brazil is a different story. Even before the start of the leaders' summit, on Wednesday demonstrators were revelling in their much-missed freedom. Youth activists, Indigenous leaders and climate campaigners sailed into Belem on vessels outfitted with giant protest banners.

“Action, justice, hope” read one sign strung between the sails of a boat belonging to environmental group Greenpeace. “Respect the Amazon” read another. Dozens disembarked after multi-day river journeys to rally along the coast.

“Being able to protest and dialogue is a great thing about this COP,” said Laurent Durieux, a researcher at the US-based International Relief and Development organisation who arrived by boat from Santarem, a city 1,200 kilometres west of Belem.

“Brazil has a long history of social struggle and that is part of this event.”