BELEM, Brazil — World leaders gathering this week for the annual United Nations climate summit in Brazil won’t need to see much more than the view from their airplane window to sense the unimaginable stakes.
A carpet of emerald green surrounded by meandering rivers surrounds the coastal city of Belem. But the view also reveals barren plains: about 17% of the Amazon’s forest cover has disappeared in the past 50 years, swallowed up by farmland, logging and mining.
Often called the “lungs of the world” for its ability to absorb vast amounts of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that warms the planet, the biodiverse Amazon rainforest is increasingly being choked by wildfires and cleared by cattle ranching.
It is here, on the edge of the world’s largest tropical rainforest, that Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva hopes to convince world powers to mobilize enough funds to halt the ongoing destruction of threatened climate-stabilizing tropical rainforests around the world and make progress on other critical climate goals.
Organizers hope this year’s Conference of the Parties – known less formally as COP30 – will bring financial commitments and measures to support the goals set at previous such meetings, and bill it as an “Implementation COP”. However, they will have to overcome the reduced participation of the world’s biggest polluters, as the heads of the world’s three biggest polluters – China, the United States and India – will be notably absent.
The tension is on display Thursday ahead of the start of formal UN climate talks, which kick off next week’s preliminary meeting of leaders.
President Donald Trump, who pulled the US out of the Paris climate accord the same day he took office, will not be sending any senior officials. China will send its Deputy Prime Minister Ding Xuexiang.
That leaves the rest of the summit leaders – including British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and French President Emmanuel Macron – facing not only the consequences of the intensifying global climate crisis, but also a daunting set of political challenges.
Advocates and diplomats have expressed concern that the absence of the US – which has at times played a key role in persuading China to curb carbon emissions and provide finance for poor countries – could signal a more global retreat from climate policy.
“Trump’s stance affects the entire global balance. It pushes governments further towards denial and deregulation,” said Nadino Kalapucha, a spokesman for the Kichwa Amazonian 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, has called man-made climate change a “socialist hoax,” threatened to withdraw from the Paris accord and pulled Argentine negotiators from last year’s summit in Azerbaijan as part of what he described as a reassessment of climate policy.
Lula, who has presented himself as a champion of climate diplomacy and has been widely praised for reducing deforestation in the Amazon, hopes to use the conference to advance key climate goals, unlike the summits of the past two years that have drawn legions of oil, gas and coal executives to the major oil-producing countries of Azerbaijan and the United Arab Emirates.
On Thursday, he is expected to launch an initiative called the Tropical Forests Forever Fund, which aims to support more than 70 developing countries that have pledged to protect their rainforests. The COP’s official website describes the initiative as a “permanent trust fund” that would generate about $4 from the private sector for every dollar added.
“We will go through negotiating the rules to implement,” Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira told reporters late Wednesday. “This will be a moment when global leaders face the challenge of climate change honestly.”
But Brazil is also a major oil producer and there are many contradictions. Despite his good climate, Lula has sparked outrage over his decision to grant state oil company Petrobras a license to explore for oil near the mouth of the Amazon River.
“I don’t want to be an environmental leader,” Lula said on Tuesday. “I never claimed to be.
The city of Belem, with a population of 1.3 million, had just 18,000 hotel beds before preparations for the conference, which typically attracts tens of thousands of delegates, environmentalists, corporate executives, journalists and other members of civil society.
Foreign officials and journalists scrambled to book rooms as prices soared to exorbitant heights. Some had reserved seats on one of the few docked cruise ships brought to a nearby port for the occasion.
Public schools, military installations, and even the local Internal Revenue Building were equipped with air conditioning and bunk beds to become makeshift dormitories. More daring or thrifty attendees can pay $55 a night to crash in hammocks at the facility, which normally caters to cats.
“Some two-legged creatures also deserve our generosity,” Eugênia Lima, 59, owner of a local cat hotel that stopped accepting feline guests to entertain them during COP30. “I’m very proud that the world will be watching us this month.”
Belem’s “love motels” also made money by the hour, luring government officials and climate scientists into rooms that would otherwise house prostitutes or couples in need of privacy. Usually $10 an hour, most love motels charge guests COP30 $200 a night.
Large-scale marches, sit-ins and rallies are staples of the annual UN climate talks, but the previous three summits have been held in autocratic countries that ban most forms of protest. Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan followed UN rules that facilitate pre-approved protests in a walled area of the venue that is not covered by local laws.
Brazil is a different story. Even before the start of the leaders’ summit on Wednesday, protesters were reveling in their much-lost freedom. Young activists, indigenous leaders and climate fighters sailed into Belem on vessels equipped with giant protest banners.
“Action, justice, hope,” read one sign strung between the sails of a ship belonging to the environmental group Greenpeace. “Respect the Amazon” is another. Dozens of people disembarked after several days’ journeys down the river to gather along the coast.
“The ability to protest and dialogue is a great thing about this COP,” said Laurent Durieux, a researcher with the US-based International Relief and Development, who arrived by boat from Santarem, a town 1,200 kilometers west of Belém.
“Brazil has a long history of social struggle and that is part of this event.”
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