Conference brings together leaders amid pressure for more ambitious measures and marks new attempt to align global efforts against global warming
A climate meeting begins this Monday (10) in the city of Belém, in the state of with an attempt to save global efforts to combat global warming. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva resisted all objections and the city of Belém will welcome almost 50,000 people during the event, despite the lack of hotels and rising prices.
The event’s ambition: for the world to open its eyes to the Amazon and for COP30 participants to experience tropical life in Belém, a city where residents carry umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun in the morning and the rain in the afternoon.
“We want the world to see the real situation of the forests, the largest river basin on the planet and the millions of inhabitants of the region”.
The Amazon, whose trees play an essential role against climate change by absorbing greenhouse gases, suffers from the impacts of deforestation, illegal mining, river pollution and violence against its indigenous populations.
Diplomatically, Brazil has been preparing COP30 for a year. But in the logistics area it is behind. Several pavilions were still under construction Sunday at the conference center. “There is great concern about whether everything will be ready in time,” a source close to the UN told AFP. “Connections, buses, we even fear a lack of food for the participants,” he added.
Path map
But the biggest uncertainty is knowing how the world will respond to the latest disastrous projections for the climate and, as always, money. How can we raise the necessary amounts to help countries hit by cyclones or droughts? The hurricane that devastated Jamaica last month, the most violent in nearly a century, is evidence of the need.
Lula also proposed a “road map” for the progressive abandonment of fossil energy. The pledge was adopted at COP28 in Dubai, but currently faces renewed support for the oil industry, particularly since the election of the US president, a climate change skeptic.
“Are we going to reach a consensus (on fossil energy)? It’s one of the mysteries of COP30”, admitted André Correa do Lago, Brazilian president of the conference, on Sunday.
I’m Trump
For 30 years, member countries of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change, adopted at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, have been negotiating to strengthen the climate regime. The effort resulted in the Paris Agreement in 2015, which commits the world to limit warming to 2°C compared to pre-industrial times and to continue efforts to contain it to 1.5°C.
But the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, acknowledged that it is “inevitable” that the limit will be exceeded soon and called for the adoption of all necessary measures to ensure that it lasts as short as possible. And this involves reducing greenhouse gas emissions, mainly caused by the combustion of oil, gas and coal.
The group of small islands is fighting for the need to formulate a response to this failure to be included on the agenda this Monday. “1.5°C is not just a number or an objective, it is a question of survival,” Manjeet Dhakal, advisor to the group of least developed countries at the COP, told AFP. “We will not be able to support any decision that does not include a discussion of our failure to avoid 1.5°C.”
The United States, the largest economy on the planet and the world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China, is not participating in climate meetings for the first time in history. Trump, who calls the of the “biggest farce” in history, he does not completely ignore COP30: on Sunday, he denounced on his social network the “scandal” of deforestation in the Belém region to recently build a road.
Faced with the increase in climate denialism, several leaders, such as French President Emmanuel Macron, called last week, at a summit prior to the event, for the defense of “science over ideology”.
*With AFP
