UN climate summit kicks off in Brazil's Amazon with hopes for action
despite US absence
[November 06, 2025]
By ISABEL DEBRE and MAURICIO SAVARESE
BELEM, Brazil (AP) — 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% 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 mobilize 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.
Organizers 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 U.N. climate talks kick off next
week.
US absence looms over leaders’ meeting
President Donald Trump, who withdrew the U.S. 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 U.K. 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
U.S. — 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 $4 from the private sector for every $1 contributed.
[to top of second column]
|
A woman walks past a sign for the COP30 U.N. Climate Summit, in
Belem, Para state, Brazil, Tuesday, November 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Eraldo
Peres)
“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
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 $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 $10 an hour, most
love motels are charging COP30 guests $200 per night.
Activists find a forum for protest
Large-scale marches, sit-ins and rallies are essential aspects of
annual U.N. 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 U.N. 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 reveling 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 U.S.-based
International Relief and Development organization who arrived by
boat from Santarem, a city 1,200 kilometers (1,000 miles) west of
Belem.
“Brazil has a long history of social struggle and that is part of
this event."
All contents © copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved |
