Two cruise ships float in the expanded port near Belém in northern Brazil, set up to house more than 10,000 participants at this year’s climate summit. Between 40,000 and 50,000 people — including heads of state and government from nearly 200 countries — are expected for COP30 to negotiate stronger climate action. With hotel rooms scarce and expensive, Belém even converted strip clubs and multi-story steamboats into lodging.
Belém’s selection as host is symbolic: it sits on the edge of the Amazon, a region crucial to regional and global climate stability but ravaged by fires, droughts and shifting rainy seasons. The Amazon faces a deforestation crisis while local communities confront some of Brazil’s deepest poverty. As extreme weather becomes more frequent and severe from fossil-fuel driven warming, low-income communities suffer disproportionate impacts — a pattern reflected globally.
Implementing climate mitigation and emission reductions
President Lula has called COP30 a “conference of truth,” stressing the need to confront climate realities; Brazil also frames the event as a “conference of implementation.” That urgency is warranted: no single country is currently on track to limit warming to the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal. Adaptation is set to be a major focus in Belém, as societies and ecosystems already face escalating climate impacts and require concrete measures to reduce harm.
Developing and vulnerable nations are pressing rich emitters for much more finance, arguing that those with greater historical emissions must help pay for adaptation and loss and damage. Unlike mitigation, adaptation lacks widely agreed targets; vulnerable countries want indicators to assess whether adaptation efforts actually reduce risks and build resilience.
Another central issue is updated national pledges. Parties to the Paris Agreement were to submit new climate targets by September, but by November COP President André Corrêa do Lago reported that fewer than 70 countries had done so. “We are frustrated,” he said, noting missed deadlines and unfulfilled commitments.
Brazil’s chance to lead amid global uncertainty
For Lula’s government, hosting COP30 is an opportunity to demonstrate that sustainable development and economic progress can go together and to take leadership on the world stage. Global geopolitical tensions — from trade disputes to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza — have strained multilateral cooperation on climate. The United States’ earlier withdrawal from the Paris Agreement under Donald Trump and subsequent rollbacks of protections have also complicated global momentum.
Observers and expectations
Analysts say a credible host that inspires confidence is important. Climate Action Tracker’s Niklas Höhne emphasizes the need for leadership that reassures all countries. Brazil plans to launch the Tropical Forest Forever Facility: a fund seeded with public money and topped up by private investors that would reward countries taking steps to protect tropical forests. Payments would benefit nations that conserve forests, with at least 20% earmarked for Indigenous communities. The initiative aims to mobilize about US$125 billion, though how much can be pledged in Belém remains uncertain.
Germany, China and shifting roles
Germany is projected to miss its target of climate neutrality by 2045 and is moving to expand fossil gas infrastructure while weakening commitments to renewables — trends that worry observers given Germany’s influence in the EU. If the EU does not lead, analysts ask, who will? China has been stepping into a more prominent role among major economies, but experts like Jan Kowalzig of Oxfam doubt Beijing will push others toward greater ambition if it conflicts with national interests.
What negotiators want
Campaigners and developing-country advocates urge concrete ambitions, clear technology transfers, and tangible financing rather than rhetoric. Mohamed Adow of Power Shift Africa says what’s needed from Belém are “concrete ambitions, concrete technology transfer, not the usual platitudes.”
This article was originally written in German.
