Fiona Harvey
Ministers and high-ranking officials from nearly 200 countries have gathered in the Amazonian city of Belem to discuss how to rein in the climate crisis, before catastrophic levels of global heating become inevitable, writes Fiona Harvey, Guardian environment editor.
On Sunday, carpenters and builders were still hard at work in the conference centre where the Cop30 UN climate summit will take place, unpacking boxes and erecting pavilions where countries will show off their commitment to tackling greenhouse gas emissions and shifting to a low-carbon economy.
By Monday, the pomp and ceremony were ready to begin. There is an element of deja vu here – world leaders have already visited Belem, jetting in last week to this same conference centre to join in round tables about climate action, preserving forests, boosting biofuels and ensuring social justice while the climate crisis bites.
More than 50 heads of state and government or their deputies took part in that “leaders’ summit” segment, on 6 and 7 November, including the UK’s Keir Starmer, the EU’s Ursula von der Leyen, and Germany’s Friedrich Merz. (Donald Trump, of course, has withdrawn the US from the Paris climate agreement and did not attend; nor did Russia’s Vladimir Putin; Xi Jinping of China and Narendra Modi of India also skipped the summit but have made friendly overtures to Brazil over Cop30.) They have all now departed and left the stage to their negotiating teams.
Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, attends an engagement at Museo Emilio Goeldi, meeting youth from the British Council’s Next Generation Brazil Photograph: Victoria Jones/Shutterstock
But these are climate talks with a difference. Brazil is refusing to countenance the standard form of tortuous negotiations that have characterised the last 30 years of nearly annual “conferences of the parties” (Cops) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the parent treaty to the Paris climate agreement, that was signed in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro.
Those were characterised by long and bitter sessions, often stretching late into the night, where negotiators re-stated entrenched positions for days on end before finally – sometimes – reaching a compromise conclusion that some present would frequently seek to back track on immediately afterwards.
Instead, Brazil insists, this will be “the Cop of implementation”. That means the real world impact of measures to combat the climate crisis today will take precedence over longwinged discussions of future promises.
“Negotiations need consensus,” said Andre Correa do Lago, president of Cop30. “But implementation is countries choosing what they want to do and executing what they have said they are going to do.”
The problem with that approach is that countries which chose to do very little may be able to get away with it. How Brazil intends to combat that tendency is yet to be seen.
The main outcomes of this Cop, instead of being a list of pledges as has become usual, are more likely to be a collection of “roadmaps” covering the key issues: a roadmap on finance, which has already been published; a roadmap on how to transition away from fossil fuels; a roadmap on how to scale up low-carbon energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with the target of limiting global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
On some of these issues, it may not be possible to produce the final roadmap at this Cop – in the case of the transition away from fossil fuels, for instance, what is more likely is that a forum could be set up that will continue for several Cops before reporting.
Cop30 will cover enormous ground – from the future of energy, to the future of climate finance, to the need for social justice to accompany climate action. It will involve ministers, diplomats, local government officials, scientists, businesspeople, Indigenous people and representatives of all forms of civil society, from nearly every country in the world. Issues including health, biodiversity, nature, wildlife, water, the oceans, transport, migration, food, gender and technology will all be addressed at some point across the two weeks of talks.
The problem Cop exists to solve could scarcely be more urgent: scientists are warning that, as temperatures rise faster than at any point in at least 24,000 years, the world stands on the brink of a series of “tipping points” that could pitch us into greatly accelerated heating and unstoppable climate catastrophe.
But one question will dominate overall: the question of whether the collective will to solve this problem exists. Can the world come together, despite geopolitical headwinds and open conflict, despite the forces of division fanned by populism, despite the global tide of climate disinformation, despite influential voices claiming the climate somehow matters less than it did before the populists took over – and show the unity, mutual respect and spirit of cooperation that are desperately needed, if we are to face this existential threat?
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Damian Carrington
Stopping the destruction of forests is key to ending the climate crisis, which means making trees more valuable standing than chopped down for timber, beef, soy or palm oil. With Cop30 taking place on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, the world’s biggest tropical forest is an obvious focus for summit hosts Brazil, writes our environment editor Damian Carrington.
But it’s not all about the Amazon. The second biggest rainforest, in the Congo basin in Africa, is also vital. It’s huge – bigger than India. A new assessment from 180 scientists says the Congo Basin absorbs about 600 million tonnes more of planet-heating carbon dioxide a year than it emits. In a press release the scientists said:
That figure makes it the most carbon beneficial rainforest in the world But data shows that figure has been coming down in recent years largely due to badly managed deforestation.
The Congo Basin also acts like Africa’s continental water-pump, they said, creating rain clouds that travel thousands of kilometres to fall as rain that will flow down the Nile all the way to the Mediterranean. And it’s a paradise for wildlife too, with 10,000 plant species and unique intact communities of chimpanzees and bonobos – humankind’s closest relatives. Prof Bonaventure Sonké, who co-led the report, said: “The Congo Basin is the Earth’s most important but least studied tropical rain forest.”
So it’s good news that, led by Gabon and France, a group of nations at Cop30 have backed a plan to raise $2.5bn by 2030 to protect the Congo Basin rainforest.
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Updated at 12.05 EST
The F word: fossil fuels
In today’s statement, the 25 UN special rapporteurs also repeated calls made by climate justice activists for years now, that the UNFCCC ban fossil fuel lobbyists from the climate negotiations.
We reiterate the need to curb the presence of fossil fuel lobbyists at the Climate COP, and ensure transparency, public participation, meaningful dialogue with civil society, and effective protection of environmental human rights defenders and their associations. These are all necessary conditions for more effective and just climate action.
On Friday, we published exclusive research by the Kick Big Polluters Out Coalition that illustrated why this matters.
More than 5,350 lobbyists representing the interests of the oil, gas and coal industries were allowed to participate in the previous four climate summits. These lobbyists, who were allowed to mingle with world leaders and climate negotiators, worked for at least 859 fossil fuel organizations including trade groups and 180 oil, gas and coal companies involved in every part of the supply chain from exploration and production to distribution and equipment.
The figures do not even include fossil fuel representatives on official country delegations or those on behalf of other major polluting industries such as industrialized agriculture, aviation, and Big Tech.
So why do they come? Just 90 of the fossil fuel corporations including ExxonMobile, Chevron, BP and Petrobas which sent some of the highest number of lobbyists, accounted for 57% of all the oil and gas produced last year – and almost two-thirds of all short-term upstream expansion projects which are gearing up for exploration and production.
The fossil fuel companies – and other polluting industries – send representatives to the climate negotiations in order to influence climate policy. Advocates and many climate vulnerable countries want them kicked because they have been successful in helping to delay and block meaningful climate action for decades. Adilson Vieira, spokesperson for the Amazonian Work Group, said:
This information clearly exposes corporate capture of the global climate process … the space that should be about science and the people has been transformed into a large carbon business hall. While forest communities fight for survival, the same companies that cause climate collapse buy credentials and political influence to continue expanding their fossil empires.”
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Updated at 11.53 EST
Hello, this is Nina Lakhani, climate justice reporter, taking over our blog from my colleague Damien Gayle for the rest of today.
This is the first UN Cop summit since the landmark climate ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in July, which clarified that all states – whether they are signed up to the Paris agreement or not – are bound under international law to to act with due diligence to prevent, mitigate and remedy harms to the climate system.
The ICJ judges rejected arguments from high polluting countries who opposed the case spearheaded by Vanuatu – including the US, UK, China, the EU, Russia and Saudi Arabia – that their obligations were limited to the consensus based climate regime, that is the UN framework convention on climate change, Kyoto protocol and Paris agreement.
Rather, the ICJ affirmed that every person has a human right to a “clean, healthy and sustainable” environment – a prerequisite for enjoying universal foundational rights such as life, health, food, water and housing. The court also confirmed that the onus is on the industrialised wealthy countries that have contributed most to the crisis to act first.
A short while ago, 25 UN experts including the special rapporteurs on climate change, Indigenous peoples and education, and a variety of other human rights issues, released a joint statement calling for “full compliance” with the ICJ ruling, along with a ban on fossil fuel lobbyists and more transparency as crucial steps in achieving just climate action. The UN experts said:
The credibility of the climate COP30 as a whole depends on achieving a meaningful outcome on mitigation and international financial and technological cooperation, with specific reference to fossil fuels and related subsidies as the main drivers of climate change and their impacts on human rights, including health, economic equality, adequate standard of living, education, and cultural rights.
So while the big polluters may want Cop30 to be business as usual, the landmark ICJ climate ruling is clear that failing to take decisive action on fossil fuels would be a violation of international law.
So what impact could or should the ICJ opinion have on the negotiations and domestic climate policies? This is something we’ll be keeping a very close eye on throughout Cop30.
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A dozen countries have pledged to formally recognise land rights across 80 million hectares where Indigenous, Afro-descendant and other communities live in tropical forests around the world by 2030 in a bid to stem global deforestation, Reuters reports.
The Intergovernmental Land Tenure Pledge, billed as the first global commitment recognising land tenure to secure additional land under Indigenous communities’ control, was announced on Friday ahead of the Cop30 climate summit that kicked off Monday.
So far nine tropical forest nations – Brazil, Costa Rica, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ecuador, Fiji, Indonesia, Pakistan and Tanzania – have signed the commitment with more countries expected to follow, a pledge document showed.
The document, a final version of which is expected to be released on 17 November, states land rights and protection should be strengthened in another 80 million hectares that have already been formally recognised.
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Brazil’s Cop30 president formally opens the climate summit
Jonathan Watts
Brazil’s Cop30 president, the veteran climate diplomat André Corrêa do Lago, has formally declared the conference open, writes Jonathan Watts, the Guardian’s international climate editor.
Echoing a statement made by Brazil’s president in the run-up to the climate talks, do Lago said Belém would be the “Cop of Truth” and stressed the importance of urgency, given the growing impact of climate disasters, most recently in Brazil, the Philippines and Jamaica.
He said the Cop process was making a difference, but needed to move faster: “Remember that the Paris Agreement 10 years ago was at the time when it was predicted that we would exceed four degrees of temperature and today we know that we reduced it. But we also know that we have to work hard to reduce it more.”
Brazil’s Cop30 president, Andre Correa do Lago, at the opening ceremony of Cop30 in Belem, Brazil. Photograph: Adriano Machado/Reuters
Setting out the host’s priority for the world to accelerate implementation of commitments and policies, do Lago said he hoped “this would be an adaptation Cop, a Cop that will advance the integration of climate into the economy, job creation activities and most of all a copy that will listen and believe in science.”
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, stressed the importance of emissions reductions during this Cop, even though it is not on the formal agenda. “We need a road map so that humanity…can overcome its dependence on fossil fuels,” he said.
He stressed the importance of reducing deforestation and putting people at the heart of climate action, particularly indigenous communities.
Lula launched a fierce attack on those who spread fear and attacked science – an apparently veiled reference to Donald Trump, the US president, who has constantly called climate action a “hoax” and bullied smaller nations into weakening action on maritime emissions.
In a defence of the Paris Agreement, he said the world would be doomed to catastrophic warming of 5C by the end of this century if it were not for multilateral negotiations. “We are moving in the right direction,” he said, but emphasised the need for more urgency in implementation of policies.
Delegates watch the opening plenary of Cop30 in Belem, Brazil. Photograph: António Lacerda/EPA
Despite the criticism of the high prices and logistical challenges of hosting a COP in the Amazon rainforest, he said the host city had done an exceptional job. “I hope the serenity of the forest inspires in all of us much-needed clarity of thought,” he concluded.
Mukhtar Babayev, Azerbaijan’s minister for ecology and the president of the previous Cop in Baku, passed the baton to Brazil at the opening session of COP30.
He stressed the importance of building on the climate finance commitments made last year, when wealthy nations agreed to provide $300bn annually by 2035, with a broader aspiration to scale this up to 1.3trillion a year with support from private sources.
“Delivering the Baku finance goal will be essential to success,” he said. “We ask vulnerable Communities to accept the limits of how much support they could expect. Now in eagle measure we see the donors deliver in full with developed countries taking the lead.”
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Dharna Noor
While the Trump administration is steering clear of Belém this month, Dharna Noor, Guardian US fossil fuels and climate reporter, last week wrote that dozens of US subnational leaders are planning to attend to promote their climate efforts.
“Whatever our nationalised policy is or isn’t, the people on the ground locally are getting it done, committing to partnerships and economic development that will last generations and create the kind of clean energy future we are all relying on,” said New Mexico’s governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, on a press call.
Grisham, who addressed reporters from from a pre-Cop30 summit in Brazil, will travel to the negotiations with more than 100 other state and local US leaders. Organized by the subnational climate coalitions America Is All In, Climate Mayors, and the US Climate Alliance, the group will also include the Wisconsin governor, Tony Evers, Phoenix mayor, Kate Gallego, and others.
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Updated at 10.33 EST
Oliver Milman
The US’s absence in Belem is notable, writes Oliver Milman, Guardian US environment correspondent. There is no official American pavilion alongside those of other major powers, no government officials, not even embassy help for the few US members of Congress who have attempted to get here amid a shutdown in Washington.
Given the hostility of the Trump administration to any sort of climate action, though, many diplomats are privately relieved that the US is staying away. They have feared a repeat of the bully-like tactics that the US recently used to stymie planned rules to curb planet-heating emissions from the shipping sector.
The Trump administration could show up and cause some fireworks next year, though, according to Chris Wright, the US energy secretary. Speaking at a business summit in Greece on Friday, some 5,000 miles away from Brazil, Wright said he may attend next year’s Cop “just to try to deliver some common sense.”
“It’s essentially a hoax. It’s not an honest organisation looking to better human lives,” Wright told the Associated Press of the Cop gatherings.
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Aseel Mousa
Mana Omar, executive director and founder of the NGO Spring of the Arid & Semi-Arid Lands (Sasal) in Kenya. Photograph: Courtesy of Mana Omar
Mana Omar, 29, is the Executive Director and Founder of Spring of the Arid & Semi-Arid Lands (Sasal) and a dedicated advocate for climate justice and gender equality among Kenya’s indigenous pastoralist communities, writes Aseel Mousa, Guardian reporter.
She will be attending COP as an individual representing her organisation, continuing her active engagement in climate negotiations since COP27 in Egypt. Her motivation to participate in this year’s COP — hosted in Brazil — stems from its focus on indigenous issues.
As an indigenous woman from Kenya, I am passionate about amplifying African indigenous voices, which I feel are often overlooked compared to those from Latin America. Through my public speaking, advocacy, and media engagement, I work to ensure that African indigenous perspectives are recognized and included in global climate discussions.
Mana’s primary area of focus is climate finance, particularly the Loss and Damage Fund.
Adaptation alone is insufficient for communities already suffering from severe climate impacts. In Kenya’s arid and semi-arid regions—covering around 83% of the country—prolonged droughts, failed rains, and rising temperatures have devastated agriculture and livestock, leading to cascading social challenges such as income loss, reduced access to education, gender-based violence, and mental health issues.”
Despite my commitment, I often feel frustrated with COP’s outcomes. I see a systemic exclusion of those most affected by climate change from key decision-making spaces, and even the Loss and Damage Fund’s board largely represents high-emission countries. Although I remain skeptical about seeing immediate progress, I still believe in the long-term power of persistent advocacy and collaboration among those who share the same vision for justice and inclusion.
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Updated at 10.13 EST
Jamaica’s former climate change director calls for hurricane accountability
UnaMay Gordon, former director of climate change for the government of Jamaica, had some strong words for big polluters on the opening day of Cop30.
The climate summit comes as huge parts of Jamaica lie devastated by Hurricane Melissa, a category five storm with winds up up to 185mph (298km/h) that slammed into the Caribbean island last month.
Last week team of scientists reported that they had found that every aspect of Melissa, the most powerful hurricane ever to hit Jamaica, was made worse by climate breakdown.
A drone view of the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa, in Black River, Jamaica, last week. Photograph: Raquel Cunha/Reuters
“Every single Jamaican now knows the words catastrophic loss,” Gordon, now a senior associate at the International Institute for Environment and Development.
Within a day of Melissa’s passing, Jamaica became the world’s symbol of climate devastation. [Cop30] therefore needs to prove to the world that it is a symbol of climate action.
I am here to ask where the accountability is. I am here to ask who should pay, the people responsible, we are asking you to take responsibility and start to pay up. While the US is not here, there are a lot of major emitters here on the ground and they have to stop talking, they have to help us to survive.
When we fought for 1.5C [at the Paris climate summit in 2015], we were fighting for our survival. That was 10 years ago and we are still fighting for survival. Every single life lost is your responsibility.
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Updated at 10.16 EST
Fiona Harvey
Governments failing to shift to a low-carbon economy will be blamed for famine and conflict abroad, and will face stagnation and rising inflation at home, the UN’s climate chief warned at the start of the Cop30 climate talks, writes Fiona Harvey, Guardian environment editor.
Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of the UN framework convention on climate change, addressed the gathering of ministers and high-ranking officials from nearly 200 countries, in a stark portrayal of the price of failure on the climate crisis.
Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of the UN framework convention on climate change, addresses the Cop30 opening plenary. Photograph: Adriano Machado/Reuters
“Not one single nation among you can afford this, as climate disasters rip double digits off GDP,” he warned. “To falter whilst mega droughts wreck national harvests, sending food prices soaring, makes zero sense, economically and politically. To squabble while famines take hold, forcing millions to flee their homelands, this will never be forgotten, as conflicts spread.”
He told the opening meeting of the UN climate summit: “When climate disasters decimate the lives of millions, when we already have the solutions, this will never, ever be forgiven.”
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Updated at 09.38 EST
