Under the Canopy: COP30 Begins in Belém as the World Argues Over the Future
Belém is heat and humidity and the scent of grilled fish rising from the markets. It is a city where the rainforest breathes just beyond the last row of concrete, where mornings begin with chorus frogs and evenings with sudden tropical downpours that turn the streets glossy and reflective. It is here, on the edge of the Amazon, that the global climate debate has been dropped like a stone into a still pond—sending out concentric ripples of urgency, anger, hope and, yes, stubborn denial.
The UN climate summit, COP30, opened in this sultry northern Brazilian city with a colorful Indigenous ceremony—feathered headdresses, ceremonial songs, hands pressed together in traditional greeting—followed by a speech that landed like thunder from President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He did not mince words. “The Amazon is not a backdrop for speeches; it is the heart of the climate crisis and the lungs of the world,” he said, calling out those who dismiss science and discredit institutions. The message was as much theatrical as it was political: this summit would be both a showcase and a battleground.
Absence, Presence, Contradiction
Yet the circus and the seriousness exist side by side with a striking absence. The United States—the world’s largest oil producer and still the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases—arrived without a full federal delegation at the ministerial level. Instead, governors, mayors and state officials have flown in to fill some of the gaps. California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, was among those taking the podium, saying, “You cannot write the story of the climate era without us—subnational governments are showing what is possible.” He pledged cross-border partnerships and investments in clean energy technology, a reminder that climate action is multilayered if not always coordinated.
That partial absence matters. COPs are where fragile agreements are forged; where finance for adaptation is hammered out; where legal language is debated until midnight. When a heavyweight nation is not present at the top table, it changes negotiation dynamics and raises questions about political will. “We don’t need theatrical attendance, we need commitments,” said Dr. Amina Kante, a climate policy researcher from Senegal. “Presence without policy is symbolic. Policy without presence is maybe worse.”
The Science Cannot Be Negotiated
Inside the cavernous conference halls—where translators’ booths glow red, where negotiators huddle around laptops and coffee-stained documents—the science feels immediate and unambiguous. The UN’s top climate scientists have warned that a temporary crossing of the 1.5°C threshold is now likely, a milestone that previously seemed avoidable only with deep and immediate emissions cuts. That warning is not apocalyptic poetry; it is a straightforward reading of trends. Sea levels are rising, hurricanes and storms are gaining intensity, and communities that have contributed least to the problem are already paying the costs.
“Small island states are not asking for dramatic language for the sake of drama,” said Maina Vakafua Talia, speaking for Tuvalu in impassioned tones. “This is survival language. If we stumble at 1.5°C, many of our islands may become uninhabitable within decades. We need action, not platitudes.”
Numbers That Haunt
Organizers report just over 42,000 delegates—scientists, politicians, campaigners and journalists—packed into Belém for two weeks. That is fewer than some recent COPs; the reason seems plain. Sky-high accommodation prices and limited hotel rooms in the city have kept many would-be participants away. For a negotiation that requires face-to-face bargaining, that shortage is not merely inconvenient; it’s an impediment to equitable participation.
Meanwhile, market shifts are threading an unlikely optimism through some corridors. Renewables have surged in capacity across the globe and, in recent reporting, overtook coal in electricity generation—a milestone industry analysts had long viewed as improbable so quickly. “The market is moving,” Simon Stiell, the UN climate chief, said. “Technology, investor appetite and policy incentives are aligning, and that is a hopeful thing.”
Where Money Meets Morality
But the conference quickly returns to the knottier business of money. How do rich countries finance adaptation in poorer ones? Who pays for loss and damage when storms wipe out livelihoods? These are not academic questions for delegations from Malawi, Bangladesh, or the Pacific islands; they’re existential. “Our 44 countries did not light this fire, but we are bearing its heat,” said Evans Njewa, chair of the Least Developed Countries bloc. “We expect reparative finance, not moral speeches.”
At the same time, oil-rich states continue to wield significant power. Fossil fuel producers have traditionally resisted explicit language on phasing out oil and gas. A tentative breakthrough at COP28 nudged the global conversation toward a “transition away from fossil fuels” for the first time, but the phrase remains porous—open to interpretation, and therefore vulnerable to backpedaling.
The Human Texture
Walk the perimeter of the conference and you will find more than negotiators. There’s a woman from the riverside quarters selling açaí bowls who pauses to ask what the talks will mean for her flooded neighborhood. There’s a youth activist from Manaus, chanting outside the venue: “We are the forest, we must be heard.” An elder leader from an Indigenous group quietly tells a reporter that protecting the Amazon isn’t only about carbon math; it’s about the stories and medicines that will vanish if the trees go.
“They speak of carbon, but who speaks of our rivers?” she says, with a look that marries weariness and defiance. “We have sat with this forest for generations.”
So What Now?
Belém will be wet—both from the sky and from heated debate. Negotiators will work long into the nights, sometimes with the steady percussion of tropical rain acting like a metronome. The outcome will likely be a patchwork: some progress, some compromise, and, inevitably, some unresolved tensions that will carry forward to the next summit.
But for a moment, for two weeks, the world’s attention is focused where it can do the most good: on a place that literally helps breathe for the planet. The stakes are intimate and global at once. How will we balance national interests against collective survival? How will markets, law, technology and morality align to reduce the worst harms of warming?
What do you, reading this from a city far from Belém, think should happen next? Is it realistic to expect a global consensus when geopolitics pulls in so many directions, or is local action—cities, states, communities—where real change will be born? The rainforest would probably answer simply: act now, with respect for those who live closest to the land.
Belém will wet its streets. Diplomats will file out exhausted and hopeful. And the forest will wait, patient as ever but not indefinitely. The question for us is whether that waiting will be rewarded with the decisive action the planet needs—or whether we will leave another summit with eloquence but insufficient consequence.
