Climate summit comes to the Amazon as COP30 opens in Brazil
Hosting the talks in the rainforest city of Belém put forests and the fate of the tropics at the heart of the agenda.
The United Nations climate summit came to the edge of the Amazon this November, as COP30 opened in the Brazilian rainforest city of Belém, a symbolically potent setting that placed the world's forests and the fate of the tropics at the heart of the global climate agenda.
Holding the talks in the Amazon was a deliberate choice by Brazil, intended to focus the world's attention on the vital role of tropical forests in regulating the climate and on the urgent need to halt their destruction. Delegates gathered near the world's largest rainforest, a region both crucial to the planet's health and under intense pressure.
The summit sought to build momentum on a range of fronts: strengthening national emissions-cutting pledges, mobilising finance for developing countries and for forest protection, and advancing the transition away from fossil fuels agreed at previous talks. Forests, finance and the gap between current pledges and the goal of limiting warming featured prominently.
The choice of venue also spotlighted the contradictions and challenges of climate action, drawing attention to the pressures facing the Amazon and the communities, including Indigenous peoples, who depend on and protect it.
As with every such summit, the talks unfolded against a backdrop of record global temperatures and mounting disasters, and amid the perennial tensions over ambition, finance and responsibility. By convening in the Amazon, COP30 underscored a central truth of the climate crisis: that protecting the world's great forests is inseparable from the effort to safeguard a liveable climate for all.