A new initiative, the Global Ethical Stocktake, launched by the President of Brazil, Lula da Silva, and the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, aims to integrate ethical considerations into climate negotiations, an aspect that has previously been omitted.
Jaded by a lack of action in previous COPs, former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, along with other influential figures such as Mary Robinson and Christiana Figueres, labelled the current climate policy process “no longer fit for purpose.”
This year’s COP president holds higher hopes than others. He is a veteran climate diplomat and serves as the current Secretary for Climate, Energy, and Environment at the Brazilian Ministry of External Affairs.
Infrastructure
He has worked with Brazil’s diplomatic corps since 1982 and has represented Brazil in similar negotiations, including as chief negotiator at Rio+20 and COP28 and COP29.
In a positive initial call to action, he has called on all stakeholders in the climate negotiations process to “act decisively in the face of climate urgency through an ambitious and integrated Action Agenda at COP30.”
The location of this year’s climate summit is highly contentious. Destroying thousands of acres of rainforest to make way for a new four-lane highway, which is intended to ease congestion for COP visitors, is a blatant contradiction. This is the very environment Brazil has pledged to protect.
Rather than addressing the concerns, classic greenwashing terms like ‘sustainable’ are being used to describe the 8-mile road. Cutting through the Amazon rainforest, the road will fragment the ecosystem, disrupt the movement of wildlife, affect the livelihoods of local communities, and be inaccessible to those who live on either side of the highway. It will, however, have bike lanes and solar-powered lights!
The lack of infrastructure in the area means that more than 30 large-scale construction projects will be taking place to accommodate and prepare for the 50,000 expected visitors. The port is being redeveloped for cruise ships, and $81 million will be spent on expanding the airport to double its current capacity.
Restrictions
After three climate conferences in countries with restrictions on protests, Amazonian leaders and social movements are wary that their participation may be discounted and silenced. Since February, Indigenous groups have been occupying the Secretary of Education and blocking roads that cut through their territories. The protests have already begun.
Brazil is also no climate leader, but rather an empire built on oil. Their vast mining, fossil fuel, and agrobusiness sectors mean that Brazil is responsible for more than 4% of total global emissions. In 2023, they emitted 2.3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases, making Brazil the world’s fifth worst polluter.
In this country of deep inequalities, the poor are disproportionately affected by climate change, including sea level rise, heat waves, and heavy, erratic rainfalls.
Just weeks before the conference begins, a new bill to dismantle Brazil’s environmental license framework was passed. It eases restrictions on oil exploration and road development in the Amazon. A self-licensing process enables fossil fuel and construction companies to act with impunity and avoid the need for impact studies and mitigation measures.
Precious
Immediately after the bill change, Petrobras, the country’s majority state-owned, scandal-ridden oil company, began drilling for oil a mere 200 miles away from Belém.
The license was previously denied due to the risk of widespread biodiversity loss in this fragile ecosystem in the event of a spill. A new report reveals that since 2024, big banks have provided $2 billion in new financing for oil and gas in the Amazon.
Estimates suggest that up to 60 billion barrels of oil may exist in the Brazilian Amazon. If burned, they could emit 24 billion tonnes of CO2 – more than Brazil’s emissions over the past 11 years. The expansion of the fossil fuel industry seriously contradicts the Brazilian government’s climate narrative and threatens the country’s credibility at COP30.
“Climate is our biggest war” says Ana Toni, chief executive of COP30. Hopes are high. Expectations are low. Change is happening, it is just painfully slow.
We need this to be the ‘delivery COP’. One thing is for sure, COP30 will be make or break for people, our precious flora and fauna, and our planet as a whole.
This Author
Rachael Mellor is a key writer for the nonprofit platform Better World Info, which focuses on global issues such as peace, human rights, environment, and social justice. Her articles are also published in The Transnational, Common Dreams, Peace News, Pace e Bene, Research Gate, SSRN, and Sonnenseite.