Leaders from more than 30 countries — but, notably, not the US — are in the Brazilian rainforest city of Belem for the COP30 climate conference, as a new report from the World Meteorological Organization warns 2025 will be one of the hottest years on record.
Scientists expect the world to cross the 1.5C warming threshold around the year 2030, risking extreme and irreversible consequences.
In his summit address, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer reflected on how leaders gathered in Paris 10 years ago and agreed to try limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial times.
“The only question was how fast could we go,” Mr Starmer said.
“Today, sadly, that consensus is gone.”
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer says the consensus on climate change is ‘gone’. Picture: Ben Stansall – WPA Pool/Getty Images
He said opponents had argued “this isn’t the time to act, and saying tackling climate change can wait”.
“But my question is this: Can energy security wait too? Can billpayers wait? Can we win the race for green jobs and investment by going slow? Of course not,” he said.
“Inaction would only deepen these problems, drive prices higher, leave the call of opportunity unanswered, and leave our communities exposed to greater instability.”
Mr Starmer said the UK was doubling down on its efforts against climate change, saying it was “a truly collective endeavour”.
He said green policies were a “win-win”, despite opposition within the UK itself.
“The greater our collective ambition, the more progress we make in tackling the climate crisis, and the greater the opportunities we create,” Mr Starmer said.
Mr Starmer and Prince William met with young Brazilian leaders from the British Council’s Next Generation program in Belem, Brazil. Picture: Ben Stansall – WPA Pool/Getty Images
UN chief Antonio Guterres told leaders on Thursday they must confront the “moral failure and deadly negligence” of missing the 1.5C climate target and urgently correct course.
“We have failed to ensure we remain below 1.5 degrees,” Mr Guterres told the gathering of leaders.
“This is moral failure – and deadly negligence”, but that did not mean all hope was lost, he added.
Major economies are not cutting planet-warming pollution fast enough to avoid dangerous levels of global warming this century, the UN said this week, but could still speed up action to protect against the worst impacts.
Brazil hopes COP30 demonstrates that climate change remains a top global priority, even as crucial targets are missed and progress falters.
The United States is not participating int the summit, with President Donald Trump branding climate science a “con job”.
In his opening address, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of COP30 said the window to prevent calamitous climate change was “closing rapidly” and blasted the “extremist forces” condemning future generations.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (right) and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres attend on Thursday. Picture: Mauro Pimentel/AFP
The choice of Belem, a city of 1.4 million people, half of whom live in working-class neighbourhoods known as favelas, has been controversial due to its limited infrastructure, with sky-high hotel fees complicating the participation of small delegations and NGOs.
Nonetheless, Karol Farias, 34, a makeup artist who came to shop at the newly spruced up Ver-o-Peso market told AFP: “The COPis bringing Belem the recognition it deserves.”
The US absence will linger awkwardly during the summit, as will Brazil’s recent approval of oil drilling near the mouth of the Amazon River.
So, too, will the unanswered call for a wave of ambitious new climate pledges ahead of COP30.
Brazil has acknowledged the uphill battle it faces rallying climate action at a time of wars and tariff disputes, tight budgets, and a populist backlash against green policies.
In a sobering reminder of the task at hand, a closely watched vote last month to reduce pollution from global shipping was rejected under intense pressure from the United States.
The United States is notably not attending the summit. Picture: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/ AFP
Leaders gathered in Belem “need to deliver a clear mandate to the COP to be ambitious and to close the gap and to address the issues that are burning,” Greenpeace Brazil executive director Carolina Pasquali told AFP aboard the organisation’s Rainbow Warrior flagship, docked in the city.
Rather than producing a slew of new commitments, Brazil has cast the summit as an opportunity for accountability.
Brazil is launching a new rainforest conservation fund and put emphasis on adaptation, a key demand of countries which cannot afford to build defences against climate disasters.
“This is not a charity, but a necessity,” Evans Njewa, a Malawian diplomat and chair of the Least Developed Countries bloc, told AFP.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron and Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at the bilateral meeting in the framework of the COP30 UN Climate Change Conference in Belem. Picture: Ludovic Marin/AFP
These countries want concrete detail on how climate finance can be substantially boosted to $1.3 trillion a year by 2035 – the estimated need in the developing world.
The hosts are also under pressure to marshal a response to the 1.5C failure. Even if all commitments are enacted in full, global warming is still set to reach 2.5C by century’s end.
“For many of our countries, we won’t be able to adapt our way out of something that overshoots over two degrees,” Ilana Seid, a diplomat from Palau and chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, told AFP in October.
They, among others, want to tackle fossil fuels and push for deeper cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.
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