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By Clár Ní Chonghaile [[link removed]] | EMEA Editor

The ‘COP of truth’

Hello from Belém, a humid port city on the edge of the Amazon and home for the next two weeks [[link removed]] to COP30, the United Nations’ annual climate summit.

I’m Clár Ní Chonghaile, Context’s Europe, Middle East and Africa editor.

Where better to discuss the planet’s future than within sight of the world’s largest rainforest, a microcosm [[link removed]] of the gravest environmental threats to our way of life?

Brazil wants this to be the “ COP of truth [[link removed]]” where countries commit to more ambitious action to cut planet-heating emissions.

Ten years after the Paris Agreement [[link removed]] to rein in climate change, we are on track to fail [[link removed]] to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), according to a recent U.N. report.

And the Amazon is showing the strain, with climate change contributing to a devastating drought and wildfires, [[link removed]] oil spills contaminating ecosystems and continued deforestation for agriculture.

My colleague Andre Cabette Fabio recently travelled to the Xingu Indigenous Park on the southeastern fringes of the Amazon, the fastest-warming region where the dry season [[link removed]] is several weeks longer than it was a few decades ago.

Drier conditions here mean thousands of people are having to adapt ancient farming practices to protect the land and produce enough food to sustain themselves.

Indigenous leader of the Celia Xakriaba tribe walks next to the Xingu River during a four-day pow wow in Piaracu village, in Xingu Indigenous Park, near Sao Jose do Xingu, Mato Grosso state, Brazil, January 15, 2020. REUTERS/Ricardo Moraes

What Andre found in Xingu is just a fragment of a larger crisis, outlined in his series on tipping points [[link removed]] facing this ecological treasure.

Even before the COP30 talks started this week, clouds of disappointment were gathering over Belém’s bright colonial-era houses and crowded baixadas, or informal settlements.

That’s because just a few weeks ago Brazil’s state-run oil company Petrobras was authorised to drill [[link removed]] in the deep waters near the mouth of the Amazon River.

The move has piled pressure on President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is keen to portray himself as a climate leader [[link removed]], said Andreas Sieber from the anti-fossil fuel group 350.org.

“Brazil now is in a situation where they have to prove a point,” he told me. “We expect bold diplomatic leadership from them.”

The country hoped to showcase that leadership with the launch of the Tropical Forest Forever Facility [[link removed]] (TFFF), a multilateral funding mechanism to support forest conservation, as leaders met ahead of COP30 in Belém last week.

But Thursday’s launch felt a little underwhelming. The fund is meant to raise around $125 billion in sovereign and private sector contributions, but on Thursday pledges only amounted to around $5.6 billion.

“It is the ultimate test of whether nations - especially wealthier ones - will recognise their shared responsibility for protecting the forests that underpin every economy on earth,” Mirela Sandrini, who leads the World Resources Institute Brazil, said in a statement.

Thomson Reuters Foundation/André Cabette Fábio

First ‘democratic’ COP since Glasgow

The need to protect the world’s forests is a message that will resonate here in Belém.

This is the first COP to take place in a functioning democracy since Glasgow in 2021, and around 3,000 Indigenous representatives from around the world are coming here to make their voices heard.

Some are sailing along the Amazon’s rivers from Brazil and neighbouring countries. Others have come even further, like Jacob Johns, a Hopi and Akimel O'odham environmentalist from the United States, and executive director of A Wisdom Keepers Delegation, a global collective working on climate action under the U.N. framework.

“This is the lungs of the earth,” he said, as he met with Brazilian Indigenous leaders on the banks of the Guamá river, an Amazon tributary, on Saturday. “These brave people come out of the Amazon to speak truth to power and speak for the trees.

“We need money for adaptation … Humanity still wants a healthy, just, liveable future,” Johns said.

Host Brazil is hoping for a global mutirão - a Portuguese word derived from the Indigenous Tupi-Guarani language that refers to a group coming together to work on a shared task.

But is that possible in a world riven by conflicts and trade wars where leaders are committing more money to defence [[link removed]], often to the detriment of climate spending?

Not to mention the fact that U.S. President Donald Trump has once again withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and declared climate change to be "the greatest con job [[link removed]]” in the world.

These brave people come out of the Amazon to speak truth to power and speak for the trees.

Jacob Johns, a Hopi and Akimel O'odham environmentalist

The United States is not sending [[link removed]] any high-level officials to Belém. But there is some concern [[link removed]] about whether it will try to disrupt these talks from afar, as it did during negotiations at the International Maritime Organization to agree a “green tax” on shipping emissions.

Brazil’s Lula made a point of denouncing " extremist forces [[link removed]]" spreading lies about climate change for political gain in his opening COP30 speech.

There’s a lot of ground to cover in the next two weeks, and sometimes it’s easy to get lost in the daily deluge of press releases and briefings.

But Chief Ninawa Huni Kui, an Indigenous leader from Brazil’s Acre state, sought to cut through the noise.

Speaking to Andre on the banks of the Guamá river on Saturday, he said COP30 was an opportunity to share the suffering of communities in the Amazon and to defend the rights of its protectors.

His message to the world: the Amazon is not just a natural resource but the main source of life.

“Protecting the Amazon from all ills is everyone's responsibility, not just Indigenous peoples,” he said.

Stay tuned to Context for updates, and if you are in Belém, do look us up!

Jack will be back with you next month for more insights from the front lines of the climate and nature crises.

See you next time,

Clar

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Read all of our coverage here [[link removed]] Food for thought [[link removed]] Are you up to speed? [[link removed]]

As world leaders arrive in Belém to tackle some of the planet’s biggest problems, this COP30 quiz will get you up to date on some of the big issues we’ll be tracking. It will test your climate and nature knowledge and hopefully provide a few key insights into the talks. Please share it with your networks, and check out all our coverage over the next two weeks.

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