NEW YORK (AP) — When world leaders, diplomats, business leaders, scientists and activists go to Brazil in November for the United Nations’ annual climate negotiations, poverty, deforestation and much of the world’s troubles will be right in their faces — by design.
In past conference cities — including resort areas and playgrounds for the rich such as Bali, Cancun, Paris, Sharm El-Sheikh and Dubai — host nations show off both their amenities and what their communities have done about climate change. But this fall’s conference is in a high-poverty city on the edge of the Amazon to demonstrate what needs to be done, said the diplomat who will run the mega-negotiations in Belem known as COP30, or Conference of Parties.
“We cannot hide the fact that we are in the world with lots of inequalities and where sustainability and fighting climate change is something that has to get closer to people,” do Lago said. That’s what Brazilian President President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has in mind, he said.
“When people will go to Belem, you are going to see a developing country and city with considerable infrastructure issues still with, in relative terms, a high percentage of poverty and President Lula thinks it’s very important that we talk about climate thinking of all the forests, thinking of poverty and thinking of progress,” do Lago said. “He wants everybody to see a city that can improve thanks to the results of these debates.”
The rich and powerful — as well as poorer nations, activists and media — are already feeling a bit of that discomfort even before getting to Belem. Even with two years of notice, Brazil is way behind in having enough hotel rooms and other accommodations for a global conference that has had 90,000 attendees.
Big year for climate negotiations
This is a significant year for climate negotiations. The 2015 Paris climate agreement required countries to come up with their own plans to reduce the emissions of heat-trapping gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas and then to update those plans every five years.
This year nearly every nation — the United States, the No. 2 carbon dioxide emitter and historically biggest polluter, withdrew from the accord earlier this year — has to submit their first plan update. Most of those updates are already late, but the United Nations wants countries to complete them by September when world leaders gather in New York. That would give the United Nations time to calculate how much they would curb future climate change if implemented — before the COP six weeks later.
On Wednesday, the United Nation’s top court ruled that a clean and healthy environment is a basic human right, a decision that may bolster efforts to come up with stronger action at the November climate conference, some activists said.
“Failure of a state to take appropriate action to protect the climate system … may constitute an internationally wrongful act,” court President Yuji Iwasawa said during the hearing.
