OPINION – COP30 in Amazonia marks an impending climate failure

Time is slipping away in the race to tackle the climate crisis. The world needs to act quickly, effectively, and together, if it wants to repair the damage humanity has done. Yet global politics stands in the way. There are wars and trade tensions, while international institutions falter and nationalism erodes any sense of shared purpose.

The recent withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement — the very first act of the newly returned Trump administration — has cast a shadow over the climate summit now taking place in Brazil. Moreover, the EU’s partial retreat from its Green Deal agenda has hardly helped. 

The result is that barely half as many heads of state have turned up in the Amazon compared to last year’s COP29. 

Donald Trump himself is the summit’s most notable absentee. 

In this atmosphere, the words of UN Secretary-General António Guterres sound like an echo in an empty room. “Too many corporations are making record profits from climate devastation […] Too many leaders remain captive to these entrenched interests,” he said in his opening address to delegates gathered in Belém, where COP30 has drawn far fewer leaders than expected.

Brazil’s president, Inácio Lula da Silva, urged wealthier nations to release funds to halt the destruction of tropical rainforests and to honour the long list of promises made — and repeatedly forgotten — at previous COP meetings. 

China, India and the United States didn’t even attend the preliminary talks leading up to this summit. 

Beijing’s attempt to send emissaries in the hope of claiming credit for any eventual COP30 breakthrough will likely make no difference. The world’s biggest have turned their backs, even as greenhouse gas levels hit record highs in 2024 and continue to climb this year, together with ocean temperatures and sea levels, the World Meteorological Organization warns.

Meanwhile, the Amazon rainforest – and its ability to absorb vast amounts of carbon dioxide — barely gains media attention. In the past 50 years, it has lost 17 per cent of its surface, consumed by fire and cleared for cattle and mining. 

The opening days of COP30 were marked by a clear warning of a need for urgent action to avoid reaching +2.5°C by 2100. This will require $1.3 trillion a year to support developing countries already facing the worst climate impacts, the rollout of the Tropical Forests Forever Facility with $125 billion earmarked over the next decade to protect the Amazon and other forests, increased investment in mitigation and adaptation, and an end to fossil-fuel subsidies.

It was a stark and necessary reminder, but one that reads less like a roadmap than a chronicle of impending failure.