Negotiators must prepare for a chaotic COP in Brazil
The climate meeting will be hot, humid and uncomfortable. That might help
Belém is a ragged town in the Brazilian Amazon that is hot, dotted with open sewers and short of hotel beds. Some 40% of its houses are not connected to a sewerage system. And in November it will host COP30, this year’s UN climate summit, which is sure to be chaotic. President Donald Trump has pulled the United States out of the Paris agreement, under which countries vowed to try to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. That threatening threshold was crossed last year, making climate talks look even more futile. And this will be the first COP in three years not held in an autocratic petro-state. Brazil is a democracy with many vibrant and often rowdy charities and civil-society organisations.
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This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “Amazon deliverance?”
From the April 12th 2025 edition
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