COP30 host Brazil has announced that world leaders will deliver their speeches on climate action several days before UN negotiations officially kick off on November 10, in a bid to ease pressure on hotels and transport in the medium-sized Amazon city of Belém.
For the past decade – since COP21 which adopted the Paris Agreement in 2015 – most heads of state and government have attended and spoken during the first two or three days of the UN climate conference. But this year, leaders will convene in Belém on November 6 and 7, before the November 10-21 talks.
“The [World Leaders’] Summit is part of the COP, and the decision to bring it forward was made by Brazil,” Valter Correia, extraordinary secretary for COP30, said in a statement. “This will give us time for more in-depth reflection, without the pressure from hotels or the city, and will help us better organise the event’s official opening.”
Climate campaigners gave the decision a mixed response, with some criticising the move and others arguing it would have little effect on the summit outcome.
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Natalie Unterstell, president of Brazilian think-tank the Talanoa Institute, said bringing forward the two-day leaders’ summit may mean less media attention and opportunity to put pressure on negotiators.
“Splitting the World Leaders’ Summit from the actual negotiations is like having the opening act perform after the main show – it disrupts the flow and weakens the impact,” said Unterstell. “The risk is that leaders make grand statements in one room while negotiators, days or weeks later, water them down in another room.”
But Alden Meyer, senior associate with international think-tank E3G, said the change “makes sense” and still provides “political momentum around Brazil’s vision of a COP that cements a shift from negotiations to implementation and accelerates climate action on the ground”.
Meyer added that security has always been tight around the presence of world leaders at the UN climate conferences, so climate lobbyists would not lose access to them if their segment is held slightly earlier.
Since COP21 in Paris, the World Leaders’ Summit has been held at the beginning of the annual UN climate conference. At that key COP, which delivered a new global accord on tackling climate change, 150 heads of state arrived at the start to deliver speeches. At previous COPs, they had done so around the middle of the conference, usually with far fewer showing up.
Belém under pressure
This year, the annual UN climate summit will be hosted for the first time in the Amazon rainforest, in the northern city of Belém – largely seen as an emblematic location given the importance of forests in holding down planet-warming carbon emissions. Yet some officials have expressed concerns over whether the city of 1.3 million people is capable of hosting tens of thousands of delegates flocking in over two weeks.
In a letter issued on Monday setting out his vision, COP30 president André Aranha Corrêa Do Lago defended the decision made by Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to host the UN talks in the Amazon, arguing it will showcase the “extraordinary role” of rainforests in fighting climate change.
Just days before, at an informal UN plenary in New York, at least three country delegations expressed concerns over security and accessibility. Corrêa Do Lago responded by saying that, while Belém was “not designed for this kind of event”, its symbolism is more important than the challenges it poses.
Brazil’s COP30 president: Climate summits must move from words to real action
The Brazilian government has announced a plan to supply 26,000 new beds by utilising river cruise boats, rental apartments and even military facilities and schools.
Yet the massive construction efforts aimed at improving the city’s ability to host the summit smoothly have also been called in question.
This week, the BBC reported that a new 13-km highway cutting through the rainforest around Belém, seen as key for COP30 logistics, threatens protected land, as well as the homes and livelihoods of forest communities living along the route. The Brazilian government denied that the project is part of its infrastructure plans for the UN climate conference.
The post Brazil decides leaders will speak before COP30, easing logistics crunch appeared first on Climate Home News.
Brazil decides leaders will speak before COP30, easing logistics crunch
The case shows that climate change is a fundamental human rights violation—and the victory of Bonaire, a Dutch territory, could open the door for similar lawsuits globally.
From our collaborating partner Living on Earth, public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by Paloma Beltran with Greenpeace Netherlands campaigner Eefje de Kroon.
A Tiny Caribbean Island Sued the Netherlands Over Climate Change, and Won
Climate Change
Greenpeace organisations to appeal USD $345 million court judgment in Energy Transfer’s intimidation lawsuit
SYDNEY, Saturday 28 February 2026 — Greenpeace International and Greenpeace organisations in the US announce they will seek a new trial and, if necessary, appeal the decision with the North Dakota Supreme Court following a North Dakota District Court judgment today awarding Energy Transfer (ET) USD $345 million.
ET’s SLAPP suit remains a blatant attempt to silence free speech, erase Indigenous leadership of the Standing Rock movement, and punish solidarity with peaceful resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Greenpeace International will also continue to seek damages for ET’s bullying lawsuits under EU anti-SLAPP legislation in the Netherlands.
Mads Christensen, Greenpeace International Executive Director said: “Energy Transfer’s attempts to silence us are failing. Greenpeace International will continue to resist intimidation tactics. We will not be silenced. We will only get louder, joining our voices to those of our allies all around the world against the corporate polluters and billionaire oligarchs who prioritise profits over people and the planet.
“With hard-won freedoms under threat and the climate crisis accelerating, the stakes of this legal fight couldn’t be higher. Through appeals in the US and Greenpeace International’s groundbreaking anti-SLAPP case in the Netherlands, we are exploring every option to hold Energy Transfer accountable for multiple abusive lawsuits and show all power-hungry bullies that their attacks will only result in a stronger people-powered movement.”
The Court’s final judgment today rejects some of the jury verdict delivered in March 2025, but still awards hundreds of millions of dollars to ET without a sound basis in law. The Greenpeace defendants will continue to press their arguments that the US Constitution does not allow liability here, that ET did not present evidence to support its claims, that the Court admitted inflammatory and irrelevant evidence at trial and excluded other evidence supporting the defense, and that the jury pool in Mandan could not be impartial.[1][2]
ET’s back-to-back lawsuits against Greenpeace International and the US organisations Greenpeace USA (Greenpeace Inc.) and Greenpeace Fund are clear-cut examples of SLAPPs — lawsuits attempting to bury nonprofits and activists in legal fees, push them towards bankruptcy and ultimately silence dissent.[3] Greenpeace International, which is based in the Netherlands, is pursuing justice in Europe, with a suit against ET under Dutch law and the European Union’s new anti-SLAPP directive, a landmark test of the new legislation which could help set a powerful precedent against corporate bullying.[4]
Kate Smolski, Program Director at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “This is part of a worrying trend globally: fossil fuel corporations are increasingly using litigation to attack and silence ordinary people and groups using the law to challenge their polluting operations — and we’re not immune to these tactics here in Australia.
“Rulings like this have a chilling effect on democracy and public interest litigation — we must unite against these silencing tactics as bad for Australians and bad for our democracy. Our movement is stronger than any corporate bully, and grows even stronger when under attack.”
Energy Transfer’s SLAPPs are part of a wave of abusive lawsuits filed by Big Oil companies like Shell, Total, and ENI against Greenpeace entities in recent years.[3] A couple of these cases have been successfully stopped in their tracks. This includes Greenpeace France successfully defeating TotalEnergies’ SLAPP on 28 March 2024, and Greenpeace UK and Greenpeace International forcing Shell to back down from its SLAPP on 10 December 2024.
-ENDS-
Images available in Greenpeace Media Library
Notes:
[1] The judgment entered by North Dakota District Court Judge Gion follows a jury verdict finding Greenpeace entities liable for more than US$660 million on March 19, 2025. Judge Gion subsequently threw out several items from the jury’s verdict, reducing the total damages to approximately US$345 million.
[2] Public statements from the independent Trial Monitoring Committee
[3] Energy Transfer’s first lawsuit was filed in federal court in 2017 under the RICO Act – the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a US federal statute designed to prosecute mob activity. The case was dismissed in 2019, with the judge stating the evidence fell “far short” of what was needed to establish a RICO enterprise. The federal court did not decide on Energy Transfer’s claims based on state law, so Energy Transfer promptly filed a new case in a North Dakota state court with these and other state law claims.
[4] Greenpeace International sent a Notice of Liability to Energy Transfer on 23 July 2024, informing the pipeline giant of Greenpeace International’s intention to bring an anti-SLAPP lawsuit against the company in a Dutch Court. After Energy Transfer declined to accept liability on multiple occasions (September 2024, December 2024), Greenpeace International initiated the first test of the European Union’s anti-SLAPP Directive on 11 February 2025 by filing a lawsuit in Dutch court against Energy Transfer. The case was officially registered in the docket of the Court of Amsterdam on 2 July, 2025. Greenpeace International seeks to recover all damages and costs it has suffered as a result of Energy Transfers’s back-to-back, abusive lawsuits demanding hundreds of millions of dollars from Greenpeace International and the Greenpeace organisations in the US. The next hearing in the Court of Amsterdam is scheduled for 16 April, 2026.
Media contact:
Kate O’Callaghan on 0406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
The Trump administration’s relentless rollback of public health and environmental protections has allowed widespread toxic exposures to flourish, warn experts who helped implement safeguards now under assault.
In a new report that outlines a dozen high-risk pollutants given new life thanks to weakened, delayed or rescinded regulations, the Environmental Protection Network, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group of hundreds of former Environmental Protection Agency staff, warns that the EPA under President Donald Trump has abandoned the agency’s core mission of protecting people and the environment from preventable toxic exposures.
Former EPA Staff Detail Expanding Pollution Risks Under Trump
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Greenpeace organisations to appeal USD $345 million court judgment in Energy Transfer’s intimidation lawsuit
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