With less than five months to go until COP30 kicks off in the Amazon city of Belém, African and Pacific island nations have told the Brazilian government they are worried that the sky-high cost of lodgings could compromise their participation in the UN climate talks in November.
Speaking at a press conference last week in Bonn, where countries gathered for mid-year talks, Richard Muyungi, chair of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN), said the issue of accommodation in Belém was causing “big concerns” for several delegations, including some countries that are the most vulnerable to climate change impacts.
“I have written a letter to the COP presidency expressing our concerns. We have had discussions with the COP presidency with the assurance that they are going to look at how they can accommodate our concerns,” said the Tanzanian negotiator.
Ilana Seid, chair of the AOSIS group of small island states, said in a statement that their representatives -who are already facing travel challenges – “have not received firm solutions to address the issue of astronomical costs of the already limited accommodation options”.
The chair of the group of Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Evans Njewa of Malawi, told Climate Home that its members had also expressed accessibility concerns and spoken “several times” about the issue with the COP30 presidency in Bonn.
Panamanian negotiator Juan Carlos Monterrey said in a social media post in late June that he was worried that COP30 could become “the most inaccessible COP in recent memory”.
Prices on Booking.com for a three-star hotel in Belém can exceed $5,000 per person during the first week of COP30 from November 10 to 16, while rental apartments on Airbnb are being advertised for over $430 a night.
Amazon forest COP
Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva chose Belém as the COP30 host city over two years ago, in a push to put the Amazon rainforest at the centre of the UN climate talks. Since then, the city has been scrambling to provide enough new rooms and transport for the more than 50,000 expected participants.
Some delegates are expected to sleep in river cruise boats, converted classrooms, tents and even love hotels, as the city of 1.3 million looks for creative solutions to the massive influx of visitors.
COP organisers have promised at least 24,000 extra beds in Belem, as well as an official accommodation platform that was commissioned in late May. The online platform had yet to be launched as of early July.
One source with knowledge of the situation said it will not be released for at least six more weeks while another source said the reason for the delay is a lack of accommodation to advertise on the platform.
COP30 president André Aranha Corrêa Do Lago has defended Lula’s decision to host the talks in Belém, saying it will showcase the “extraordinary role” of rainforests in the fight against climate change. In a briefing to other governments in Bonn about the logistics of the Belem summit, COP30 special secretary Valter Correia said Brazil has “a long history of making happen what many think is unlikely”.
Brazil’s environment minister suggests roadmap to end fossil fuels at COP30
To ease pressure on the city’s logistics, the Brazilian government decided to bring forward the high level section at the start of the summit, where heads of state deliver speeches and set the tone for negotiations. The World Leaders’ Summit is now scheduled to take place on November 6 and 7, several days before COP30 talks officially kick off on November 10.
“We will continue pushing the Brazilian government to make sure we get appropriate treatment in terms of accommodation and, of course, transport,” AGN chair Muyungi said in Bonn. This is important, he added, because negotiators need to return to their rooms at late hours, as sessions can extend beyond midnight.
Participation concerns
At the mid-year talks in Bonn, the difficulty of finding affordable accommodation in Belém was a major talking point in informal conversations. Campaigners have been raising the issue for months, arguing that the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people could end up being excluded from the UN summit because they cannot pay for a room. And those with higher incomes are struggling too.
“I want to go Belém but how?” one academic messaged Climate Home. “Do you have any idea for the accommodation – it seems very troublesome.”
One climate campaigner said the Christian NGO they work for was using its links with Brazilian churches to access accommodation, while another said their colleague had an aunt who had been able to organise – albeit expensive – accommodation.
One negotiator said their delegation thought it would be best to move the COP out of Belém to a bigger Brazilian city – like São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro. But that decision would be “deeply political” and the Brazilian government is unlikely to sanction it, they said.
The COP30 presidency had not responded to Climate Home’s request for comment by the time of publication.
The UN Climate Change secretariat pointed to its quarterly update, published during the June talks in Bonn, which referred to preparations for COP30. It noted in this document: “The secretariat has been working closely to help the [COP30] Presidency assess and address a range of challenges, including around accommodation availability and affordability, and transportation.“
Speaking at a press briefing in Bonn, Valter Correia, special secretary for COP30, said the Brazilian government has commissioned new buildings like Vila Lideres, with capacity of around 400 rooms, which will offer prices of around $100-$250 per night. The building will turn into a Pará state government building after COP30.
“I have confidence that we will reach enough (rooms). We have a good quantity already. We will reach enough (rooms) to allow for every country to participate with their whole delegation, without having to make cuts due to challenges posed by prices” Correia said.
Brazilian news outlet Sumaúma reported that government authorities told hotels in Belém to slash prices or they could risk other countries requesting a relocation of the event to a larger city.
Correia said during the press conference in Bonn that the Ministry of Justice has been ordered to assess whether prices are being inflated. If that is found to be the case, hotel owners could face fines and lose operating licenses, he added.
Belém’s electric bus controversy: a cautionary tale for COP30
Several sources suggested that a compromise could be to keep the two-day gathering of world leaders, which will take place on November 6 and 7, in Belém, but to move the COP30 negotiations and accompanying conference – from November 10-21 – to a bigger city. A COP30 Local Leaders Forum will take place in Rio de Janeiro on November 3-5.
The COP venue has changed at the last minute before. In October 2019, because of social unrest, Chile withdrew its offer to host the COP25 climate talks just over a month before they were scheduled to start. Two days later, Spain offered to host them in Madrid and the summit went ahead there relatively smoothly.
The post African and Pacific delegations air “big concerns” over COP30 accommodation appeared first on Climate Home News.
African and Pacific delegations air “big concerns” over COP30 accommodation
As COP30 reaches its midway point in the Brazilian city of Belém, Carbon Brief has hosted its second “ask us anything” webinar to exclusively answer questions submitted by holders of the Insider Pass.
The webinar kicked off with an overview of where the negotiations are on Day 8, plus what it was like to be among the 70,000-strong “people’s march” on Saturday.
At present, there are 44 agreed texts at COP30, with many negotiating streams remaining highly contested, as shown by Carbon Brief’s live text tracker.
Topics discussed during the webinar included the potential of a “cover text” at COP30, plus updates on negotiations such as the global goal on adaptation and the just-transition work programme.
Journalists also answered questions on the potential for a “fossil-fuel phaseout roadmap”, the impact of finance – including the Baku to Belém roadmap, which was released the week before COP30 – and Article 6.
The webinar was moderated by Carbon Brief’s director and editor, Leo Hickman, and featured six of our journalists – half of them on the ground in Belém – covering all elements of the summit:
- Dr Simon Evans – deputy editor and senior policy editor
- Daisy Dunne – associate editor
- Josh Gabbatiss – policy correspondent
- Orla Dwyer – food, land and nature reporter
- Aruna Chandrasekhar – land, food systems and nature journalist
- Molly Lempriere – policy section editor
A recording of the webinar (below) is now available to watch on YouTube.
Watch Carbon Brief’s first COP30 “ask us anything” webinar here.
The post COP30: Carbon Brief’s second ‘ask us anything’ webinar appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Mohamed Adow is the Founder and Director of Power Shift Africa
A sobering truth hangs over the COP30 climate talks in Belém: negotiators are discussing adaptation indicators with the enthusiasm of technocrats while quietly starving frontline communities of the resources they need to survive.
The UN’s latest adaptation gap report could not be clearer. Needs are skyrocketing. Finance is collapsing. And yet the global community continues to debate how to measure progress, rather than how to enable it. They act as if weighing a cow will make it fatter, rather than giving it any food.
This contradiction exposes the heart of the climate crisis: adaptation is not merely a technical challenge; it is a political and moral one. Every finance gap is a justice gap. Behind every unmet target are farmers who cannot plant, families who cannot rebuild, and communities forced into displacement because “resilience” was promised but never delivered.
Adaptation is the difference between dignity and despair. It determines whether societies can endure rising temperatures, intensifying floods, or prolonged droughts — or whether they are pushed beyond the limits of survival.
Yet, as negotiators haggle over the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) and its indicators, the foundations needed to achieve these goals are crumbling. How do we talk about climate-resilient development when the means to achieve it are drying up? How do we measure resilience while draining the very resources that make resilience possible?
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COP30 Bulletin Day 5: COP30 could greenlight work on a fossil fuel transition roadmap
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COP30 Bulletin Day 6: First week ends with a colourful march and much work left to do
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At COP30, countries must resist the impulse to rush through a weak indicator framework simply to claim progress. This would give us a system that measures activity, not impact. – that measures paperwork, not protection.
Africa is championing a fit for purpose GGA, but some have misunderstood and wrongly accused it of stalling the GGA process. But Africa is not delaying adaptation work. Africa is living adaptation every day. For us, adaptation is not a choice or a policy preference or an interesting side issue. It is an existential threat that is already reshaping livelihoods, economies, and ecosystems.
Africa needs this COP to get the GGA right. What we reject is an approach that turns adaptation into an exercise in reporting rather than a vehicle for survival.
A meaningful GGA must track whether finance actually reaches those who need it, whether technologies are shared equitably, and whether vulnerable countries are being supported to build early-warning systems, climate-resilient infrastructure, water security, and heat-resilient health systems. Without this backbone of finance and technology-sharing by the rich world, adaptation indicators become little more than an empty checklist.
And this is where COP30 stands at a crossroads. If rich countries succeed in pushing through a set of indicators that sideline finance, it will confirm that the world’s poorest are once again being asked to run a race with no shoes. No community can adapt without resources. No farmer can withstand worsening heatwaves without irrigation and drought-resistant seeds. No coastal town can protect its people without early-warning systems and resilient infrastructure. To pretend otherwise is not merely flawed policy; it is a profound injustice.
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Some will argue that indicators and finance should remain separate discussions. But this is a fiction. You cannot track progress on adaptation without the means to adapt. Adaptation is where political decisions determine whether people live safely or suffer needlessly.
The world is not short of evidence of this suffering, it is short of political courage. Extreme weather displaces more than 30 million people a year, with Africa bearing the brunt. While communities rebuild with scarce resources, developed countries continue to cut aid or repackage support as loans which shackles poor countries with eye-watering debt. This does not build resilience — it entrenches vulnerability.
The Global Goal on Adaptation will become a white elephant if it is not paired with predictable, grant-based finance. Indicators that pretend adaptation is happening without resourcing it will fail the people they claim to protect. COP30 is the moment to close the distance between science and solidarity: wealthy nations must scale up adaptation finance, share technologies, and support long-term resilience planning.
Until then, the world’s most vulnerable will continue carrying the heaviest burden with the lightest support — a defining injustice of our time.
The post Global Goal on Adaptation: Weighing the cow won’t make it fatter appeared first on Climate Home News.
Global Goal on Adaptation: Weighing the cow won’t make it fatter
Last Monday, to get the COP30 agenda agreed, Brazil promised to hold consultations on four controversial issues: emissions-cutting, transparency, trade and finance. Last night, after most delegates had spent their day off exploring the Amazon, the Presidency released a five-page document summarising what was said in those consultations.
Nothing in that “summary note” has been agreed by countries. But it collects together divergent views and forms the basis of what could become a politically agreed statement (known in the jargon as a cover decision) at the end of the COP. It has three key strands on boosting climate finance, strengthening emissions reductions and tackling trade measures linked to decarbonisation.
It includes the key rhetorical messages the COP30 presidency wants to include – that this is a “COP of Truth”, multilateralism is alive (despite President Trump’s efforts to thwart climate action) and the Paris Agreement is now moving from negotiation to implementation.
On emissions-cutting and the need to raise ambition – sorely lacking after the latest round of national climate plans (NDCs) – the note includes an option to hold an annual review and explore the “opportunities, barriers and enablers” to achieve the global efforts agreed at COP28 in Dubai to triple renewable energy and double energy efficiency by 2030; accelerate action to transition away from fossil fuels; and halt and reverse deforestation. This is essentially where any reference to a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels could be anchored.
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COP30 Bulletin Day 5: COP30 could greenlight work on a fossil fuel transition roadmap
At the climate talks in Belém, governments are considering whether to launch a process to craft a roadmap and how that might look -
COP30 Bulletin Day 6: First week ends with a colourful march and much work left to do
UN climate chief Simon Stiell tells governments “to give a little to get a lot”, as many thorny issues remain for ministers to resolve next week
The document also includes proposals to “urge” developed nations to include finance in their NDC climate plans and “encourage” all countries that have set a range of percentage emissions reductions in their NDCs – like the EU’s 66.25-72.5% – to move toward the upper end of the range.
On finance, options include a three-year work programme on provision of finance by wealthy governments and a goal to triple adaptation finance (something the least-developed countries are pushing for) or just repeating the finance goal agreed at COP29 and “noting” a new roadmap to achieve that (which rich nations very much prefer).
There are also various options for how to talk about where climate and trade overlap: an annual dialogue, roundtables, consultations, a new platform or just to keep discussing in the ‘response measures’ strand of climate talks.
Li Shuo, head of the Asia Society Policy Institute’s China Climate Hub, told Climate Home News it was highly significant that – after two years of the issue being buried in climate talks – trade has now been “anchored in the endgame of this COP”.
The various potential outcomes in the summary note could be included in existing agenda items or they could be lumped together into what is usually referred to as a cover text but the Brazilian government would likely prefer to call a “mutirão decision” or a delivery, response or global action plan.
Essentially, after governments ignored the presidency’s pleas not to add contentious items to the agenda, it looks like they could get at least some of what they want by turning those issues into the headline deal from COP30 .
At the start of the high-level segment of the conference on Monday morning, where environment ministers deliver their speeches, UN climate chief Simon Stiell urged governments “to get to the hardest issues fast”.
“When these issues get pushed deep into extra time, everybody loses. We absolutely cannot afford to waste time on tactical delays or stone-walling,” he added.
The presidency consultations on the issues in the note will continue on Monday, along with negotiations on adaptation metrics and a Just Transition Work Programme among others. The COP30 president then plans to convene a “Mutirao” meeting of ministers and heads of delegation on Tuesday “to bring together various outcomes”.
Korea joins coal phase-out coalition at COP30
As fossil fuels have grabbed headlines at COP30, major coal producer South Korea kicked off the second week of the Belém conference with an actual concrete pledge: the country will phase out most of its coal power by 2040.
Operating the seventh-largest coal fleet in the world, Korea announced on Monday that it will join the Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA), an initiative launched in 2017 by the UK and Canada to encourage countries to wean themselves off the planet’s largest source of emissions. Oil and gas exporter Bahrain is another new member.
Asian industrial giant Korea said that out of 62 operating coal power plants, it will commit to retiring 40 of them by 2040. The phase-out date of the remaining 22 plants “will be determined based on economic and environmental feasibility”.
Korean Minister of Environment Kim Sung-Hwan said at an event announcing the pledge that the country will play a “leading role” in the energy transition.
“South Korea is known as a manufacturing powerhouse. Unfortunately renewable energy has taken a low share in our power mix, but going forward we are determined to foster renewable energy industries,” he told journalists. “We will show the world that we can create a decarbonised energy transition.”
Asked about a fossil fuel transition roadmap – an idea floated around by many governments in Belém – Sung-Hwan said “humanity and all of the governments should work together to achieve a decarbonised green transition”, adding that “COP30 will be an important momentum”.
UK climate minister Katie White said Korea was taking an “ambitious step”, and that they can “reap the rewards that we are seeing from our own clean energy transition”.
Korea is a major importer of oil and gas. Domestically, it has historically relied on coal for electricity, but the country’s production of the fossil fuel has decreased steadily by 86% in the last 25 years, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Their nuclear fleet, on the other hand, has nearly doubled in the same time period.
The post COP30 Bulletin Day 7: Brazil outlines options for a possible deal in Belém appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP30 Bulletin Day 7: Brazil sets out options to reach a deal in Belém
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