COP30 Belém Climate Change Conference

UN Climate Change Conference –
UNFCC COP 30
Belém, 10-21 November 2025

What’s at stake at COP30 in Belém? Expert breaks down key climate issues
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Turkey to host Cop31 climate conference after Australia drops push to hold it in Adelaide
Fortnight-long event to be held in Antalya but Australia may lead negotiations

24 November
🇧🇷 The 30th COP climate summit, Belém
(International Intrigue) Here are the top quotes you should know, starting with…
“Trees can be worth more standing than cut down” – Mohamed Irfaan Ali, president of Guyana
Ali here was highlighting one of the summit’s clearer outcomes: a $125B ‘Tropical Forests Forever Facility’ to pay certain nations for preserving their trees. With an initial ~$6B seeding from Norway and others, it’s now up to the World Bank to get it running.
The other big COP outcome was…
“Adaptation is not optional” – Simon Stiell, the UN climate chief (pre-COP quote)
Wealthier countries pledged to triple their support to help poorer players adapt to climate change: think more flood defences in Bangladesh, or sea-level barriers in Vanuatu.
Interestingly, this tripling was meant as a carrot to get the rest of the world to commit to burning fewer fossil fuels, but instead, the summit just yoinked that carrot and…
“A climate decision that cannot even say ‘fossil fuels’ is not neutrality, it is complicity” – Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez, Panama’s COP representative
This COP was meant to hammer out the details of our pledge to “transition away” from fossil fuels, but petrostates like Saudi Arabia and Russia said no, so Brazil announced Colombia’s voluntary April summit will take this forward outside the UN instead.
Intrigue’s Take
There was something grimly poetic about a gridlocked climate summit in the Amazon literally bursting into flames on Thursday. But here we are.
And no offence to Swedes or teens, but it’s also a reminder of how much our world has changed since the days when a Swedish teen could scold world leaders to attention.
To be clear, that’s not because the research has changed — to the contrary, it still warns that “climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health”.
The change is in the politics, and it’s playing out in the G20, too: a collapse in trust is eroding our world’s willingness and ability to adapt.
Sound even smarter:
The COP statement did include this line: “the global transition towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development is irreversible and the trend of the future”.
Brazil dubbed its main COP outcome text ‘Mutirao’, which roughly translates to collective mobilisation.
20-22 November
COP30 Backpedals on Climate Action
Offering no new plans to cut fossil fuels, the UN’s climate conference failed to produce a roadmap to stop global warming
(Inside Climate News/ICN) After negotiators at COP30 retreated from meaningful climate action by failing to specifically mention the need to stop using fossil fuels in the final conference documents published Saturday, the disappointment inside the COP30 conference center was as pervasive as the diesel fumes from the generators outside the tent.
This year’s United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was billed as the “COP of Truth” by host country Brazil, but it could go down in history “as the deadliest talk show ever,” said Harjeet Singh, founding director of the Satat Sampada Climate Foundation in India and strategic advisor to the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative.
COP30 was yet another “theater of delay” with endless discussions, and the creation of yet more administrative duties, “solely to avoid the actions that matter—committing to a just transition away from fossil fuels and putting money on the table,” he said.
Six Big Takeaways From COP30 Climate Talks
From the grand compromise on fossil fuels to the new items on the COP agenda, this is what you need to know about this year’s negotiations — and what comes next.
(Bloomberg) Global climate negotiations eked out an agreement that manages to nudge forward efforts to curb planet-warming emissions. But the final result — in avoiding explicit reference to fossil fuels — will leave big questions hanging over the efficacy of international climate politics.
Two weeks of talks in the rainforest city of Belém, Brazil, served as a rebuttal of sorts to the idea that climate multilateralism is no longer viable. In the end, nearly 200 countries agreed to an eight-page document that calls for stronger efforts on national goals on emissions and boosting financial support to poor countries that need help defending against intensifying heat, storms and droughts.
But the outcome of COP30 revealed deep fractures, particularly around which countries should pay for adaptation and how to get the world off fossil fuels. The Global Mutirão decision, a title using the Brazilian hosts’ term for collective action, left out key provisions about winding down fossil fuel use that had been the benchmark for success by dozens of more ambitious countries.
End of fossil fuel era inches closer as Cop30 deal agreed after bitter standoff
Wealthy countries should triple funds for countries to tackle climate impacts, but deforestation and critical minerals blocked from final deal
(The Guardian) The world edged a small step closer to the end of the fossil fuel era on Saturday, but not by nearly enough to stave off the ravages of climate breakdown.
Countries meeting in Brazil for two weeks could manage only a voluntary agreement to begin discussions on a roadmap to an eventual phase-out of fossil fuels, and they achieved this incremental progress only in the teeth of implacable opposition from oil-producing countries.
The talks were hauled back from the brink of collapse in an all-night session into Saturday morning, after a bitter standoff between a coalition of more than 80 developed and developing countries, and a group led by Saudi Arabia and its allies plus Russia.
The agreement among 194 countries – excluding the US, which did not send a delegation – was reached in the early morning after 12 hours of nonstop extra-time talks among ministers in deserted conference halls, and completed at a closing meeting at 1.35pm, after negotiations were hauled back from the brink of collapse on Friday evening.
In the plenary, many country delegations, including Colombia, complained vociferously that they were not allowed to speak before the deal was gavelled through, despite Brazil having said this would be “Cop of truth”. The session was briefly paused but the Cop president, André Corrêa do Lago, then confirmed that the decisions that were gavelled through earlier have been adopted.
Jennifer Morgan, the Cop veteran and former German climate envoy, said: “While far from what’s needed, the outcome in Belém is meaningful progress. The Paris agreement is working, the transition away from fossil fuels agreed in Dubai [at the Cop28 talks in 2023] is accelerating. Despite the efforts of major oil-producing states to slow down the green transition, multilateralism continues to support the interests of the whole world in tackling the climate crisis.”
… The final deal also recognised the “just transition” that social justice campaigners have been calling for, which means helping workers affected by the move away from fossil fuels and towards clean energy. But key provisions on the exploitation of “critical minerals” – which has been accompanied by soaring human rights abuses in some countries – were blocked by China and Russia.

COP30 runs into overtime to reach deal as nations clash over fossil fuels
(France 24) UN climate talks in Brazil ran past their Friday deadline as delegates remained locked in tense negotiations over a draft deal that omits any call to phase out fossil fuels, leaving nations struggling to find common ground to keep the Paris accord alive and salvage faith in global cooperation
At stake at COP30 is securing a deal that paves the way for faster cuts to planet-warming emissions that are driving ever more extreme weather – and proving that international cooperation can still function in a fractured world.

19 November
Brazil aims to wrap some challenging negotiations by end of day
Fiona Harvey
(The Guardian) Brazil’s running of Cop30 has been unorthodox from the start, with an insistence that effectively there was little to negotiate at this “conference of the parties” and that some of the biggest items – the roadmap to climate finance, the transition away from fossil fuels, and above all a response to the national climate plans that were supposed to be submitted ahead of this Cop – were not even to be on the agenda. (Less arguing, more action: will Brazil’s unorthodox approach to Cop30 work? Host uses Indigenous concepts and changes agenda to help delegates agree on ways to meet existing climate goals)
The hosts have continued with their unusual approach: the Cop president has let it be known he wants to wrap up the most difficult issues at a ministerial meeting on Wednesday, gavel through the deal, and then allow the less contentious issues to be processed on Thursday and Friday.
This would be the opposite of the usual Cop format, in which routine issues are dispensed with first and the final hours are an almost fisticuffs affair when ministers wrangle over their intractable differences – usually over money and responsibility for emissions cuts – late into the night.
Cop30 live: As president Lula tries to find common ground between negotiating countries, planetary scientists say emissions must be urgently cut
Planetary scientists have warned President Lula today that Cop30 must act decisively because the world is at a crossroads: protect people and life or the fossil fuel industry, writes my colleague Jon Watts.
“We are already facing danger,” they warn in a statement on the state of negotiations, which take place against a backdrop of “suffering for billions of people and rapidly approaching tipping points in the Amazon and the Tropical Coral Reef systems and many others.”
Emissions must start to bend next year, they say, and then continue to fall steadily in the decades ahead: “We need to start, now, to reduce CO2 emissions from fossil-fuels, by at least 5% per year. This must happen in order to have a chance to avoid unmanageable and extremely costly climate impacts affecting all people in the world.”
The signatories include several of the world’s leading authorities on planetary science, forests and oceans: Carlos Nobre from Science Panel of the Amazon; Fatima Denton of United Nations University; Johan Rockström of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research; Marina Hirota; Instituto Serrapilheira; Paulo Artaxo – Universidade de São Paulo; Piers Forster of the University of Leeds; and Thelma Krug, who is Chair of the COP30 Science Council.
They say this is the first time that a COP presidency has involved scientists in the preparation of a climate conference and then provided a pavilion for them to share their findings and opportunities to provide updates to the negotiators.
Meanwhile
Trump’s anti-climate agenda could result in 1.3m more deaths globally, analysis finds
Fallout from increased emissions linked to president’s ‘America First’ policies expected to most affect those in poor, hot countries

18 November
Brazil’s COP30 is all about ‘climate triage’
At COP30–the world’s largest climate conference–in Brazil, the conversation isn’t about preventing the worst of climate change, but stopping the bleeding.
That’s what Eurasia Group’s Shari Friedman is hearing on the ground, but it’s a message that the United States is ignoring, given the Trump administration’s refusal to send a delegation to the conference for the first time in 30 years.
Shari Friedman:
Instead of getting 198 countries, well, 197 without the United States, to move together on collective action, this COP has broken things out into smaller coalitions. These coalitions are organized around specific action items, like forestry or reducing fossil fuels or carbon markets. It’s like moving from multilateralism into minilateralism. And outside of the negotiating rooms is a lot of participation from sub-national, state, and local governments. And this is particularly important for the United States who, for the first time since the beginning of COPs, has not sent a delegation.
So will this minilateralism work? In some cases, these initiatives will get traction. They’re laying down the framework for collaboration on very important initiatives. And more importantly, Brazil is avoiding a breakdown of these talks. But when you hear about the impact to your economy, to the asthmatic kids in the local school, to your economy that might be based on agriculture, then the impacts become real. And these are the conversations that the sub-national governments bring to the conversations in the hallway and on the panels. This COP may not achieve the results that were originally intended, but given the hand it was dealt, Brazil made a key pivot that will at least keep the conversation going and, at best, may create some real action.

17 November
Climate and Development Finance Must Be Integrated
Mahmoud Mohieldin
(Project Syndicate) Much of the international community has been under the illusion that climate action and development are different pursuits. But to make progress on both agendas, the delegates at this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference must recognize that they are one and the same, and begin building an integrated financing system.
For decades, the international community has operated under the illusion that climate action and development are different pursuits, each with its own goals, institutions, and funding mechanisms. This approach has hindered progress on both agendas.
The world leaders gathered in Belém, Brazil, for the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) must recognize this and begin transforming the fragmented, underperforming climate-finance system into an integrated framework that delivers on both climate and development objectives.
While making the global financial architecture more equitable and efficient is a long-term project, delegates at COP30 can take important steps forward. First, they must deliver a replicable and scalable model for climate finance that translates pledges into predictable flows, provides measurable results, and allows for country ownership. This is necessary to narrow the climate-finance gap, especially because developing countries will require between $5.1-6.8 trillion through 2030 to meet their nationally determined contributions, while their adaptation finance needs are 10-18 times greater than international public-finance flows. A good example of this kind of model is the Tropical Forests Forever Facility, an ambitious blended-finance mechanism designed to unlock large amounts of both public and private capital for the conservation and sustainable management of tropical forests.

14 November
Fossil fuel lobbyists outnumber all Cop30 delegations except Brazil, report says
One in every 25 participants at 2025 UN climate summit is a fossil fuel lobbyist, according to Kick Big Polluters Out
(The Guardian) This year’s tally represents a 12% rise from last year’s climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, and is the largest concentration of fossil fuel lobbyists at Cop since KBPO first began exposing industry participation in 2021. The overall number is smaller this year than at Cop29 in Baku (1,773) and Cop28 in Dubai (2,456), but the proportion is higher this year as the Belém summit is less well-attended.
It brings the total number of fossil fuel lobbyists given access to the UN climate summits to 7,000 over the past five years, a period marked by a rise in catastrophic extreme weather, disinformation and oil and gas profits.
“Another Cop, same playbook. This is corporate capture, not climate governance,” said Lien Vandamme, senior campaigner on human rights and climate change at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL).

11-12 November
Built to Fail: Rules at UN Climate Talks Favor the Status Quo, Not Progress
Experts say stifling bureaucratic procedures that are disconnected from the climate crisis have consistently stalled COP negotiations.
(ICN) Frustration about slow progress at the United Nations climate talks boiled over this week. After hours under the equatorial sun at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, scores of protesters pushed past security guards Tuesday evening and briefly occupied parts of the negotiating area, calling for an end to mining and logging in the Amazon, among other demands.
The clash symbolized a deeper tension at the heart of the U.N. climate summits. The people demanding change are often outside the gates while those with power inside are bound by rules that slow progress to a crawl.

Removing CO2 from atmosphere vital to avoid catastrophic tipping points, leading scientist says
10bn tonnes must be captured from the air every year to limit global heating to 1.7C, says Johan Rockström
Johan Rockström was among several leading climate experts at Cop30 who warned the world would overshoot the 1.5C target of the Paris agreement
Johan Rockström of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, who is one of the chief scientific advisers to the UN and the Cop30 presidency, said 10bn tonnes of carbon dioxide needed to be removed from the air every year even to limit global heating to 1.7C (3.1F) above preindustrial levels.
To achieve this through technological means, such as direct air capture, would require the construction of the world’s second biggest industry, after oil and gas, and require expenditures of about a trillion dollars a year, scientists said. It would need to be done alongside much more drastic emissions cuts and could also have unintended consequences.
Rockström was among several leading climate experts who spoke at a first public event for the Science Council, which was set up as an advisory body by the Belém Cop30 presidency.

Tussles break out between protesters and security at Cop30 in Brazil
Dozens storm venue at climate conference that has encouraged NGOs and Indigenous groups to play unprecedented role in talks
(The Guardian) There were tussles between protesters and security guards at the Cop30 climate talks late on Tuesday night, when a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people stormed the conference centre in Belém.
Several dozen men and women, some in brightly coloured feather headdress, ran through the entrance, pushing at least one door off its hinges, before striding through the metal detectors and entering the Blue Zone.
UN security guards rushed to stop them, leading to grabbing, shoving and yelling. At least one non-Indigenous man in the area was carrying a banner that read “Our forests are not for sale”. Others wore T-shirts saying “Juntos” (Together). …
[Agustin Ocaña, from the Global Youth Coalition] said some Indigenous communities had been frustrated watching resources pour into building “a whole new city” in Belém when spending was needed on education, health and forest protection elsewhere. “They were not doing this because they were bad people. They’re desperate, trying to protect their land, the [Amazon] river,” he said.

A novel bond fund that bets rainforests are worth more alive than dead is launched at COP30 in Brazil
Eric Reguly
(Globe & Mail) Brazil’s President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, did not cover himself in green-tinged glory as his country on Monday launched the COP30 climate change conference in Bélem, in the rainforest country’s northeast. Just days before calling for the end of the dependence on fossil fuels, his government approved studies on oil exploration at the mouth of the Amazon. He also must decide within a week whether to veto a bill that extends coal production subsidies. It could go either way.
With his credibility as a climate leader in jeopardy, Mr. Lula must be praying that his Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) gains traction in Bélem. It might. It’s a novel initiative that essentially financializes nature – a bond-backed bet that rain forests are worth more alive than dead.
In the era of U.S. President Donald Trump, who called climate change a “con job” at the UN General Assembly in September, and who is not sending a high-level U.S. team to Bélem, expectations for a breakthrough at COP30 are exceedingly low.
… Tropical rain forests in particular act as the Earth’s thermostat by storing vast amounts of carbon. They protect and spawn huge numbers of plant and animal species, some of which have yet to be catalogued, and regulate rainfall. The fires used to clear the forests contribute to global warming.
The Global Forest Review, published by the World Resources Institute, says that the amount of forest lost in 2024 (trackable by satellite and drones) came to 6.7 million hectares, or 26,000 square miles. That’s the size of Ireland or Sri Lanka. For each of the previous six years, the loss was close to four million hectares.

10 November
Big Tech And Big Carbon Fueling COP30 Misinformation, Groups Claim
By Emma Woollacott,
(Forbes) With the COP30 climate conference kicking off in Brazil this week, misinformation and disinformation are swirling.
From Donald Trump recently calling climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” to Joe Rogan asserting that the Earth is actually in a cooling period, there’s widespread opposition to international efforts to reduce man-made climate change.
And much of this is, well, hot air. In a new report, Climate Action Against Disinformation and the Observatory for Information Integrity found a 267% increase in COP-related disinformation between July and September, with keywords related to the global conference appearing 14,000 times alongside words like “disaster,” “joke,” “catastrophe” and “failure.”
“Deny, Deceive, Delay: Demystified exposes big carbon and big tech’s grand illusion that makes us underestimate public support for climate action, making us feel like the battle is over, despite the fact that not only is it still happening, but we may just be winning, because of progress that is being made all over the world,” said CAAD communications co-chair Philip Newell in a statement.

Climate KIC takes stand against climate disinformation at COP30
As COP30 started in Belém, Brazil—dubbed the “COP of Truth” by President Lula—Climate KIC has joined a coalition of over 90 climate and anti-disinformation organisations to demand governments take action against the wave of climate misinformation threatening global progress.
While extreme weather events intensify and the 2025 UNEP Emissions Gap Report finds that available new climate pledges under the Paris Agreement have only slightly lowered global temperature rise over this century, coordinated disinformation campaigns continue to obstruct climate action. A new report by the Coalition Against Climate Disinformation (CAAD) even finds that despite increasing support for policies to address climate change, the persistence of online falsehoods, supercharged by AI, helps sustain an undercurrent of hostility towards science.
6 November 2025
Deny, Deceive, Delay: Demystified
Exposing the Climate Disinfo Illusions Big Tech Creates For Big Carbon
Today the Climate Action Against Disinformation coalition publishes Deny, Deceive, Delay: Demystified How Big Carbon uses disinformation to sabotage climate action, and how we stop them. It covers the Brazilian disinformation environment leading up to COP30, and then steps back to explain the history of climate obstruction, and why despite the 89% global demand for climate action, UN negotiations have failed to deliver. Spoiler alert: they’ve been sabotaged by Big Carbon, who turned to Big Tech to upend the post-Paris Agreement consensus.
How did we get here? And why does it feel so hopeless? “Deny, Deceive, Delay: Demystified exposes Big Carbon and Big Tech’s grand illusion that makes us underestimate public support for climate action,” according to CAAD communications co-chair Philip Newell, “making us feel like the battle is over, despite the fact that not only is it still happening, but we may just be winning, because progress that is being made all over the world. CAAD’s grown from a handful of us to over a hundred organizations around the world, with members achieving policy wins from fossil fuel ad bans on the local level to national efforts addressing greenwashing to international wins like getting information integrity on the COP30 action agenda. And we’re just getting started.”
After four years of monitoring disinformation around the annual UN COP negotiations, CAAD’s pre-COP30 report represents a turning point in the struggle to confront climate disinformation. No longer is CAAD a relatively lone player in monitoring COP climate disinfo, as we’ve been working with FALA, who will be providing COP30 climate disinfo updates in Oii, their Brazilian-focused climate disinfo newsletter. No longer is CAAD a relatively lone voice in the climate disinfo research realm either, as two major academic assessments of climate disinformation were published in 2025, one from the Climate Social Science Network, and the other the International Panel on the Information Environment. And no longer is CAAD a relatively lone voice in calling for solutions, as none other than the UN Secretary General has taken to calling on us all to “fight mis-and disinformation, online harassment, and greenwashing.”
That call is being answered, as Brazil has put information integrity on the action agenda at COP30, and worked with the UN, UNESCO, CAAD and others to establish the Global Initiative on Information Integrity on Climate Change.

Trump’s COP30 snub thrusts Europe into a role it’s not ready for
Without the US, the EU will bear the brunt of demands leveled at rich countries during the talks.
(Politico Eu) For decades, the European Union has relied on the United States to act as shock absorber and chief powerbroker at global climate talks. No longer.
At the COP30 conference starting in Brazil on Monday, the unprecedented absence of its longtime ally leaves the 27-country union bearing the brunt of demands and pressures leveled at rich countries — an awkward role for the EU to take on.
In theory, the EU is the obvious candidate to step into the leadership vacuum left by the U.S. following President Donald Trump’s decision to skip the summit. After all, its climate targets and concrete policies rank among the most ambitious in the world.

9 November
Climate disasters displaced 250 million people in past 10 years, UN report finds
Floods, storms and droughts have uprooted people across the globe as rising temperatures intensify conflict and hunger
Climate-related disasters forcibly displaced 250 million people globally over the past decade, the equivalent of 70,000 displacements every day, according to a report by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR). The figure includes people who have been displaced multiple times.
Floods, storms, drought and extreme heat are among the weather conditions driving conflict and displacement, alongside slow-onset disasters such as desertification, rising sea levels and ecosystem destruction, which are threatening food and water security.
By mid-2025, 117 million people were displaced by war, violence and persecution – a dire human rights crisis that the climate emergency is rapidly intensifying.
No Escape – On the front lines of climate change, conflict and forced displacement
Conclusion
The consequences of delayed action – both human and financial – are escalating.
Towards COP30 and beyond, there is a growing imperative for greater recognition, decisive action and strengthened collaboration to address both the challenges and opportunities of climate action in displacement settings. Climate change is not only amplifying existing vulnerabilities – it is also fuelling displacement trends, creating complex and compounding risks for refugees, other displaced people and their hosts, leaving many with no escape from its impacts.The way forward must be grounded in inclusive, practical solutions that reflect the realities on the ground. The significant funding setbacks facing humanitarian programmes in 2025 only increase the urgency for targeted, practical solutions that empower countries and communities on the frontlines of climate change. Delivering on these solutions will require a whole-of-society effort, with governments, humanitarian and development actors, civil society and the private sector each playing complementary roles.

6 November
World leaders gather in Belém to discuss challenges and commitments in tackling climate change
The two-day World Leaders Climate Action Summit kicks off today bringing together heads of state and government, ministers, and leaders of international organizations to discuss pressing climate change challenges and commitments.
The Summit is part of the official activities of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP30), which runs from November 10 to 21. Convened by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the meeting represents a key milestone in the process of mobilization and international dialogue on the climate agenda. Both the Summit and COP30 provide a platform for world leaders to raise ambition, translate climate pledges into concrete, real-economy outcomes.
Throughout both days of the Leaders’ Summit, heads of delegation will take the floor in the Plenary Hall to deliver their formal speeches on climate. António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations will address the Leaders’ Summit today.

New Brazil-led fund aims to put forest protection at the heart of climate action
Tropical forests, vital allies in the fight against climate breakdown, are vanishing at an alarming rate. On Thursday, in a bid to help reverse this trend, Brazil launched a new initiative at a summit of world leaders in Belém, the gateway to the Amazon.
(UN News) The move comes ahead of COP30, the UN climate talks where countries will present updated plans to cut planet-warming emissions, alongside measures to protect forests and boost funding for renewable energy.
Known as the Tropical Forests Forever Facility, the fund will reward countries that succeed in halting deforestation. Aiming to make forests worth more standing than cleared, it could channel up to $4 billion a year to as many as 74 nations.
Brazil launches the Tropical Forest Forever Facility
Today in the heart of the Amazon, President Lula took a hugely important step, with the Tropical Forest Forever Facility – a new push to make standing forests more valuable than cleared land.
Writing on LinkedIn, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell welcomed the new initiative, saying it “creates long-term, predictable support for the countries and communities who protect them.”
He added: “Forests are the lungs of our planet. They protect biodiversity, store carbon, regulate rainfall, sustain livelihoods, and help keep the 1.5 degree goal within reach. Every economy depends on them. That’s why the Tropical Forest Forever Facility is so important. Because it begins to match financial incentives with reality.”
STATEMENT: Brazil Launches Tropical Forests Forever Facility
(WRI) Today, at the COP30 Leaders’ Summit in Belém, the Brazilian COP30 presidency formally launched the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), a mechanism to provide long-term, predictable financing to countries that protect and sustainably manage their tropical forests.
After initial contributions from Brazil, Indonesia, Norway and Portugal have announced funding pledges so far, though almost 50 countries expressed support for the initiative. Brazil has set a $125 billion target for the TFFF, and aims to raise $10 billion initially from governments and philanthropies, which would spur further investments from private, corporate and philanthropic investors.
Following is a statement from Mirela Sandrini, Interim Executive Director, WRI Brasil:
“From the Amazon to the Congo to Southeast Asia, the forests that sustain us all are facing a global red alert. If enough countries contribute, this new mechanism could offer a breakthrough, flipping the economics of deforestation by making standing forests more profitable than clearing them.

‘Trump is against humankind’: World leaders at climate summit take swipes at absent president
Some of Thursday’s speeches reflected anger and dismay at U.S. policies but could not hide the ambivalence that many countries feel about this year’s climate talks.
(Politico) Donald Trump isn’t at the global climate summit in Brazil. But he was on the minds of some of his fellow world leaders Thursday, who used their time on stage to try to isolate the U.S. president and his hard-line opposition to their agenda.
In speeches meant to highlight their support for efforts to halt rising temperatures, a few of the heads of state at the COP30 climate talks in the Amazonian port city of Belém could not resist the chance to admonish the U.S. president directly.

31 October
Brazil’s Belém Is Attempting a Billion-Dollar Transformation
The city aims to reinvent itself with new parks, museums and hotels to host the COP30 climate conference. But what happens when the spotlight fades?
(Bloomberg) The Brazilian government’s decision to host COP in Belém underscores the city’s historic role as the entry point to the Amazon — vital to the global fight against climate change — while also drawing attention to the challenges faced by the millions who call the region home. In many ways, Belém tells the story of urban Amazonia, a region rich in resources but short on opportunity.

23 September
Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF) proposes innovative financing model for conservation
A Brazil-led proposal seeks to compensate countries for preserving tropical forests, with 20% of funds reserved for Indigenous peoples. The mechanism, set to launch at COP30, could become one of the world’s largest multilateral funds
Brazil is spearheading an initiative set to transform the world’s approach to environmental conservation. The Tropical Forests Forever Fund (TFFF) is set to launch during COP30 and will provide funding to countries that commit to preserving these forests. More than 70 developing countries with tropical forests will be eligible to receive funds from what could be one of the largest multilateral funds ever created.
The valuation of environmental preservation through the TFFF stems from the understanding that ecosystems such as the Atlantic Forest, the Amazon, and the Congo and Mekong basins are essential to sustaining life, as we know it today.

10 September
Brazil Invited the World to the Amazon. It’s Become a Big Headache.
(NYT) This year’s U.N. climate conference, on the edge of the rainforest, is fueling criticism of the host nation and the entire process of global diplomacy on climate change.
Brazil, self-described champion of developing nations, invited the world’s dignitaries into the Amazon rainforest to showcase solutions to the global crisis of climate change.

30 July
UN holds emergency talks over sky-high accommodation costs at Cop30 in Brazil
Concerns poorer countries could be priced out of negotiations in Belém as room rates soar amid shortage

12 March
Amazon forest felled to build road for climate summit
(BBC) A new four-lane highway cutting through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest is being built for the COP30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belém.
It aims to ease traffic to the city, which will host more than 50,000 people – including world leaders – at the conference in November.
The state government touts the highway’s “sustainable” credentials, but some locals and conservationists are outraged at the environmental impact.