By Rédaction Africanews with AP
There are mixed emotions from experts around the world as Brazil prepares to host the 30th edition of the United Nations climate summit in the city of Belém, the gateway to the Amazon rainforest.
COP30 gets underway months after two-thirds of the 195 nations that signed the Paris Climate Agreement missed a deadline to publish their new climate plans.
So, when talks begin in earnest on 10 November, climate experts, world leaders, and diplomats will be hoping for fewer promises and more action.
Past pledges have fallen far short, and new plans submitted by 64 countries this year barely speed up pollution-fighting efforts, experts say.
And if the numbers aren’t sobering enough there is the highly controversial setting for the summit.
Belém is a relatively poor city on the edge of a weakened Amazon, which is often described as the “lungs of the world”.
Still, the conference from 10 to 21 November hopes to showcase a world that remains determined to tackle global warming.
It’s an aim that will be tough in a year marked by economic upheaval and cancelled climate commitments by the United States.
In fact, US President Donald Trump will not be attending, having last month branded climate change a “con job” at the United Nations General Assembly.
He is not sending any “high-level” officials to the gathering.
Unlike past climate negotiations, this year’s conference isn’t primarily aimed at producing a grand deal or statements. Organisers and analysts frame it as the “implementation COP”.
What is needed now is more money and political will for countries to put decades of words and promises into action and policy to reduce heat-trapping gases and stop deforestation.
Only that will put the brakes on global warming as it careens toward a level the world has agreed is too dangerous.
Against this backdrop is the fact that in 2024, the 1.5 degree Celsius limit for temperature increase – long seen as a threshold for very dangerous warming – was breached for a whole year for the first time.
COP30 runs from the 10 to 21 November.
