Belém, host of COP30 in 2025. Image courtesy of Marcelo Souza, from Agência Pará.
By AFP - Agence France Presse
Brazil prepares for the first climate conference in the Amazon
By Anna PELEGRI
After serving a customer a bowl of açaí with fried fish at the Belém market, Sandra da Costa enthusiastically wipes her hands.
“Finally, the long-awaited renovation will happen,” she says.
With 200 workers working seven days a week, the largest open-air market in Latin America reflects the transformation underway in the Brazilian city, which is preparing to host the first UN climate conference in the Amazon in November, a meeting called COP30.
But the challenge is immense for this northern metropolis of 1.3 million inhabitants, criss-crossed by canals.
It faces severe social inequality and lacks sufficient infrastructure, including accommodation for the 60,000 delegates expected.
Record public investment is restoring monuments, transforming abandoned port warehouses into leisure areas, and dredging the river bay to anchor two cruise ships, expanding accommodation options with two new hotels.
“COP30 will be a turning point for the city and the Amazon,” Igor Normando, the 37-year-old mayor, told AFP.
“The world will get to know the challenges of the Amazonian people and will see that there is nothing fairer than helping us,” says Normando from the top of the historic Presépio Fort, overlooking an açaí market where tons of the Amazonian fruit arrive every dawn.
The world's largest tropical rainforest is key in the fight against climate change, but it is increasingly suffering its effects, with fires and droughts becoming more severe every year.
Experts see the UN conference, scheduled for November 10-21, as a crucial chance for humanity to reverse the warming trend with firm commitments to reduce global emissions and preserve the forest.
In the new City Park, a former airfield where the COP30 events will be held alongside the convention center for the official negotiations, there are many references to nature and indigenous cultures.
Among the metal structures prepared to house cooking and craft centers, native flora such as rubber trees are being planted. Excavators are also working to prepare the site for a lake.
Replacing asphalt with green spaces in one of Brazil's least wooded cities - despite being in the Amazon - is another goal of the local authorities.
The initiative gained momentum after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva declared in 2023 that the COP30 meetings could even take place “under the canopy of a tree”.
Belém is “two cities: the one that everyone will see, including the heads of state; and another that is invisible,” says historian Michel Pinho.
Max Moraes, a 56-year-old boatman from Vila da Barca, a neighborhood on stilts that struggles without basic sanitation while luxury apartment towers spring up nearby, expresses indignation.
“Where is the money from COP30 going? To help the population?” he asks skeptically, sitting on a wooden walkway above the garbage floating in the yellowish water.
However, in Vila da Barca, founded a century ago by fishermen and now coveted by real estate speculators, resistance is key, according to community leaders.
“Our daily struggle is real,” says Inez Medeiros, 37, a teacher and social leader in the neighborhood. “We want COP30 to consider us because we also live in the Amazon, even if it is an urban Amazon.”
After more than two decades of delays, the city recently handed over 100 social housing units, finally providing some families with decent homes.
Every victory brings motivation, says Medeiros.
His next challenge: was to launch a small floating hotel to host COP participants, offering them a first-hand view of Belém, “beyond the spotlight”.
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