The World Leaders Climate Action Summit officially launched in Belém, Brazil, opening the political stage for the 30th U.N. climate summit, on the edge of the Amazon.
The summit began on Thursday under a cloud of scientific and geopolitical tension, focusing immediately on a push for action — the "Implementation COP" — that is both underfunded and politically fractured.
The urgency was amplified by the release of the new "10 New Insights in Climate Science" report, produced by Future Earth, The Earth League, and the World Climate Research Program.
The report confirmed the global temperature breach of the 1.5° Celsius threshold and warned that accelerated ocean warming is intensifying extreme weather, that climate-driven dengue outbreaks are spreading, and that increasing heat stress is projected to reduce working hours and economic output.
Supported by the World Meteorological Organization, the report underscored that global land carbon sinks are showing signs of stress and absorbing fewer emissions.
"We cannot defy the laws of physics. Science does not lie.The alarming streak of exceptional temperatures continues," WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo, an Argentine meteorologist and educator, told leaders.
"Let COP30 be remembered not as another warning ignored, but as the moment the world changed course," she said. "We can’t rewrite the laws of physics, but we can rewrite our path."
The tension is mirrored locally, where an estimated 17% of the Amazon’s forest cover has vanished, amplifying a separate warning from U.N. Economic Commission for Europe that the world's forests, including the Boreal forests which contain about 32% of global terrestrial carbon stocks, risk flipping from a vital carbon sink to a source of emissions.
Brazil’s chief negotiator, Ambassador and Climate Director Liliam Chagas, said the world musts reverse the trend of rising temperatures. "We already have a vast body of rules, norms, tools, and mechanisms to help countries reduce emissions and adapt to climate change," she said. "That is why this summit aims to generate political momentum for these discussions."
The trillion-dollar divide and political fault lines
The most difficult challenge is bridging the climate finance gap. The formal minimum target agreed at COP29 was "at least $300 billion" a year by 2035, but the Baku to Belém roadmap, a "coherent reference framework" for the future, targets an aspirational "at least $1.3 trillion" per year, backed by developing nations and expert analysis.
The political conflict at COP30 centers on who pays: developing nations, including the G77 and China, cite Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement and demand grants, not loans, to alleviate soaring debt. The negotiations, which typically go to overtime, are scheduled to conclude on Nov. 21.
Conversely, developed nations push for a "broadening of climate finance" through private investment, global levies, and moving the discussion beyond the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, the platform for U.N. climate talks.
The roadmap suggests tackling the deficit by taxing polluters, noting that profits from just five international oil and gas giants reached almost $800 billion over the last decade, and by exploring new issuances of special drawing rights and financial transaction taxes.
The geopolitical setting is highly fractured. The heads of the world’s three largest polluters — China, the U.S., and India — are notably absent. U.S. President Donald Trump's administration is not sending an official delegation, a position that drew sharp criticism from Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr.
"Without the United States, without China, without India committing, we really have no hope," he said. The absence also influenced allies like Argentine President Javier Milei, who pulled negotiators from last year’s summit after calling human-caused climate change a "socialist hoax."
That mirrors Trump's position that climate change is a "con job" or "hoax" and U.S. policies should focus on maximizing U.S. fossil fuel production, deregulation, and withdrawing from international climate agreements.
In attendance are U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. The European Union is sending a strong delegation, committed to a net emissions reduction of 66.25% to 72.5% below 1990 levels by 2035.
Panama’s Environment Minister Juan Carlos Navarro sharply criticized the entire process, however, telling The Associated Press such meetings have become "a jet-setting orgy of bureaucrats who travel around the world with a tremendous carbon footprint and achieve nothing."
Indigenous rights and host contradictions
The push for justice is centered on the framing of the summit as "The Indigenous People’s COP."
The Brazilian presidency said it is committed to ensuring "unprecedented Indigenous participation," granting more than 1,000 accredited representatives of Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local community groups access to the Blue Zone, the primary U.N. negotiation venue.
Their central demands are legal recognition and direct financing of community land rights, which are key goals of the Brazzaville Declaration, urging that territorial rights be fully incorporated into nations’ climate action plans.
Yet, contradictions persist within the host nation. Despite Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s introduction of the Tropical Forest Forever Facility, a mechanism to financially reward conservation, his government faces fierce criticism for licensing state-owned Petrobras to drill for oil near the mouth of the Amazon, an action that human rights groups warn threatens Indigenous peoples.
The 30th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP30, is hosted by Belém, a city struggling to accommodate thousands of delegates. It is using river cruise ships and unconventional local lodging, including "love motels" and a former cat hotel.
In contrast to the previous three COPs held in autocratic petrostates Egypt, United Arab Emirates, and Azerbaijan, Brazil’s democratic status allows activists, including youth and Indigenous leaders, to hold visible, large-scale rallies and protests throughout the event.
