The cost of hosting COP30 in Belém

The UN climate summit that took place this November was hosted in Belém, a city surrounded by the Amazon rainforest. The previous Conference of the Parties (COP) hosts, the United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan, were accused of respectively signing oil deals and openly promoting fossil fuel production during the summit. Therefore, it doesn’t come as a surprise that Brazil, as a host, is this year also the subject of critique. While the COP30 president, provided by Brazil, André Corrêa do Lago, is subject to little controversy, this year’s critique is aimed at the infrastructure that the COP30 required. The Brazilian government has been accused of chopping down 100 thousand trees in preparation for the summit. Even Trump, whose administration remained absent from the COP30, cast blame upon Brazil for ‘ripping the hell out of the Rainforest of Brazil to build a four-lane highway for Environmentalists to travel’. 

The president is referring to the Avenida Liberade, a 13km highway that cuts through the Amazon rainforest in order to improve Belém’s accessibility. While it is true that new infrastructure has been constructed in preparation for the COP30, the plan for the Avenida Liberade has been on the table since 2016. According to the governor of Pará, Helder Barbalho, the highway will improve the quality of life for the entire region, reducing traffic jams on the overfull ringway of Belém. Even the crossing of local communities and wildlife will be facilitated by several bridges, viaducts and wildlife crossings. 

In spite of the efforts to preserve the ecosystem of the area, local researchers and Indigenous communities fear the destruction the new highway will cause. Piercing through protected rainforest, it is certain that both the construction and the future usage of the Avenida Liberade will cause irreversible damage. First of all, the rainforest is home to many indigenous communities. The state of Para, of which Belém is the capital, already counts 869 registered indigenous communities, which rely on local farming. The highway will result in the fragmentation of the ecosystem, leading to mortality among vegetation at the edges vulnerable to increased wind, higher temperatures and reduced humidity. Additionally, once Avenida Liberdade is finished, its usage will pose further threats to the surrounding forest and its tenants. The four-lane motorway could become a new ‘Highway of Death’, the name that is currently carried by Brazil’s BR-262 road, where 3000 animals are killed per year. Next to vehicles colliding into fauna, the expressway creates opportunities for further deforestation along the road for agriculture or urbanisation. The 100 thousand trees that have already been cut down during the construction result in a loss of respiratory capacity of the Amazon, the lungs of our planet. Replacing trees that store carbon dioxide with a highway home to cars that emit carbon dioxide accelerates the greenhouse effect, resulting in tremendous climate change. Therefore, though the construction of the highway seems to have a small impact on the 700 million hectares of the Amazon rainforest, deforestation still has consequences that can hit close to home. 

While the COP aims at limiting global warming, the event still causes significantly high emissions of gases that intensify the greenhouse effect. The emissions produced by activities that occur at the conference venue have greatly decreased according to the UNFCCC handbook; however, emissions generated by participants are growing only bigger. Many heads of state and other conference attendees seem oblivious to the hypocrisy of travelling by private jet, the most polluting type of transport, to a conference that has the ultimate goal to limit global temperature rise. Keeping a private jet in the air for a few hours emits more greenhouse gases than an average person emits in an entire year. Even though this fact creates a taboo around private jets, the number of private aircraft that land at the COP keeps increasing each year, amounting to 65 last year. Taking this into account, one might start to question whether organising a climate summit yields enough to compensate for the emissions it causes.

On the other hand, the COP30 seems to have achieved great results compared to previous years. Considering that the last three years, the host countries were ruled by authoritarian regimes that stifled any form of dissent, democratic Brazil scores points on the representation of civil voices in the decision-making process. Belém hosts movements of hope; indigenous people are calling for better regulations that protect the Amazon and more influence on their implementation. Whether this year’s summit will prove to be more successful than last year, when less-developed countries called the outcome a ‘staggering betrayal’, will become clear later. For now, let’s hope the negotiations in Belém will prove to be effective in fighting climate change, or at least compensate for the infrastructure built in preparation for the summit, and the emissions by the private jets that landed in Belém. 

Disclaimer: This article was entirely human-written without the use of Artificial Intelligence.

Sources

• https://www.trouw.nl/duurzaamheid-economie/de-hele-wereld-heeft-kritiek-op-de-snelweg-die-brazilie-bouwt-door-het-regenwoud-wat-vinden-de-inwoners-er-zelf-van~b5f382fd/ 
• https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115520633257497938 
• https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/there-will-be-impacts-brazil-s-cop30-preparations-are-already-harming-critical-ecosystems
• https://news.mongabay.com/2024/07/to-host-2025-climate-summit-brazil-will-carve-up-an-amazonian-reserve/