• Indigenous leaders demand protection for their territories
• Scientists highlight rapid destabilisation of the planet’s frozen regions
• It’s unclear whether states would aim to negotiate a single, final agreement for end of the event
BELEM: The COP30 climate summit opened Monday in this Amazon city with the UN climate chief urging countries to cooperate with one another in the fight against a warming planet rather than battling over competing priorities.
Host country Brazil brokered an agreement on the agenda for the two-week summit, fending off attempts from developing-country negotiating blocs to shoehorn contentious issues like climate finance and carbon taxes into the formal talks.
The opening day was marked by calls for unity, stark warnings from scientists and Indigenous groups, and a notable absence by the US federal government that drew sharp criticism from one of its own governors.
“In this arena of COP30, your job here is not to fight one another — your job here is to fight this climate crisis, together,” UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell told delegates from more than 190 countries attending the conference.
Stiell acknowledged that three decades of UN climate talks had helped to bend the curve in projected warming downward, “because of what was agreed in halls like this, with governments legislating, and markets responding.”
It remained unclear whether countries would aim to negotiate a single, final agreement for the end of the event — a hard sell in a year of fractious global politics and US efforts to obstruct a transition away from fossil fuels.
Some officials have suggested that countries focus on smaller efforts that do not need universal consensus, after years of COP summits making lofty promises only to leave many unfulfilled.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva warned against interests trying to obscure the dangers of climate change in his opening remarks.
“They attack the institutions, the science, the universities,” he said. “It’s time to impose another defeat to denialists.”
The world’s biggest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, the United States, opted to skip the summit at the federal level, while US President Donald Trump asserts that climate change is a hoax.
However, a state-level US presence was expected, with California Gov Gavin Newsom and New Mexico Gov Michelle Lujan Grisham scheduled to arrive in Belem on Tuesday.
Addressing a global investors summit, Newsom questioned the federal government’s disengagement. “What the hell is going on here?” Newsom said about the US government’s absence from the talks.
“We’re in Brazil, one of our great trading partners, one of the world’s great democracies. I mean hell, home to all the rare earth metals we need. This is the country we should be engaging with instead of giving the middle finger with 50 percent tariffs,” Newsom said.
European nations planned to use the summit to press for firm commitments. Germany said it would join other European countries to push for commitments to rein in fossil fuel use, a goal also promoted by Lula.
Warning signs
Delegates were joined by Indigenous leaders, who arrived on Sunday by boat after travelling some 3,000 kilometres (1,864 miles) from the Andes.
They are demanding more say in how their territories are managed as climate change escalates and industries such as mining, logging and oil drilling push deeper into forests.
“We want to make sure that they don’t keep promising, that they will start protecting, because we as Indigenous people are the ones who suffer from these impacts of climate change,” said Pablo Inuma Flores, an Indigenous leader from Peru.—Reuters
Published in Dawn, November 11th, 2025
