COP30. ՄԱԿ-ի ղեկավարն ասում է, որ աշխարհը պետք է դիմակայել 1. 5ºC թիրախը բաց թողնելու «բարոյական ձախողմանը».

UN chief António Guterres said leaders must confront the "moral failure and deadly negligence" of missing the 1.5°C global warming target and urgently correct course on Thursday, November 6, at the COP30 summit. Dozens of national leaders are in the Brazilian Amazon ahead of next week's UN climate talks that come after scientists confirmed the 1.5°C safer limit of the Paris Agreement would be breached.

"We have failed to ensure we remain below 1.5 degrees," Guterres told the gathering of leaders in the rainforest city of Belém in northern Brazil. "This is moral failure – and deadly negligence," but that did not mean all hope was lost, he added.

On Thursday, the UN's weather and climate agency said that 2025 would be among the hottest years ever recorded. Major economies are not cutting planet-warming pollution fast enough to avoid dangerous levels of global warming this century, the UN said this week, but could still speed up action to protect against the worst impacts.

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Brazil says the window is 'closing rapidly'

In his opening address, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of COP30 said the window to prevent calamitous climate change was "closing rapidly" and blasted the "extremist forces" condemning future generations. Brazil hopes that COP30 will demonstrate that climate change remains a top global priority, even as crucial targets are missed and progress falters.

On Thursday, Lula launched a fund to protect the world's forests, key absorbers of planet-warming carbon. "When forest destruction reaches irreversible points, its effects will be felt across the world. Forests are worth more standing than cut down. They should be part of the GDP of our countries," said Lula.

In what he dubbed "one of the main tangible outcomes" expected from the gathering, the so-called Tropical Forest Forever Facility is meant to gather investments of $125 billion from governments and private investors in the long term, with startup funding of $10 billion that has not yet been received.

The forest protection fund soon received support from Norway, with a promised contribution of up to 30 billion kroner ($2.9 billion) in loans. Norway's contribution would be conditional on at least 100 billion kroner ($9.8 billion) having been secured from other donors, according to a government statement. Another condition is that Norway's contribution must not exceed 20% of the fund's total financing.

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Brazil and Indonesia have also announced contributions of $1 billion each, according to the Norwegian statement.

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Yet beyond producing a slew of new commitments, Brazil has cast the summit as an opportunity for accountability. Brazil has put emphasis on adaptation, a key demand of countries that cannot afford to build defenses against climate disasters. These countries want concrete details on how climate finance can be substantially boosted to $1.3 trillion a year by 2035 – the estimated need in the developing world.

"This is not a charity, but a necessity," Evans Njewa, a Malawian diplomat and chair of the Least Developed Countries bloc, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The US is not participating

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron are attending the Belém conference, with Macron urging world leaders to choose "multilateralism over isolationism," "science over ideology" and "action over fatalism," in a speech on Thursday. "We must reaffirm the spirit that guided the adoption of the Paris Agreement," Macron added.

However, other major economies, such as China and India, are sending climate ministers or deputies, and the United States is not participating, with President Donald Trump branding climate science a "con job." The US absence will linger awkwardly during the summit, as will Brazil's recent approval of oil drilling near the mouth of the Amazon River.

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So, too, will the unanswered call for a wave of ambitious new climate pledges ahead of COP30.

Uphill battle

Brazil has acknowledged the uphill battle it faces, in calling for climate action at a time of wars and tariff disputes, tight budgets and a populist backlash against green policies.

In a sobering reminder of the task at hand, a closely watched vote last month to reduce pollution from global shipping was rejected under intense pressure from the United States.

Leaders gathered in Belém "need to deliver a clear mandate to the COP to be ambitious and to close the gap and to address the issues that are burning," Greenpeace Brazil executive director Carolina Pasquali told AFP aboard the organization's Rainbow Warrior flagship, docked in the city.

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The hosts are also under pressure to marshal a response to the 1.5°C failure. Even if all commitments are enacted in full, global warming is still set to reach 2..5°C by century's end.

"For many of our countries, we won't be able to adapt our way out of something that overshoots over two degrees," Ilana Seid, a diplomat from Palau and chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, told AFP in October. They, among others, want to tackle fossil fuels and push for deeper cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.

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Le Monde with AFP

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