BELEM, U.N. — Climate negotiations were expected to begin Monday at a meeting on the edge of the Brazilian Amazon, with leaders pushing for urgency, cooperation, and acceleration after more than 30 years fighting to curb global warming by drastically reducing the carbon pollution that causes it.
André Corrêa do Lago, president of this year’s conference, known as COP30, emphasized that negotiators engage in “mutirão,” a Brazilian word derived from an Indigenous term referring to a group uniting to work on a shared task.
“Either we decide to change by choice, together, or we will be imposed change by tragedy,” do Lago wrote in his letter to negotiators Sunday. “We can change. But we must do it together.”
Complicating the calls for togetherness is the United States. The Trump administration did not send high-level negotiators to the talks and is withdrawing for the second time from the 10-year-old Paris Agreement, which is being celebrated as a partial achievement here in Belem.
The United States has historically emitted more heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas than any other country. China is now the world’s No. 1 carbon polluter, but because carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for at least a century, much of the current greenhouse effect stems from U.S. emissions.
“I think the environment we are in, the geopolitical landscape, is particularly challenging,” said Palau Ambassador Ilana Seid, who chairs the Alliance of Small Island States. Small island nations suffer some of the worst effects of climate change because rising seas swallow land.
“The United States withdrawing from the Paris Agreement has really shifted the gravity of the whole negotiating system,” she added.
President Donald Trump’s actions have damaged the fight against climate change, according to former U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Todd Stern.
“It’s a good thing that they are not sending anyone. It wasn’t going to be constructive if they did,” Stern said.
Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy, compared the negotiations to a potluck dinner.
“Everybody brings the contributions that they are making,” she explained, referring to new and strengthened plans to cut carbon pollution. “And it’s obvious who took the time to bake the fresh pie with fruit that they picked and who fished out that year-old frozen chicken nuggets from the back of their freezer.”
“The United States as a country will not be showing up with a dish,” Hayhoe said.
However, she and several others, including former lead American negotiators, are pointing to U.S. cities, states, and businesses that they say will take up the slack.
In a letter to negotiators released late Sunday, Simon Stiell, the U.N. climate chief, acknowledged that while the 10-year-old Paris Agreement is working to a degree, “we must accelerate in the Amazon.”
“Devastating climate damages are happening already, from Hurricane Melissa hitting the Caribbean, super typhoons smashing Vietnam and the Philippines, to a tornado ripping through southern Brazil,” he wrote.
Stiell emphasized that not only must nations do more and faster, but they “must connect climate action to people’s real lives.”
