In a big country in the Americas, an elderly leader defeats his far-right rival by a narrow margin. After facing a coup attempt, he starts off his government reversing several of his predecessor’s nefarious policies, rebuilding federal governance, and proposing ambitious measures to tackle the climate crisis.  

Soon, however, it becomes clear that the new government can’t or won’t deliver on its progressive agenda: the president faces severe hurdles in a Congress tipped to the far right. The elderly leader’s popularity starts to plummet, even though the economy is doing fine, and job creation is spiking. His adversaries regroup and are threatening to take back power at the next election. 

This could be the story of the United States – but it’s Brazil we’re talking about. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 78, led in 2022 a coalition of democrats across the political spectrum to salvage his country from the grip of autocracy. 

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His tightly won election was greeted with relief by the international community, but environmentalists had particular reason to celebrate. Lula’s far-right predecessor saw Amazon deforestation increase by 60% over his term and turned Brazil not only into a pariah but also a liability for the global fight against climate change. 

More environmentally conscious now than in his two previous administrations, former union leader Lula vowed to prioritize the fight against the climate crisis. He gave native Brazilians a seat in the cabinet for the first time and promised to end deforestation by 2030, starting by re-enacting the Amazon Deforestation Control Plan that made Brazil a success story of climate mitigation in the past.  

Lula also offered to host the 2025 UN climate conference in Brazil, resurrected environmental funds, and corrected his country’s embattled climate pledge. The efforts paid off: in 2023, Amazon deforestation dropped by 22% and a further reduction is expected for 2024. 

Stakes high for COP30

Understandably, the world started to look up to Brazil in search of leadership in this critical decade for climate action. As Europe has weakened its position in the wake of farmers’ protests and the rise of the far-right in the EU parliamentary elections – and the US faces the threat of Trump 2.0 – the stakes are getting higher for COP30, the UN climate summit to be held in the rainforest city of Belém next year under Lula’s baton.   

Alas, Mr. da Silva has little to show for it so far. The Brazilian president has faced a hostile Congress, dominated by the far-right and the rural caucus, and empowered by Jair Bolsonaro, whose government gave Congress increased control over the federal budget.  

In the tough negotiations with such a parliament, the environmental agenda has been a bargaining chip. More anti-environment and anti-Indigenous bill projects have advanced since 2023 than during the whole Bolsonaro administration.  

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Right now, three dozen legislative proposals are under examination that could make it impossible to control deforestation and meet the country’s climate pledges. Lula’s negotiators in Congress have faced this barrage with embarrassing apathy. 

In a situation similar to that of Joe Biden in the United States, Lula’s polling has dropped – for no obvious economic reason. Joblessness is at its lowest since before the 2015 recession; inflation is under control; real wages have increased, and with them the purchasing power of families; and GDP growth, though mediocre, is steady.  

The perceived weakness of a government that has so far failed to make transformative changes (and whose greatest merit is precisely to make Brazil normal again) works as the proverbial blood in the water for the opposition: as a result, the government gets even weaker and more likely to forgo progressive agendas.  

New oil and roads

To be sure, a fair share of environmentalists’ disappointment stems from Lula’s own actions. The president has been determined to make Brazil the world’s 4th biggest oil producer (today it ranks 9th) at the expense of the global climate, even though Brazil right now is ablaze and its major cities are covered in smoke from record-breaking wildfires.  

Lula’s plan involves opening up new hydrocarbon frontiers both on land and offshore, including in the Amazon. His administration is also hell-bent on constructing a highly controversial road that cuts through the heart of the rainforest, which is feared to facilitate land-grabbing and illegal timber extraction and could increase emissions from deforestation by 8 billion tons by 2050.  

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Da Silva’s Workers’ Party is riddled with old-school backers of national development who don’t believe in the green economy and isolate pro-climate officials such as Finance Minister Fernando Haddad and Environment Minister Marina Silva. Bizarrely, Lula also bets his international prestige on non-starters, like Ukraine, while leaving unattended the only geopolitical agenda where he and his country could really make a difference: climate change.  

“Lead by example” is a motto of the Brazilian government whenever it tries to portray itself as a trusted champion of the Paris Agreement global warming limit of 1.5oC. Right now, the world would do better searching for leadership elsewhere. The good news is that Lula can still be persuaded to wear the mantle. COP30 is his golden opportunity – but it is a window that will not remain open for long. 

The post Is Brazil’s Lula a climate leader? appeared first on Climate Home News.

“The first time I travelled by bus in Belém it was very difficult. It was so stuffy – there were so many people. It was so hot, I almost got sick,” José Martin, 26, an exchange student from Guinea, told Climate Home at a bus stop near Mangueirão stadium, a busy area of the city.

Belém has 870 public buses that carry around 470,000 passengers a day – but they lack cooling in a city where temperatures can rise to 34 or 35 degrees Celsius on Amazonian summer afternoons from July to November. Most of the buses are old, and users complain about broken seats and frequent breakdowns.

Candidates in mayoral elections have made campaign promises to modernise the bus network – also a hot topic among city councillors. But it was the prospect of hosting a global climate conference in November 2025 that boosted the push for a new, air-conditioned fleet.

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The first five state-of-the-art electric buses for a pilot project were delivered in early July and should have been on the road already. The vehicles – with a range of 270 kilometres and capacity for 76 passengers – are the same model used to ferry delegates around during COP28 in Dubai.

However, their deployment was held up by a dispute between Belém City Hall and the local political opposition, which lasted for nearly two months until it was resolved at the end of August.

Old buses continue to circulate in Belém (Photo: Alice Martins Morais)

Soon after the buses arrived in the city, the Municipal Audit Court (TCMPA) published a precautionary measure, suspending the purchase contract for the initial batch of 10 buses issued by the Belém Executive Secretariat for Urban Mobility (Semob). The decision alleged flaws including overpricing and lack of planning.

In response, Semob’s head, Ana Valéria Borges, said the cost – which works out at R$3.6 million (around $636,500) per bus – took into account taxes and changes in import tariffs.

The left-wing Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL) – of the city’s current mayor, Edmilson Rodrigues – claimed the suspension was an attempt to benefit the opposition’s mayoral candidate, Igor Normando of the centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB) party. He is backed by his cousin, Pará state governor Helder Barbalho, who is a key player in the mobilisation for COP30.

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The PSOL’s accusation stems from the fact that the councillor who took the decision to suspend the bus contract, Ann Pontes, was a federal deputy from 2003-2011 for the MDB party and has close ties to the Barbalho family.

In addition, Normando’s mother – an aunt of Barbalho – is secretary-general of the TCMPA, while another relative is director of the School of Public Accounts. The court did not respond to a request for comment from Climate Home.

Mayor Rodrigues himself also accused the Barbalho family of being involved in the TCMPA’s decision on social media.

https://twitter.com/EdmilsonPSOL/status/1827832289524318622

This post by Mayor Rodrigues on X says: “Belém’s buses are at a standstill due to an unfounded decision by the TCM, which questions the purchase of the vehicles. And guess what? The Barbalho family is involved, including Hilda Centeno Normando, Igor’s mother and TCM secretary. Stay tuned!”

Climate Home asked the press offices of Normando and the Pará State Government to comment on this claim but had not received a response at the time of publication.

COP30 tensions feared

Political scientist Eliene Silva, a researcher at the Laboratory of Geopolitical Studies of the Legal Amazon (LEGAL), warned that political tensions between the national, state and municipal authorities over arrangements for COP30 are likely to intensify, at least in the run-up to this October’s municipal elections.

Silva noted that in 2022, when there was first talk of Belém hosting the conference, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party (PT), the governor of Pará and the mayor of Belém were allies, despite their differing political affiliations.

Helder Barbalho (left to right), President Lula and Edmilson Rodrigues in June 2023, at the COP30 announcement ceremony in Belém (Photo: Ricardo Stuckert)

But in recent months, there have been signs of a split, such as in March when Mayor Rodrigues was not seen with the Pará state governor and Lula during a visit by French President Emmanuel Macron to an island in Belém.

Since Normando announced his decision to run for mayor, the division between Barbalho and Rodrigues has become more evident, although Lula’s party continues to support Rodrigues.

“This issue is closely linked to the fact that Edmilson’s administration has been very poorly evaluated by the population,” said Silva.

As well as dissatisfaction with public transport, there has been widespread criticism of chaotic management of the city’s garbage, exacerbated by the hiring of a new company for the job, leading to months of irregular waste collections before the contract started.

“I think Helder [Barbalho]’s bet is precisely to bring in a new figure [as mayor], even if they don’t have as much experience in executive positions, to guarantee the continuity of the plans he has for the capital, including COP30,” said Silva.

Far-right  mayoral candidate

So far, all the main three mayoral candidates in Belém have publicly supported the hosting of COP30, highlighting it as a crucial opportunity for the city’s development.

According to the latest opinion poll released in mid-August, Normando was ahead in the race, with 36.5% of voting intentions, closely followed with 34.7% support for Éder Mauro, a far-right candidate who is aligned with former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Rodrigues was trailing at around 16%.

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Ex-policeman Mauro, now a Liberal Party parliamentarian, is regarded by environmental groups as antagonistic to the green agenda – although he has backed Belém’s hosting of COP30, primarily as a business opportunity. He has made statements defending police violence against members of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), for example, as well as calling Indigenous people “fakes”.

He is also the author of a bill that allows municipal bodies to issue environmental licences for small-scale mining operations, which environmentalists warn will weaken oversight.

Silva said a win for Mauro “could jeopardise the entire mobilisation of the federal and state governments to hold COP30″. “In this scenario, political tensions would be much more worrying than what we’re seeing now between Edmilson and Helder,” she added.

Green light for buses

Meanwhile, the suspension of the electric bus procurement was lifted last week after a series of hearings and meetings between the TCMPA and Belém City Hall.

As part of the deal, the company selling the buses, TEVX Motors Group, agreed to “reimburse” almost R$4 million – around 1% of the contract’s value – through products and services such as training, installation of chargers and disposal of the buses’ electric batteries when they can no longer be used.

Overall, by the time of COP30, 778 new buses with air-conditioning and wi-fi are expected on the streets of Belém thanks to three separate purchasing processes. The first by City Hall was expanded from an initial 10 electric buses to 30 after winning additional investment from the federal government last November.

This money will also fund another 183 more fuel-efficient buses with lower emissions that will expand the public bus transport service by adding new routes and reinforcing others.

Izabela Souza commutes 30 km every day by bus, which can take up to three hours due to traffic and bus changes (Photo: Alice Martins Morais)

The Pará state government has also ordered 265 new buses, which it will pay for with R$368.7 million from the federal government, channelled through the Ministry of Cities, run by Barbalho’s brother. Of these, 40 will be electric – used to improve connections across the Belém metropolitan region – and 50 will run on natural gas.

A further 300 new diesel buses have also been purchased as part of a joint agreement between Belém City Hall, the Pará State Government and the Belém Public Transport Companies Union. This fleet will replace older buses.

For local people, wherever the buses come from, they can’t arrive soon enough. Izabela Souza, 29, a specialist in neuro-pedagogy, commutes 30 kilometres by bus every day, which can take up to three hours due to traffic and bus changes. She said that, aside from the heat, there is a need for more buses to cut commuting times and enable passengers to sit down.

“It’s very precarious – and while the politicians are bickering, we’re the ones who have to wait here like this,” she said.

(Reporting by Alice Martins Morais in Belém; editing by Megan Rowling)

The post Belém’s electric bus controversy: a cautionary tale for COP30 appeared first on Climate Home News.

Stiell said this month that he personally “would certainly like to see future COPs reduce in size”, telling an audience at London’s Chatham House think-tank that “bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better”.

In Dubai, where the 2023 summit was held from November 30 to December 13, the Expo City site was so large that important delegates were ferried around on golf buggies while electric scooters were available to get around the public area, known as the Green Zone.

“Size does not necessarily translate to the quality of outcomes,” Stiell said in London, noting that the UN climate change secretariat (UNFCCC) is discussing the issue with the hosts of COP29 in Azerbaijan this year and COP30 next year in Brazil.

Last week, Climate Home reporters visited the COP29 host city of Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan – on a tour sponsored by the COP29 presidency – and also the location of COP30, the Brazilian Amazon city of Belém, to see how preparations are going for the November 2024 and 2025 gatherings.

Azerbaijan’s government is expecting just 40,000 people to come to the Baku Olympic Stadium for the talks this year, while Belém’s remoteness, congested roads and lack of hotels are likely to substantially limit how many people can attend the “Amazon COP”.

The number of people attending COPs has shot up in recent years. Close to 40,000 people went to COP26 in Glasgow, around 50,000 were in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh for COP27 and nearly 84,000 headed to Dubai last year. But most of the 28 COPs held since 1995 have been attended by fewer than 10,000 people.

Just over half of last year’s participants belonged to government delegations, with most of the rest comprising staff working at the conference or activists from non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

In practice, the boundaries of these categories are blurred though, as government delegations often include business representatives, NGO employees, journalists and others.

Baku’s Olympic Stadium

The government of Azerbaijan will host COP29 in the country’s Caspian seaside capital, Baku. A member of the organising committee told Climate Home they are expecting around 40,000 people.

The government has not had much time to prepare, as it was only tasked with the presidency last November at COP28 after Eastern Europe’s geopolitical divisions delayed the decision on which country would host the summit.

But it already has a venue: the Olympic Stadium on the outskirts of Baku. According to state media, COP29 chief operations officer Narmin Jarchalova said temporary structures will be built around the stadium to accommodate the negotiations and side events. These are likely to be in car-park areas.

The city is used to hosting major events. Ten thousand come each year for Formula One’s Baku Grand Prix and the 69,870-capacity Olympic Stadium has hosted the 2015 European Games, big concerts, the 2019 Europa League football final and Euro 2020 matches, although no Olympic Games despite the name.

Climate Home visited the area in April while in Baku, as part of a press trip organised by the COP29 presidency team. The stadium is connected to the city centre, where most hotels are located, by a Soviet-era metro railway with a one-way journey taking around 45 minutes.

A car journey should take about half of that, 20 minutes, but heavy traffic gridlocked the main roads in and out of Baku when Climate Home visited.

The Baku Olympic Stadium (Photo: Matteo Civillini)

Climate Home asked the COP29 team for information on how the temporary COP facilities will be built, powered and heated sustainably during the summit, but had received no response at the time of publication.

In February, Climate Home revealed that the government had told hotels in Baku not to sell rooms for COP29’s November 11-22 dates until further notice.

In London this month, UN climate chief Stiell said, with regard to the number of participants, that “we have an opportunity with Azerbaijan and we’re engaging with them”. He did not give further details.

COPs usually feature one big climate demonstration on the middle Saturday of the two-week talks. The UNFCCC is talking to the COP29 team about how this will be enabled.

Protesters march on the middle Saturday of COP26 in Glasgow, UK, in 2021 (Photos: Insure Our Future)

In a meeting at the energy ministry last week, COP29 CEO and deputy energy minister Elnur Soltanov told journalists, including Climate Home, that these discussions were “fruitful”.

Human rights groups like Freedom House say Azerbaijan does not respect freedom of assembly. Police violently arrested opposition protesters in 2019.

Soltanov was asked if the climate march will be allowed to take place in the city, which is governed by Azerbaijan’s police force, or only in the COP29 venue, which is under the jurisdiction of UN security guards.

He replied that “this is too specific a question” but said that protest is “part and parcel of people expressing their views, their anger, their desperation”.

Brazil’s Amazon COP

On Belém, which is in northern Brazil near the Amazon rainforest, Stiell said he was “actively discussing with the Brazilians how we can reduce the size of the COP so that the logistics of it can be supported at that hosted destination”.

Last June, Brazilian climate ministry official André Corrêa Lago told local media he was expecting 40,000-50,000 people. But there are concerns that the city will struggle to cope with those numbers.

Belém is not a major tourist destination and has less than 6,000 hotel rooms. Even at last year’s Amazon Summit – a smaller event than a COP – participants reported difficulty finding rooms and rates soared.

Construction workers are currently turning a 1.6 km-long disused airport runway into the Parque de Cidade (City Park), which will be the size of about 70 football pitches. The park and its new buildings will be the main COP30 venue.

The government of Pará State says it is almost one-third finished. The federal government, meanwhile, is reportedly considering hosting part of COP30 in bigger cities like Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro.

A spokesperson for the federal government told Climate Home that “all possibilities to enable the reception of delegations and visitors are being evaluated”.

As well as the park and its new buildings, some of the conference will be held in an existing conference centre on the park’s southern tip called The Hangar – which hosted last year’s Amazon Summit.

The Hangar convention centre (Photo: Alice Martins Morais)

For COP30 delegates though, finding a hotel room and getting to the venue are likely to be challenging. 

A spokesperson for the COP30 organising committee said last week that while 84,000 people went to COP28, the peak daily attendance was just 41,000 at the beginning of the conference when heads of state made their speeches.

An Ibis hotel near the COP30 site (Photo: Alice Martins Morais)

The spokesperson told Climate Home the organisers are looking at bringing in cruise ships for COP participants to sleep on, refurbishing schools to serve as hostels and encouraging people to rent out their rooms on Airbnb.

To promote the “modernisation” of the city’s existing hotel rooms, the government has given hotel operators tax exemptions on purchases for new equipment like minibars, televisions and air-conditioning.

The city’s airport, which the government aims to improve before COP30, has few regular international connections and is over three hours by plane from Brazil’s major hubs like Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. 

There are no trains to Belém and getting the bus from Rio or Sao Paulo can take more than two days.

The Belém Bus Rapid Transit system is scheduled to be completed by COP30 (Photo: Alice Martins Morais)

Even inside the city, transport is challenging. The roads are congested, particularly in the centre where most of the hotels are, during rush-hour and when it rains.

The authorities have tried to solve the problem by widening roads and building dedicated bus lanes for a Bus Rapid Transit system.

While these are being constructed, they have made traffic worse – but the body in charge told Climate Home work is progressing according to schedule and should be completed by the second half of 2024 – well before the UN climate summit the following year.

“The new fleet will reinforce the capital’s transport system for COP30,” said a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Transport Management Centre, adding that 40 of the 265 new air-conditioned buses will be electric.

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Nonetheless, the remoteness of the location is likely to translate into a bigger carbon footprint for delegates travelling from overseas.

While COPs have a sizable carbon footprint, researchers investigating misinformation have found this is often exaggerated on social and traditional media by those trying to undermine climate action.

Examples include pictures of private jets with captions falsely associating them with COP or of biofuel generators with captions erroneously claiming they are diesel.

Questioned about COPs’ carbon footprint by an audience member at London’s Chatham House, UN climate head Stiell replied that “at every COP, we get the reports – how many private planes [and] the CO2 footprint for hosting those COPs”.

But, he added, “taking a very pragmatic view, we need the right people around the table in order for this process to work and there will be a cost to that. How you ensure that those that are present are the ones necessary to contribute positively to the process is also important.”

(Reporting by Matteo Civillini in Baku, Alice Martins Morais in Belém and Joe Lo in London; videos by Fanis Kollias; editing by Joe Lo and Megan Rowling)

The post Peak COP? UN looks to shrink Baku and Belém climate summits appeared first on Climate Home News.

In a statement, the Brazilian presidency said the United Nations (UN had confirmed that the northern city, commonly described as the gateway to the Amazon river and rainforest, would host the talks.

A spokesperson for the UN’s climate change body (UNFCCC) told Climate Home that the Latin America and Caribbean region had informed them that the group is endorsing Belém’s bid. The choice now just needs to be rubber-stamped at the Cop28 talks.

Brazil’s president Lula da Silva, who will be in the final few months of his term during Cop30, said that the Amazon rainforest had been the main topic of conversation at climate talks in Copenhagen, Paris and Sharm el-Sheikh.

“If everyone’s talking about the Amazon, then why not hold the Cop in an Amazon state so that they can find out more about the region? About its rivers, its forests, its fauna?”, he said.

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Lula has been promising to tackle deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, which hit a 15-year-high under former president Jair Bolsonaro.

He has named Marina Silva, who oversaw a significant drop in deforestation during his first stint as president in the 2000s, as his environment minister.

Amazon Cop

Belém is the capital of the Amazonian state of Pará and is the second most populous city (1.5 million people) in the Amazon region after Manaus (2.2 million).

Former Brazilian environment minister Izabella Teixeira told Climate Home in January that the Brazilian government had chosen Belém over Manaus because its state governor Helder Barbalho is “the essential political player in Amazon”.

While Belem is at the mouth of the Amazon river near the Atlantic coast, Manaus is deep in Brazil’s interior. Lonely Planet calls Belém the Eastern gateway to the Amazon region.

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Teixeira has said having a Cop in the Amazon would be “amazing”. Climate campaigner Cintya Feitosa said that having the talks in the Amazon region “can send a signal to the global community of the relevance of the Amazon to the climate negotiations and include its population in the main rooms”.

But, while this is an important symbolic signal, “the environment does not live only on nice gestures”, said Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of the Climate Observatory, a Brazilian NGO.

“Brazil is today the country that deforests the most in the world and Pará is the state that deforests the most in the Amazon. It is essential to get to Cop30 with this situation reversed”, said Astrini in January.

Logistical challenges

Teixeira also previously said she was “concerned because of infrastructure, costs, digital infrastructure, hotels – everything that you need when you have a Cop with 30,000 people”.

She said flying to the Amazon region was particularly expensive. Return flights from Sao Paulo to Belém are currently around $250 three months in advance. Demand from Cop30 travellers is likely to push these prices up.

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One Brazilian campaigner, who did not want to be named, told Climate Home Belém is “a lovely colonial city, but between ‘lovely’ and ‘able to host a COP’ there’s a huge distance”.

The city does host large events. Every October, the city hosts more than one million pilgrims who participate in a procession of the image of the Virgin of Nazaré.

Regional rotation

The host of UN climate talks rotates each year among the UN’s regional groupings.

In 2021, Cop26 was in the British city of Glasgow. The UK is part of the Western Europe and others group which includes Canada, Australia and New Zealand with the USA as an observer.

Last year’s climate talks were in the beach resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt, which is in the African group.

This year’s will be in the United Arab Emirates, which is in the Asia-Pacific. South Korea had indicated an interest but backed down.

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Next year’s event will be in Eastern Europe and the president of Bulgaria has said his country wants to host it.

Before the Bulgarian announcement, the new Australian government had said they wanted to co-host it with a Pacific nation but that would mean persuading the Eastern Europe group to let them swap turns.

Then it is the turn of Latin America and the Caribbean. No country other than Brazil publicly indicated a willingness to host the talks.

Previous Latin American Cops have been held in Argentina’s Buenos Aires, Mexico’s Cancún and Peru’s Lima.

Chile’s attempt to host talks in 2019 was abandoned after mass protests and the talks were held in Madrid instead.

This article was updated on 3oth May to include the UNFCCC’s statement

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