The third decade of United Nations climate negotiations opened on Monday in the Brazilian Amazon, as 50,000 negotiators, politicians, civil society representatives, industry lobbyists, and indigenous peoples from around the world gathered for talks on protecting the planet from climate catastrophe.

The thirtieth anniversary of COP summits has little time to celebrate: Ten years after the world agreed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, that threshold has been breached. In the health arena, the Bélem Action Plan to be launched on Wednesday aims to position health sector climate action a little closer to the mainstream of climate commitments, actions and stocktaking – after years of operating on the margins.

Brazil insisted on hosting the talks in Belém, a small coastal city on the Amazon’s edge, to place the rainforest, nature, planet and people negotiators are there to protect at the center of negotiations.

Limited hotels and housing has delegates housed on mammoth cruise ships, casting long shadows over local fishing villages. Others will spend the week in local, pay-by-the-hour love motels. All will be working under the heavy humidity and heat of the world’s largest rainforest, a constant reminder of the climate future awaiting the billions worldwide if negotiations fail.

“Climate change is not a threat of the future, it is already a tragedy of the present,” Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva told the opening plenary, citing the hurricane that levelled Jamaica and a “trail of destruction, droughts, fires in Africa and Europe, floods in South America and South East Asia” that have killed thousands and displaced millions.

“The climate emergency is a case of inequality; it exposes and exacerbates the unacceptable,” Lula said.

He also attacked rising military spending, arguing the world should prioritise climate finance over defence budgets. “The men that go to war, if they were here, present here, at this COP, they would perceive that it’s much cheaper to put $1.3 trillion for us to end the climate crisis than to put $2 trillion and sell $700 billion to buy weapons and go to war,” he said.

Progress has been made since Paris. The planet was then on pace for 4°C of warming by century’s end. Today’s business-as-usual scenario projects 2.8°C. If countries implement their Paris commitments, warming could fall to between 2.3°C and 2.5°C.

‘COP of implementation’

Unlike previous summits, COP30 is not expected to produce a landmark agreement. Instead, the focus is implementation: meeting the promises made in Paris, Baku and Dubai to raise climate finance, transition away from fossil fuels, and return warming to under 1.5°C.

The tasks ahead may be the most difficult COP in years: find the money, international cooperation and political will to protect billions facing life or death on current warming projections.

In his inaugural address as COP president, André Aranha Corrêa do Lago said three priorities will dominate the agenda: climate adaptation, finance for a just transition, and implementing the global stocktake recommendations on clean energy and reversing deforestation.

“This is a COP of implementation,” said Corrêa do Lago. “I hope it will be remembered as a COP of adaptation, a COP of advancing climate integration with economic activity and generation of jobs, and above all, a COP which will hear and believe in science.”

The latest COP is the first in several years not to be heavily clouded by the smoke and scandal of petrostate hosts.

The last two climate summits, held in the UAE and Azerbaijan, two nations heavily reliant on state-owned oil conglomerates for government revenue, were hit with scandals alleging subterfuge and coordination between the chiefs of negotiations and fossil fuel interests seeking to weaken any global agreement.

Brazil, an oil-producing state, is by no means immune to industry influence either. “Brazil is hosting COP30. Why is it still drilling for oil?” asked the award-winning Brazilian journalist, Cândida Schaedler, in a post published Monday, noting that Lula recently approved a plan by the state-owned company, Petrobras, to start drilling in a sensitive Amazonian region, at the mouth of the Amazon River.

Even so, at this year’s COP, the heaviest pressures on the negotiators will likely come from outside. The United States, the world’s largest historical emitter, has spurned the talks entirely, after withdrawing from the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5° C. China’s President Xi Jinping and Nahrenda Modi of India, will not attend the Brazil summit, either – topping off the list of the world’s three largest polluters.

Fears of US influence hover over talks

A fear of US influence from Washington looms over the talks despite the fact that Washington is not sending a team. Recently, the Trump administration used intimidation and economic threats to derail a landmark deal to cut global shipping emissions. And the US administration employed similar tactics at the failed plastics treaty negotiations in Geneva in August.

“Although climate change will hurt poor people more than anyone else, for the vast majority of them, it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare. The biggest problems are poverty and disease, just as they always have been,” Gates wrote in a provocative new memo, roundly criticised by climate scientists for minimising the damage warming could do.

Following the Gates memo, US President Donald Trump declared on social media: “I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax,”  taking aim at Gates’ argument for a change in the framing of climate change from a “doomsday view” to a more optimistic framing of a crisis with billions of livelihoods in the balance.

“Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue,” declared the US president, who has frequently called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated”.

Lula: ‘defeat the denialists’

Brazil’s Lula has sought to frame COP30 as a direct counterpoint to forces such as the US administration. European Union officials have taken a similar tack. The bloc’s chief negotiator, Jacob Werksman, said last week COP30 must press on against the “strong counter-narrative that’s coming from a particular part of the world, suggesting that climate change is a hoax.”

In an indirect swipe at the US in his opening remarks, Lula referred to a coalition of ‘denialists’ which he said: “reject not only the evidence and science,” but attack multilateralism, spread “hatred and fear,” and “attack institutions, science and universities.”

“Now is the moment to defeat the denialists,” Lula said. He spoke from experience.

The nation’s previous president, Jair Bolsonaro, like Trump, dismissed climate change as a hoax, and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon reached record heights. Bolsonaro was recently sentenced to 27 years in prison for organising a coup against Lula.

Under Lula’s presidency, Brazil’s emissions fell nearly 17% last year – the biggest drop in 15 years – as the government cracked down on illegal deforestation.

Whether the United States – which has never truly stepped into the climate leadership role its historical emissions would suggest – might one day follow a similar path from climate denial back to engagement remains an open question. But Brazil’s transformation demonstrates how climate policies can swing dramatically when governments change.

And at the same time, Lula has tread a fine political line between his supporters and opponents. This was reflected in his signing of the “devastation bill” in August. The new legislation approved by the Brazilian parliament, removed many of the legal safeguards around the environmental review of new development, although the Brazilian leader vetoed some of its most damaging provisions.

Green as the ‘growth story of the 21^st century’

As green technology surges ahead, however, climate denial is increasingly at odds with basic economics, the optimists point out.

While the US retreats from climate leadership, China is moving to consolidate its dominance in renewable energy manufacturing and deployment, positioning itself to dominate the energy markets of the future.

“The economics of this transition are as indisputable as the costs of inaction,” UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell told delegates. “Solar and wind are now the lowest-cost power in 90% of the world. Renewables overtook coal this year as the world’s top energy source.”

“This is the growth story of the 21st Century, the economic transformation of our age,” Stiell said. “Those opting out or taking baby steps face stagnation and higher prices, while other economies surge ahead.”

‘Climate justice invoice’

But translating that economic momentum into the financing needed for a global transition remains the central – and likely insurmountable – challenge of COP30.

At the opening ceremony of COP30, outgoing president Mukhtar Babayev presented delegates with an “invoice for climate justice”, a document outlining the minimum financial commitments required from wealthy nations.

The invoice includes: $40 billion in urgent adaptation finance by 2025, tripling climate funds to $5.1 billion by 2030, and the $300 billion annual pledge by 2035 that emerged from last year’s negotiations.

The total, including the aspirational $1.3 trillion annual climate funding target in the Baku finance deal? Several trillion.

The invoice is addressed specifically to what are known as Annex II countries under the UN climate convention: 39 developed nations identified in 1992 when the framework was first opened for signing. These include the United States, European Union members, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Japan, and a handful of others.

But the US, historically the world’s largest emitter and responsible for roughly 40% of climate finance under this framework, has walked away from the table. The gap in the $1.3 trillion annual target agreed in Baku created by a US exit breaks the math: The EU and other Annex II nations cannot shoulder $1.3 trillion, or even the scaled-back $300bn commitment, on their own.

This leads to the second, politically fraught problem that has plagued environmental negotiations from plastics, to biodiversity and climate alike for years: several of the world’s wealthiest nations – China, Russia, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Poland, the United Arab Emirates, and Mexico – are classified as developing countries under the 1992 framework. They are not obligated to contribute climate finance, and they have so far largely refused to do so voluntarily.

Since then, China’s cumulative emissions have surpassed the EU’s while it has become the world’s second-largest economy. Early drafts of the Baku agreement proposed expanding the donor list to include some of these nations. That language was quietly dropped from the final text, leaving the donor list unchanged.

China, the world’s largest annual emitter, contributes approximately $3.8 billion per year in climate finance, a fraction of what it would owe under a system based on current emissions or economic capacity. It does provide developing nations with cheap green technology, but resists any formal obligation to pay into global climate funds.

Analysis by the Center for Global Development suggests that by 2030, non-Annex II nations should collectively shoulder around 30% of total climate finance, with Annex II countries covering the remaining 70%.

Even the $300 billion target, however, remains distant. Current climate finance flows are estimated between $28 billion, according to Oxfam, which excludes loans, and $116 billion by OECD figures, which count loans equally with grants. The $1.3tn economists say is needed grows more remote with each passing year as inflation and continued warming increase the cost of adaptation and mitigation.

The Baku agreement also made a key compromise to get it over the line: leaving unresolved whether loans should count toward the finance target. Loans currently make up two-thirds of climate finance for the Global South, with some countries, like France, providing 86% of their climate finance through loans.

If this loan-to-grant ratio continues, approximately $200 billion of the $300 billion 2035 target would come as loans rather than grants, which developing countries argue perpetuates rather than solves their debt crises.

“We now need to put the Baku to Belém roadmap to work to start moving towards the 1.3 trillion,” Stiell said.

Billions of lives, species, and nations 

The planet warming in line with the latest projections is a matter of life and death for billions of people, species, and nations.

Over half a million people have died every year due to heat exposure over the past decade. Millions die due to air pollution. Conflicts drive resource wars, while droughts cause famine and displacement. Extreme weather destroys homes, while sea level rise threatens nations themselves.

The UNHCR’s latest report, released on the opening day of the summit, adds to the reality just decades away – or already here – for the world’s most vulnerable populations.

“Three in every four refugees and other displaced people fleeing war and persecution now live in countries that are highly vulnerable to climate-related hazards,” UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi said. “These communities face an impossible reality – they are being hit harder by more devastating floods, longer droughts and periods of extreme heat, without the means to adapt, recover and rebuild.”

Of the 117 million people displaced by conflict today, around 75% – 86 million – are exposed to extreme weather. The one million refugees who returned home in the first half of this year returned to countries highly vulnerable to more of the climate impacts that displaced them in the first place.

“Whilst mega droughts wreck national harvests, sending food prices soaring, it makes zero sense, economically or politically, to squabble while famines take hold, forcing millions to flee their homelands – this will never be forgotten,” Stiell said. “As conflicts spread while climate disasters decimate the lives of millions when we already have the solutions this will never, ever be forgiven.” 

“We have already agreed that transition pathways must be inclusive and just, covering whole economies and societies,” the UNFCCC chief added. “Now we must agree on concrete steps to turn aspirations into actions.” 

COP ‘Health Day’ to launch the Bélem Action Plan for health sector

Health will have its own featured day at the conference, on the COP30 Health Day this Thursday.  Proponents hope this year’s high-level event will create more of a buzz than last year’s COP29 in Baku, where the marquee Health Day event took place in a cramped, windowless meeting room with just a few dozen attendees in person and online.

This year’s day will focus on the launch of the  Belém Health Action Plan – a blueprint for health sector adaptation to climate change.  A key political objective of the Action Plan, however, is to integrate by 2028 member state progress reports into the broader COP “Global Stocktake” mechanism – ending years of health sector isolation from mainstream climate monitoring and reporting.

Specifically, the Action plan aims to support stronger health sector surveillance of climate-sensitive disease trends, integration of “climate adaptation and resilience measures into all levels of health care,” strengthen the health care workforce and support “Innovation, Production, and Digital Health.”

Buried under that last rubric is a call to support “investments in sustainable  investments in sustainable innovation and technology to provide uninterrupted operation of health care services during extreme climate events.” And that, finally, includes “energy-efficient solutions, renewable energy sources, safe water supply and sanitation, and logistics systems in health facilities to strengthen operational resilience.”

Translated, that means supporting shifts to more sustainable and reliable energy systems for energy-starved health systems in the global South, where some 1 billion people are served by health facilities with inadequate energy services, and 12-15% of facilities in South-East Asia and Africa have no electricity at all.  Applied to high-income settings, the same strategies that lead to long-term reductions in health sector climate emissions, estimated at 5% of the global total.

Critics have complained that the Bélem Action Plan is still far too tame – focusing primarily on adaptation in the health sector rather than on the millions of lives that climate mitigation can save through the simultaneous reduction of air pollution, the fostering of greener urban areas that enable physical activity, and healthier low-carbon diets.

Even so, if the Bélem plan can help catapult health issues into the mainstream of talks, that would be a significant gain after decades of fighting for recognition.

“The plan provides a detailed roadmap of adaptation measures to protect lives and livelihoods against the impacts of climate change, from early warning systems, to improving collaboration across sectors and health systems, to providing health workers with the tools to respond to climate impacts,” said the former WHO and Australian government advisor, Arthur Wyns, in a recent LinkedIn Post, “It builds on the COP28 Declaration on Climate and Health, which was endorsed by 150 countries and sent a powerful political signal that countries are ready to do more in this area.”

 

Health pavilion to livestream events non-stop

WHO is also hosting a Health Pavilion at COP30 in the official Blue Zone in collaboration with the UK-based Wellcome Trust, engaging dozens of global health, finance and environmental partners from the International Energy Agency to the Asian Development Bank, not to mention local governmental, non-profit and youth alliances.

Events livestreamed almost non-stop throughout the two weeks of talks will showcase evidence and discuss solutions that optimise the health benefits of tackling climate change across regions of the world; key sectors from transport to food production and health; and in cities as well as rural areas.

“A sick planet means sick people,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told delegates at the COP high-level opening today in Bélem.

“The climate crisis is a health crisis – not in the future, but now. It is already spreading disease, worsening malnutrition, displacing communities, and claiming lives through heat, floods, fires, and pollution.”

Beyond the political rhetoric, however, health-specific climate action remains severely underfunded, capturing only 2% of adaptation funding and 0.5% of multilateral climate funding, advocates point out.

“Health is the strongest argument for climate action,” Tedros said. “It’s much easier to convince people of the need to protect their own health or that of their children, than to protect glaciers or ecosystems. Both are important. One is a lot closer to home.”

“Put health at the centre of every climate decision. Direct climate finance towards protecting lives and livelihoods. And recognise health as a measure of climate ambition and success. Because there can be no healthy people on a sick planet.”

The talks continue through November 21.

–Elaine Ruth Fletcher contributed to reporting and editing. 

Image Credits: COP30, COP30, COP30, Eden FlahertySource: Agência Nacional do Petróleo, Gás Natural e Biocombustíveis, Center for Global Development, COP30, WHO, WHO .