Why the next global climate conference, COP30, is raising eyebrows

The next COP30, Conference of Parties, hosted by the United Nations, is set to take place in Belém, Brazil.

However, panelists at the 2025 Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Tempe wonder if it’s appropriate to host a big international climate conference that draws delegates from 198 countries in a smaller rainforest city.Only twice has South America hosted a COP conference, once in Buenos Aires and once in Lima, Peru. The 2025 conference will drive attention to the Amazon rainforest and the role it has in climate mitigation.

But not without some eyes being raised by some attendees in Tempe who question the choice of Belém.Building roads on protected lands, expensive lodging and climate injustice are the issues and ironies that arise from bringing the COP30 conference there.“What the visitors will find in Belém is not the original Belém that we have,” said Karla Mendes, a Brazilian investigative and feature reporter for Mongabay, an environmental news outlet.

The irony of building a new road to a climate conference through the rainforest

Large events typically happen in cities like São Paulo and Rio do Janeiro. Those cities have hotels and roads to support large numbers of people. In Belém, that’s not the case, Mendes said.To support the conference coming to the city in November, the Brazilian government started to build a road that cuts into the protected lands of the Amazon rainforest. While the government denies any links to the road being built for the conference, Mendes points out the contradiction of the newest construction project and the efforts to minimize deforestation and encourage biodiversity in the area.“I understand it’s not a big city, but the reality is different,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to go to COP.”

Expensive lodging and delayed construction in Belém

Since Belém, a city of about 1.3 million people, the prices of hotels or Airbnb’s have skyrocketed due to the limited number of rooms available, Mendes said. To help fix this, city officials thought about having attendees stay on cruise ships.Another criticism the country is facing surrounding the international climate conference is it delaying construction projects, increasing the costs.“It puts the question on if it’s really worth it being done,” she said.It’s too late to change the structure of the conference, but Mendes thinks scaling down the conference would have been better.

The COP30 climate summit is not meant to be a large party

COPs are slowly moving in the wrong direction: Instead of addressing solutions to climate issues, host countries have started to view it as a party, said Michael Dorsey, director and chair of the Walton Sustainability Solutions Service at Arizona State University.“It’s a way of ignoring a systemic problem that we see at large events,” Dorsey said.This is an example of climate injustice. He says a way to address these issues is to integrate the interests of the public.“People are interested in this stuff,” he said. “Lots of people are delivering solutions.”

Arilynn Hyatt is junior studying journalism at the University of Arizona and is part of a student newsroom led by The Arizona Republic.

Coverage of the Society of Environmental Journalists conference is supported by Arizona State University’s Cronkite School of Journalism, the University of Arizona, the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust and the Arizona Media Association.

These stories are published open-source for other news outlets and organizations to share and republish, with credit and links to azcentral.com.