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Leaders from around the world hopped off their jets on the edge of the Amazon rainforest to hold meetings and deliver speeches at the COP30 UN climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belém this Thursday and Friday.

Today, around 60 of them were listed to speak one after another. Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva opened the session as host, and leaders from the UK, France, the EU and South Africa, as well as China’s vice-premier, were among those following.

Some leaders planned to break off from the main room for a lunch meeting to launch the Tropical Forest Forever Facility – an innovative but controversial Brazilian proposal to tap financial markets and pay governments to keep their forests standing. A later roundtable of leaders will cover climate and nature, covering oceans and, again – as it’s the Amazon COP – forests.

The symbolism of having COP on the edge of the rainforest has come at a price. A shortage of accommodation has prevented many – particularly from poorer countries – from travelling to Belém despite subsidies from wealthy governments and philanthropies.

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The unusual timing of the leaders’ summit – a few days ahead of the official start of COP30 on Monday – was an attempt to improve the accommodation situation by smoothing out the peak in demand.

It also means that the presidents and prime ministers present will not cross over in Belém with the non-VIPs – the climate campaigners, government officials, journalists and business executives who make up the bulk of COP attendees.

With fewer leaders showing up than in recent years, and the UN admitting the world will overshoot the 1.5C warming limit governments endorsed in the Paris Agreement, proceedings in Belém got off to a sober start.

We’ll be updating Climate Home News readers with the day’s key developments here, so please check back for more as the action unfolds.

UN chief: 1.5C overshoot now inevitable

Among the first to take the stage was the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. He told the assembled leaders that “the hard truth is that we have failed to ensure we remain below 1.5 degrees” of global warming.

“Science now tells us that a temporary overshoot [beyond] the 1.5 limit – starting at the latest in the early 2030s – is inevitable,” he added. That admission is based on the findings of the UN’s annual Emissions Gap Report – published on Tuesday.

The UN’s rhetoric has now shifted from staying below 1.5C to bringing the temperature back down to that level by the end of the century, through reaching net zero emissions and then net negative emissions – where the world sucks in more greenhouse gases than it pumps out.

Under today’s policies, the Emissions Gap Report estimates there’s no chance of bringing the temperature back down to under 1.5C this century. But if governments meet all the targets they have set for themselves, there’s a one-in-five chance.

“We can make the overshoot as small, as short and as safe as possible,” Guterres told the leaders’ summit. He went on to blast governments that subsidise fossil fuels and companies that produce and sell them for “deceiving the public and obstructing progress”.

Speaking before him, the head of the World Meteorological Organization Celeste Saulo warned that the past three years have been the warmest on record and 2025 will be either the second or third warmest.

“Let COP30 be remembered as the moment the world changed course – with the Amazon as its witness,” said the Argentine weather-watcher. “We can’t rewrite the laws of physics, but we can rewrite our path.“

Brandishing the gavel he brought down to adopt the Paris Agreement 10 years ago, the French chair of COP21 Laurent Fabius noted that the world had been on course for 4C or more of global warming before the pact was sealed, while the climate action it spurred has brought the prediction down to 2.8C. That means, he said, “millions and millions of lives saved”.

Brazil’s Lula proposes roadmaps to tackle fossil fuels, deforestation

Brazil’s President Lula urged world leaders to consider drafting roadmaps to transition away from fossil fuels and to reverse deforestation, both commitments that were agreed two years ago in Dubai during COP28.

“To accelerate the energy transition and protect nature, two of the different ways that are more effective to contain global warming, I am convinced that although we face difficulties and contradictions, we need roadmaps to plan in a fair way the reversal of deforestation, reducing the dependency on fossil fuels and mobilise the necessary resources to reach these objectives,” the Brazilian president told the Belém Climate Summit.

The idea of producing a roadmap to phase down fossil fuels was first suggested earlier this year by Marina Silva, Brazil’s environment minister and a close ally of Lula. Countries have been urged to focus on the implementation of existing climate policies at COP30, rather than making new pledges.

“Humanity has been aware of the impacts of climate change for more than 35 years, since the publication of the first IPCC report. But it took 28 conferences to recognise for the first time in Dubai the need to get rid of fossil fuels and to stop and reverse deforestation,” Lula said.

This year, Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions dropped to a 15-year low according to government statistics, the biggest annual fall since 2009. This was mainly thanks to policies to combat deforestation, which has also been on a downward path for the past four years.

But on the fossil fuel front, the South American nation has been in the eye of the storm after granting state-oil company Petrobras a license to drill for oil in a controversial block near the mouth of the Amazon River. The country is also planning other new oil projects in the Amazon region, which has emerged as a new oil frontier.

The Amazon rainforest emerges as the new global oil frontier

Commenting on Lula’s speech, Ilan Zugman, Latin America and Caribbean director with campaign group 350.org, pointed to “a deep contradiction between calling on the world to protect our common home and approving new oil drilling at the mouth of the Amazon”. He called for COP30 to deliver concrete commitments and timelines to end fossil fuel expansion and build a just energy transition led by Indigenous and traditional communities.

Arriving at the leader’s summit accompanied by his allies at the state and judicial level, and joined by several members of his cabinet, President Lula also took aim at global inequality as one of the main drivers of climate change.

“The opportunity window that is open for us to act is closing quickly,” he said. “Climate change is the result of the same dynamic that for centuries has split our societies between rich and poor, and split the world between developed and developing countries,” Lula said.

“It will be impossible to contain climate change without overcoming inequalities within nations, and between nations.”

China’s VP: End clean-tech trade barriers

Warning that “humanity now stands at a new crossroads”, China’s Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang called on world leaders to “uphold true multilateralism, strengthen solidarity and coordination”.

Beijing has been keen to present itself as a defender of global cooperation this year, in sharp contrast with the “America first” approach embraced by US President Donald Trump, a climate-change denier whose administration does not plan to attend COP30.

Ding said the global energy transition requires economic and trade cooperation. Countries should “remove trade barriers and ensure the free flow of quality green products”, he added.

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China controls the majority of renewable energy manufacturing – including processing the minerals needed for it – and is by far the world’s largest producer of electric vehicles. Tariffs slapped by the US and the European Union on China’s clean tech risk curbing its exports and slowing the global energy transition.

Ding defined the green, low-carbon transition as “the trend of the times”, but called for a balance between environmental protection, economic development and poverty eradication.

China submitted its new national climate plan to the UN this week with a headline target to cut greenhouse gas emissions by between 7% and 10% from an unspecified peak level by 2035. When the target was first announced in September, it was criticised as unambitious by many climate experts, who also pointed out that Beijing has a record of underpromising and overdelivering.

“China is a country that honours its commitments,” Ding said in Belém.

U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks on tariffs in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 2, 2025. (Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria)

‘Forget Trump’ – Chile and Colombia criticise US president

The first two Latin American leaders to take the stage were Gabriel Boric, Chile’s president, and Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s president. Both used their speeches to call out the president of the United States, Donald Trump, who has made false or misleading statements regarding the climate crisis and is pulling his country out of the Paris Agreement.

Petro said reversing climate change effects should be the world’s collective goal, one not shared by the US leadership as it is absent from the summit. People should “forget about” Trump, which is “the biggest punishment”. “Nowadays, literally, Mr Trump is against humankind,” Colombia’s leftist leader added.

He also said that making deals with Trump is not necessary, as countries can negotiate with US states individually. Recent elections for US state governors, state legislators and mayors were won by around 40 local candidates associated with C40 Cities, a global network of major cities committed to tackling climate change.

Chile’s Boric called on leaders to respect science, noting that without scientific evidence, there would be no COPs to discuss climate change impacts or the targets needed to limit global warming. “Trump said the climate crisis does not exist – and that’s a lie,” he said, referring to the US president’s address to the UN General Assembly in September.

Petro said that for real progress, fossil fuels should be phased out completely. In recent months, Lula has authorized new oil projects in Brazil, arguing that the revenues they generate can be used to fund green initiatives. Petro said the world needs to “decarbonise economies – zero carbon, zero oil, zero gas” and turn the economy into one that supports life, not the profits of oil companies.

Both Latin American leaders called for a COP30 outcome with actionable targets.

Ireland bemoans poor turnout

It’s generally considered rude to point out that the event you’re at is less well-attended than on previous occasions – but that didn’t stop Ireland’s leader Micheál Martin.

He recalled COP26 in Glasgow four years ago. “The mood then was optimistic,” he said. “As we emerged from the pandemic, there was a large global turnout and a palpable sense of joint purpose to tackle the shared challenge of climate change.”

The closing plenary of the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow (Photo: Kiara Worth/ UN Climate Change /Flickr)

“I am concerned that that spirit of common purpose is weakening,” he added. “Our attention is being drawn to other threats and crises that can seem more pressing – geopolitical turbulence, economic pressure, conflict and dislocation.”

But several of these challenges are rooted in or worsened by climate change, he noted. For that reason,it’s a shame that “at a time when political leadership has never been more vital, there are fewer of us here in Belem, fewer leaders ready to tell it as it is: climate change is unarguable, the science is undeniable, temperatures are rising and the clock is ticking.”

His only new announcement, however, was that Ireland will host a UN Development Programme office in Dublin. He lauded Ireland’s emissions reductions and the EU’s new target to cut emissions by 90% by 2040.

DR Congo vows to make new global forest fund a success

Felix Tshisekedi, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, said his country is willing to cooperate on the Tropical Forest Forever Facility – a new financing initiative to protect forests launched by Brazil on Thursday.Tshisekedi, whose country hosts a large portion of the Congo Basin, the world’s second largest rainforest, said he will work with Brazil and other partners to “make sure that it [TFFF] is a success”.

Explainer: Can a new climate fund help save the world’s rainforests?

The facility – which has received initial investment pledges of $1 billion from Brazil and $1 billion from Indonesia – is expected to raise $25 billion from governments and about $100 billion from private investors to pay countries that are reducing deforestation.

Talking up the DRC’s readiness to participate in financial market mechanisms, Tshisekedi said that with more than 30% of its territory under conservation, the country has engaged in significant reforms to ensure the “transparency and credibility of the carbon market, specifically in terms of creating a regulatory authority”.

Technicans carry out monitoring in a forest reserve in Yangambi, DRC (Photo: Axel Fassio/CIFOR/Flickr)

Referencing the DRC’s 2,600km-long “Green Corridor”, launched earlier this year with support from the European Union and intended to serve as the world’s largest protected forest area and a vital carbon sink, Tshisekedi said he had been working to protect the forest and investing in the development and wellbeing of the local population.

He said the Green Corridor reinforces the rights of communities and is “based on the forest and not against the forest”. In contrast, locals told Climate Home the initiative had failed to include Indigenous people and forest communities in its design.

Meanwhile, the conflict with rebels in eastern DRC is contributing to the destruction of forests, protected areas and parks, Tshisekedi said, tagging it as “an ecological war”.

“My country therefore understands the initiative of Fiji and Samoa to recognise ecocide as an international crime which means that carbon stocks need to be preserved because otherwise the future of mankind will be compromised,” he added.

UK brings nothing for rainforests

Despite the UK’s role in shaping the new Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) led by Brazil, Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer did not announce any funding for it. British media report that his finance minister – keen to cut spending – won the argument against doing so, leaving the Brazilians “fuming”.

Starmer said today that “we stand with…our friends in Jamaica” after the devastation of Hurricane Melissa and warned of climate change’s “instability, flooding, rising food prices, growing migration flows and growing threats to national security”. But he announced no new international climate finance.

His only announcements were that private companies have decided to invest in the wind-farm supply chain at ports in East Anglia and Belfast and an energy storage facility near Manchester United’s training ground in Carrington.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Prince William at the COP30 leaders’ summit in Brazil on November 6, 2025. (Photo: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street)

While he did not join Petro and Boric in criticising Trump, Starmer did have a shot at his right-wing opponents back home, saying that the cross-party consensus on climate change in the UK has broken down.

While Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May made the UK the first major economy with a net zero target in 2019 and her successor Boris Johnson presided over COP26 in 2021, the current Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and far-right Reform UK leader Nigel Farage have pledged to scrap the net zero by 2050 goal if elected.

Guyana slams activists, journalists and bureaucrats

Irfaan Ali, president of Guyana – one of the world’s newest major oil producers – said the world should invest massively in renewables but also pursue “a science-based policy that advances a transition by powering the remainder of the fossil fuel era with the lowest-carbon, most-efficient, least-cost fuels”.

To enable a level playing field between oil producers, carbon prices should be introduced and fossil fuel subsidies should be removed, he said. Competition should be “based on carbon science – not legacy advantage” and “responsible producers must be included in the search for solutions”, he added.

ExxonMobil helps Amazon nation Guyana build ‘petrostate’, while people stay poor

Ali criticised “a vocal minority” of climate activists “often far from the frontlines” who “capture the headlines with simplistic narratives and social media theatrics” as well as “some irresponsible journalists [who] saturate the public realm with misinformation and sensationalism”.

He also blasted “bureaucracies – including within international institutions – [who] have become better at stopping progress than enabling it”. “These forces create a different kind of climate denial by generating public fatigue and scepticism,” he said.

The president then talked up Guyana’s carbon offset projects which he said ensure “carbon revenues flow directly to the Indigenous peoples and local communities“. But some Indigenous peoples have complained about the country’s carbon sales not following adequate processes.

Congratulating Brazil on the TFFF, he said forests should be a standard part of every climate summit, while lambasting governments for not joining Guyana’s Global Biodiversity Alliance initiative.

Mozambique wants room for its gas

Mozambique’s President Daniel Chapo also seemed to defend oil and gas production in his speech despite saying the fight against climate change is an opportunity to transform economies, generate green jobs and promote sustainable development.

He emphasised that Mozambique is in favour of a just energy transition that makes “economic and political room for our natural resources to be used for the benefit of the populations and the entire Planet Earth”.

His government has been advancing liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects. Earlier this year, the US approved a $4.7 billion loan for a gas plant in a part of the country beset by conflict and human rights abuses.

At the same time, Chapo called for developed countries to provide financial support that recognises the climate realities and rights of Africa, including for access to clean energy, resilient infrastructure and sustainable industrial facilities.

The post World leaders get behind climate action at first COP in the Amazon appeared first on Climate Home News.

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