COP30 delegates have been evacuated from the climate conference venue after a fire broke out shortly before 2pm local time. Reuters photographs show the fire was put out by 3pm local time and Brazilian media report that no one was harmed.
Videos circulating online – including one posted online by the AFP news agency – suggest the fire started in the pavilions area of the venue. A Reuters photo shows the Africa pavilion in particular has been damaged.
Sonia Borrini works in communications for the African Development Bank which runs the pavilion. She told Climate Home News that she doesn’t know what caused the fire but the pavilion’s technicians said that they started getting fire in their technical room and one had to run out without shoes.
“What I understood is that it started just where all cables are, between [the Africa] pavilion and the East African Community pavilion”, she said.
The governor of Pará state, where Belém is located, Helder Barbalho, told Brazilian news outlet G1 that no one was injured and that the two initial hypotheses on the source of the fire are a short-circuit in one of the pavilions or a failure in an electricity generator.
The fire breaks out in the pavillions (Video: Andrea Grieco)
The Brazilian fire service are conducting checks and announced they plan to provide an update at 4pm local time. The venue has passed temporarily from the control of the UN – as it usually is for the duration of the COP – to the Brazilian government. Events in a separate part of the site – the Green Zone – are continuing as normal.
Brazilian tourism minister Celso Sabino said authorities must await for an official report from the local fire department before continuing negotiations at COP30.
In a message, UNFCCC, the UN climate change body, thanked delegates for “the swift evacuation of the venue”, adding that the fire had been contained with limited damage. It advised participants that the venue would not reopen before 8pm.
Climate Home News editor Megan Rowling was working in the press centre when she heard a big stampede and was evacuated, along with everyone else. “One thing is for sure,” she said, “this is not going to help the negotiations which have already fallen behind.”
Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa said the fire caused a “fright” but “what could have spiralled into a disaster was contained in minutes thanks to the swift, disciplined work of the security teams and marshals on site. They moved fast, kept people calm, and restored order before rumours could outrun the truth. They deserve full credit.”
He added: “Even in a moment of chaos, one thing stood out: people from every corner of the world, different nations, creeds and affiliations, looked out for one another. Delegates helped strangers, staff guided crowds, and no one stopped to ask who belonged to which bloc before stepping in. When faced with a crisis, cooperation wasn’t a slogan, but a human instinct in its rawest, truest form.”
UN chief backs call to triple adaptation finance
Before the fire incident, as negotiations on a Belém “Mutirão” decision dragged on beyond the Wednesday deadline the COP30 presidency had targeted, UN chief António Guterres called on governments to agree a balanced political package that would require compromise and courage.
Such a package should be “concrete on funding adaptation, credible on emissions cuts, bankable on finance”, he told journalists on Thursday morning.
For the first time, he rallied behind a demand from the world’s poorest countries to triple finance to help them adapt to more extreme weather and rising seas to $120 billion by 2030.
He noted that communities on the frontlines are watching the UN summit – “counting flooded homes, failed harvests, lost livelihoods and asking ‘how much more must we suffer?’” “They have heard enough excuses, they demand results,” he added.
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He warned that an “inevitable” temporary overshoot of the 1.5C warming limit in the Paris Agreement means “more heat and hunger, more disasters and displacements”.
“For millions, adaptation is not an abstract goal,” the Portuguese official insisted. “It is the difference between rebuilding and being swept away, between replanting and starving, between staying on ancestral lands or losing it forever.”
Adaptation needs are “skyrocketing and the overshoot will push them even higher”, he added. Despite this, developed countries’ commitment to double adaptation finance to at least $40 billion by this year “is slipping away”, he warned.
Poorest countries appeal for more adaptation finance at COP30
The latest estimate of developing countries’ annual climate adaptation needs for 2035 outstrips current funding by at least 12 times, with rich nations providing just $26 billion in 2023, according to the annual UN Adaptation Gap Report.
If current trends continue, developed countries are set to miss the 2025 target that they committed to at COP26 four years ago, UNEP’s report said.
“So tripling adaptation finance by 2030 is essential,” Guterres said, adding that it is also “possible and desirable” and he hoped developed countries would “accept to engage in this objective” at COP30 if their concerns on emissions reductions are addressed.
He noted that a new fund to help countries recover from loss and damage is practically empty and called for it to be capitalised. During COP30, the fund has received tiny pledges totalling less than $16 million from Iceland, Japan and Luxembourg. It has now secured combined promises of nearly $800 million but only around half of that is in the bank.
Guterres urged funders, including wealthy governments, climate funds and development banks “to step up and prevent further tragedies”. “It’s about survival, it’s about justice – and for Indigenous peoples, it is also about protecting cultures and homelands that sustain our planet’s vital ecosystems,” he added.
To ramp up emissions-cutting efforts and bring warming back down to 1.5C, he said countries’ national climate plans (NDCs) should be the “floor not the ceiling”, with the responsibility on big emitters to do more.
He did not explicitly back a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, as more than 80 countries are pushing for at the talks, but said governments should implement the energy shift they signed up to at COP28 and ensure it is done in a fair way.
Asked if he wanted the US to return to the UN climate process, which climate-change denier President Donald Trump has abandoned, Guterres said “we are waiting for you”, quipping “hope is the last thing that dies”.
Germany pledges €1 billion to TFFF forest fund
Germany has joined a handful of countries pledging money to the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), but the conservation mechanism launched by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ahead of COP30 is still far short of the $25 billion in public funds it aims to secure.
Following talks between government ministers and Lula yesterday, Germany said it would contribute one billion euros ($1.1 billion) over the next 10 years, praising the “innovative approach” of the investment-driven multilateral fund proposed by Brazil.
The TFFF is a blended finance instrument that will invest in financial markets and pay a share of any returns to tropical countries that are protecting their rainforests. At least 20% of all payments must be allocated to Indigenous people and local communities. Read this Climate Home News explainer for more details of how the fund works.
Visitors stroll through the Green Zone corridor at the 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30). (Photo by Alex Ferro/COP30)
Visitors stroll through the Green Zone corridor at the 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30). (Photo by Alex Ferro/COP30)
“It’s about protecting the tropical rainforests, the lungs of our planet,” a statement by Germany’s development and environment ministers said after Wednesday’s meeting.
At a press conference this Thursday, German environment minister said the country will disburse $100 million every year over a decade in the form of a grant, which experts said could allow for larger payouts to forest countries since the fund wouldn’t have to pay interest. The money would come from the country’s foreign aid budget.
Germany’s promise of support follows a Norwegian pledge of 3 billion euros over the coming decade – which are conditional to other donors also contributing money to the fund, while Brazil and Indonesia have pledged $1 billion each, with Colombia offering $250 million. France has also said it will consider contributing 500 million euros over the next five years.
But campaigners were critical of the German contribution, as the world’s third-largest economy has pledged about the same amount as Brazil and Indonesia. A group of German NGOs sent a letter to government officials requesting the country to pledge at least $2.5 billion for the TFFF.
“That the German government is investing in the TFFF is important and the right thing to do. Nevertheless, the investment amount of one billion euros is a disappointment,” said Felix Finkbeiner, founder of Germany-based conservation NGO Plant-for-the-Planet.
Florian Titze, WWF-Germany Head of International Policy, also said the sum was “disappointing”, given that Chancellor Frierich Merz told world leaders at COP30 that the country would pledge a “considerable” amount. “The federal government should now successively increase the German amount and distribute it over the next few years.”
The total pledged so far to the TFFF amounts to roughly $7 billion. However, experts noted that, because Norway’s pledge is conditional and doesn’t count toward the $10bn target set by the Brazilians at COP30, the fund has been left with about a $6bn shortfall.
British climate minister Ed Miliband said on Monday the UK government was keeping “the option of an investment under review”.
Talks have also been held with China, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Japan and Canada, Brazilian TFFF official João Paulo de Resende told Climate Home News last month. None of those countries have so far announced pledges
De Resende said securing political support was more important at this stage than funding promises, which can come later.
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Roman ruins and lots of hotels – Türkiye’s pitch to host COP31
Outlining their ultimately successful bid to host COP31, Turkish officials pitched the country as a lower-emissions choice due to its location at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, and played up the rich cultural heritage and top-level tourist facilities of the resort city of Antalya.
Australian Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen announced last night that his country was ceding the summit’s hosting rights to Türkiye, though Australia – which had greater support for its candidacy – will lead the negotiations.
Türkiye’s pitch for the talks to be held in Antalya, made in a presentation to delegates at the Bonn climate talks in June, promised to deliver a “zero-waste COP”, with a strong focus on heritage sites such as nearby Roman ruins and a shrine to Saint Nicholas of Myra, the inspiration for Santa Claus. The presentation’s slides also praised the Mediterranean city’s food and golf courses.
Turkish officials argued that a COP held in Antalya would have a smaller carbon footprint than Australia’s proposal of Adelaide due to its central geographical location, and also sought to emphasise the city’s urban transport network as well as its strong local logistics and supply chain.
Antalya pictured on February 18, 2024. (Photo by Dominika Zarzycka/NurPhoto)
Antalya, which is a similar size to Belém, with a population of roughly 1.5 million people, is popular with European and Russian sun-seekers in summer. By November, when the COP will be held, temperatures will have dropped to highs of about 21C (70F). That means COP delegates won’t have to compete with as many tourists for the 628,000 beds that the Turkish government says the city has to offer – far more than Belém.
But at a time of worries about democratic backsliding in Türkiye, hosting COP31 in Antalya may draw concerns.
Mahir Ilgaz, a Turkish regional programme director at Oil Change International, voiced concern about the decision, noting in a social media post that elected mayors – including Antalya’s – have been replaced by government-appointed trustees.
“Colleagues working on local engagement are already wondering how to operate safely and meaningfully in that context”, he wrote on LinkedIn.
Meanwhile, a former Turkish climate diplomat told Climate Home News that they were disappointed Turkiye would not hold the presidency.
“We bear the burden, but they hold the power. We have the drum but they hold the drumstick. We do the work but they make the decisions,” the official said.
Chris Bowen, who is likely to be COP31 President, speaks to the media in Sydney, Tuesday, March 17, 2020. (AAP Image/Joel Carrett)
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