UN Climate Conference Begins in Belém,Brazil

BELÉM,Brazil (CN) – Negotiations at the United Nations Climate Change Conference began in Belém,Brazil,after 194 countries approved the official agenda,averting a procedural deadlock that threatened to stall the summit on its first day Monday.

“I want to thank all delegations for the fantastic agreement,” said Brazilian diplomat André Corrêa do Lago, president of COP30, during a news briefing. “This understanding allows us to start working intensely right away and to explain to the world why these additional issues really matter.”

Negotiations will continue through Nov. 21, covering topics from climate mitigation and adaptation to finance and openness – all of which must be approved by consensus.

With the agenda cleared, Brazil is now seeking to broaden the talks beyond technical targets, bringing social issues such as hunger, poverty and food security to the centre of climate diplomacy.

In his opening speech, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva urged the international community to “put people at the center of the climate agenda.”

“Global warming can push millions of people into hunger and poverty, rolling back decades of progress,” he said.

According to saulo Ceolin,head of the food and Nutrition Security Division at Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs,topics like food systems and food security rarely appear on the official COP negotiation agenda.

“What Brazil did was to strongly bring these issues into the action agenda, which is everything that happens around the negotiations,” Ceolin said. “The goal was to organize these themes and find ways to ensure that previous commitments are actually implemented.”

The effort gained momentum with the launch of the Global Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition at COP28 in Dubai.

“We need to show that climate action and social justice are not mutually exclusive,” Ceolin said. “They are two sides of the same coin.”

The Belém conference is taking place in the Amazon rainforest, a region especially vulnerable to climate change.The choice of location is intended to highlight the importance of protecting biodiversity and the rights of Indigenous communities.

“The Amazon is not just a forest; it’s a vital ecosystem for the entire planet,” Lula said. “We must protect it for the sake of our future.”

Courthouse News reporter Maria Vultaggio is covering the COP30 climate conference in Belém, Brazil.