# COP30: Can Climate Action Be Heard in a World of Noise?
If 50,000 world leaders, journalists, NGO representatives, politicians, business leaders, lobbyists, and diplomats all gather for a conference in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest but no one hears them, did they even have the Conference? It is a philosophical thought experiment worth considering as delegates gear up to do exactly that in one months’ time. The 30th iteration of the Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC will be taking place between 10th and 21st November in Belem, Brazil, a city with a poignant location in the context of this conference. The Amazon Rainforest is one of, if not, the most significant global ecosystem that needs international protection and preservation in the interests of climate mitigation. This would appear to be the right place for the gathering at COP30 to put climate back at the top of the global agenda and to provide strong clear leadership on the future of climate policy which is so badly needed.
However, this year’s COP will also take place against a backdrop of arguably the strongest and most vocal political opposition to climate action that we have seen since the establishment of the conference in 1995. while the avalanche of electoral successes that climate sceptic populist parties are enjoying around the democratic world can no longer be called a new phenomenon, this is the first COP since the return of President Donald Trump to the White House. And it was his claim that climate change is the ‘the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world’, stated at a speech in the UN itself at the end of September, that will embolden climate sceptics the world over. The rhetoric means that the job of COP30 to make itself heard in an increasingly fractured international landscape has now been made doubly arduous as it is indeed set to be drowned out by deafening noises of derision made by the US President and his acolytes. Meanwhile, with so many other critically significant concerns regarding multiple international conflicts, will there really be the bandwidth required for COP30 to put climate change at the top of the 24-hour news cycle for more than the duration of the conference? Not to mention the to-do lists of the world’s most powerful leaders.
The UNFCCC faces an uphill struggle coming into this conference but there are some key things that can be done to ensure that this conference is indeed heard loud and clear and can be a catalyst for significant progress without being drowned out within the very forest it aims to save.
Rather than this conference focusing on climate-sceptic countries, the countries willing to stand up and demonstrate their commitment to climate mitigation on the world stage must dominate the agenda. None are more important than Brazil, which not only hosts this year’s conference but in doing so is signalling its return as a country which takes climate action seriously. The years of the Bolsonaro presidency saw despairing and dejected climate activists in Brazil and around the world watch on as plans to curtail the degradation of the Amazon were halted in favour of deforestation practices which grew unabated in the name of economic growth. The policies in these years did untold damage to the forest and took Brazil out of global leadership on climate, with trust in its government seriously undermined. However, since the return of Lula to the presidency in 2023, rhetoric has been far