COP30 starts with call for faster action, more togetherness, but without US

COP30 president Andre Correa do Lago urged negotiators to embrace mutirao, a Brazilian term meaning collective effort, to work together toward tackling climate change

UN climate negotiations were expected to begin on Monday at a meeting on the edge of the Brazilian Amazon, with leaders pushing for urgency, cooperation and acceleration after more than 30 years fighting to curb global warming by drastically reducing the carbon pollution that causes it.

Andre Correa do Lago, president of this year's conference, known as COP30, emphasised that negotiators engage in mutirao, a Brazilian word derived from an Indigenous word that refers to a group uniting to work on a shared task.

Either we decide to change by choice, together, or we will be imposed change by tragedy, Lago wrote in his letter to negotiators on Sunday. We can change. But we must do it together.

Complicating the calls for togetherness is the United States. The Trump administration did not send high-level negotiators to the talks and is withdrawing for the second time from the 10-year-old Paris Agreement, which is being celebrated as a partial achievement here in Belem.

The United States has put more heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the air from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas than any other country. China is the No. 1 carbon polluter now, but because carbon dioxide stays in the air for at least a century, more of it was made in the US.

I think the environment we are in, the geopolitical landscape, is particularly challenging," said Palau Ambassador Ilana Seid, who chairs the Alliance of Small Island States. Small island nations suffer some of the worst effects of climate change because rising seas swallow land. "The United States' withdrawal from the Paris Agreement has really shifted the gravity of the whole negotiating system.

President Donald Trump's actions damage the fight against climate change, former US Special Envoy for Climate Todd Stern said.

It's a good thing that they are not sending anyone. It wasn't going to be constructive if they did," he said.

The Nature Conservancy chief scientist Katharine Hayhoe compared the negotiations to a potluck dinner.

Everybody brings the contributions that they are making, which in this instance are new and strengthened plans to cut carbon pollution, Hayhoe said. And it's obvious who took the time to bake the fresh pie with fruit that they picked and who fished out that year-old chicken frozen chicken nuggets from the back of their freezer.

The United States as a country will not be showing up with a dish, Hayhoe said. However, she and several others, including former lead American negotiators, are pointing to US cities, states and businesses that they said will take up the slack.

In a letter to negotiators released late Sunday, Simon Stiell, the UN climate chief, said the 10-year-old Paris Agreement is working to a degree, but we must accelerate in the Amazon. Devastating climate damages are happening already, from Hurricane Melissa hitting the Caribbean, Super Typhoons smashing Vietnam and the Philippines, to a tornado ripping through Southern Brazil.

Not only must nations do more faster, but they must connect climate action to people's real lives, Stiell wrote.