This year’s major United Nations climate talks, COP30, fell short of many expectations. 

Despite being held in Belém, Brazil, known as the “gateway to the Amazon,” issues such as stopping deforestation and transforming global food systems received relatively little attention. While some bright spots emerged, overall progress was minimal.

COP30 faced a number of logistical hurdles this year, including limited lodging, formidable humidity and rain, and even a sizable fire that disrupted the last week of negotiations. These logistical issues, paired with a general atmosphere of deteriorating international cooperation, meant the Brazilian presidency was carrying a considerable burden to see the talks through. In some sense, we should celebrate the fact that the UN climate process has not collapsed entirely (a low bar, I know)…

If I had to put my faith in anything, it would be in the power of people to lead, mobilize, and deploy real climate solutions. 

The Amazon is falling, but people are rising

After all the media coverage, hot takes, and focus on the conference location, very little was said about the Amazon and its importance to us all. Several points stuck out to me on my first visit to this incredible rainforest: 

• First, the scale of people living in the rainforest is much bigger than I imagined – roughly 47 million people, including over 2 million Indigenous people, live in the Amazon.
• Second, its biodiversity – the Amazon is thought to be home to more than 10% of species on Earth, and a new species is discovered there every other day on average. 
• Third, its size – the Amazon is over one and a half times the size of India, covering roughly 6.7 million square kilometers.
• Fourth, it’s incredibly vulnerable – according to the latest Amazon Assessment Report, the Amazon has been deforested by about 18%; that is dangerously close to a ‘tipping point’ that could push the rainforest into a savanna ecosystem (a savannah). 

Dan Jasper is a senior policy advisor at Project Drawdown with a multidisciplinary background in public policy at the intersection of climate change and poverty alleviation.  Read the entire post…

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