Belém, Brazil, Nov 10, (dpa/GNA) – The 30th annual UN Climate Change Conference begins on Monday in the Brazilian city of Belém, in the Amazon rainforest, with hosts expecting around 50,000 participants.
More than 190 countries will spend two weeks, discussing how to curb the climate crisis and its devastating impacts, including more frequent and severe droughts, storms, wildfires and floods.
Talks at the conference known as COP30, will also address demands from poorer nations for more funding, to adapt to increasingly hostile climate conditions.
The mammoth gathering comes 10 years after the Paris climate agreement, hailed at the time as historic. Back then, the international community agreed to limit global warming to as close as possible to 1.5 degrees Celsius, above pre-industrial levels.
That has failed, UN Secretary General António Guterres said at a preparatory summit with dozens of heads of state and government, calling this “the hard truth.”
He said the 1.5 degree threshold would be exceeded temporarily by the start of the 2030s at the latest, describing this as a “moral failure and deadly negligence.”
According to a current UN forecast, the world is on track for 2.8 degrees of warming with existing climate policies.
GNA