Brazil, self-described champion of developing nations, invited the world’s dignitaries into the Amazon rainforest to showcase solutions to the global crisis of climate change.
Now, with just eight weeks before negotiations begin, Brazil faces a diplomatic migraine.
History’s biggest polluter, the United States, is likely to be a no-show. The billions of dollars that poor countries need to cope with climate catastrophes have not materialized. Activists accuse Brazil of hypocrisy by authorizing more oil drilling.
And pressure is mounting to overhaul the entire system of climate diplomacy, established by the Paris Agreement 10 years ago, because the countries that pollute the most aren’t cutting their emissions nearly fast enough to stave off irreversible damage to the planet.
Amid all this, Brazil hasn’t found a way to resolve a basic problem threatening the coming talks. Many diplomats are complaining of an acute scarcity of affordable rooms in Belém, the host city. Two-thirds of countries have yet to book a room.
“We can’t push the issues critical to our survival if we can’t even get there,” said Ilana Seid, a diplomat from the Pacific island nation of Palau, the very existence of which is threatened by climate change. “It is difficult to see how we will be able to fully represent ourselves.”
According to the leader of a group of African diplomats, Brazilian officials had suggested to some countries that their delegates may need to share rooms. Delegates objected to that idea.
The Brazilian diplomat in charge of the negotiations, André Corrêa do Lago, called it a “misunderstanding” and said that the government had made available 53,000 rooms in all, more than enough for the 50,000 expected to attend the negotiations, including rooms in the $100-to-200 range for the poorest countries and island nations like Ms. Seid’s.
“We have already set aside the rooms to make sure all the countries will be in Belém at an affordable price,” he said in a telephone interview on Monday.
The kerfuffle over affordable rooms has only added to the deficit of trust that hangs over international climate diplomacy at a time when climate hazards are hitting the poorest countries hardest. It comes as the United States has not only announced its pullout from the Paris accord, but it is undermining efforts to tackle global climate change by advancing oil and gas production.
“The circumstances are not ideal,” Mr. Corrêa do Lago added. “The geopolitical context is very difficult.”
In a letter to delegates in mid-August, he acknowledged the logistical difficulties and asked fellow diplomats for “your creativity in finding new solutions to new challenges.”
The government said it had arranged for rooms at hotels, two cruise ships and “regulated private properties,” and that it was looking into converting some schools into hostels. On Friday, Mr. Corrêa do Lago said Brazil had asked banks and philanthropic organizations to chip in to help some attendees cover costs, which have spiked because of great demand.
In Belém, normally low-cost rooms have risen to as much as $600 a night. There are subsidies available from the United Nations for a limited number of delegates most in need, and Brazil has said it will set aside lodging starting at $100 for delegations from the poorest countries. Brazil has also proposed a cap of 15 rooms per delegation for the discounted rooms. The government also said it had put together a task force to guard against “abusive lodging practices.”
The annual talks remain the most important gathering for nations to jointly face an issue that hurts them all. They’re particularly important for small or poorer countries, since they represent a rare opportunity to have an equal diplomatic voice.
“You need a place for all countries and, optimally, all stakeholders, which are many, to come together and find solutions,” said Jennifer Morgan, the former climate envoy of Germany and also former president of Greenpeace International. However, she said, “They can be more efficient.”
There are, in fact, growing calls to make the agenda for the talks more focused.
Over the years, they’ve ballooned in size, drawing anywhere from 40,000 to more than 80,000 people. Oil company executives come to them, as do climate activists.
The goal of the talks is to find agreement among countries to jointly reduce greenhouse gas emissions to slow global warming, ideally limiting the increase in temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial times. But any agreement has to be reached with unanimous consent, and oil producing nations have routinely undermined some of the more ambitious proposals.
Perhaps most important, the promises that countries have made so far at these talks, even if they were kept, wouldn’t be sufficient to stave off catastrophic temperature rise.
Belém, near Brazil’s Atlantic coast, rose to prominence for its role in the sugar trade while Brazil was a Portuguese colony, and for rubber from the rainforest in the 19th and 20th centuries. Today, with a population of more than a million, it’s the capital Pará, one of Brazil’s poorest states. It receives few international flights. And it’s not a tourist draw, so there aren’t resorts and conference centers that can readily accommodate visitors from around the world.
But for Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Belém seemed the ideal location to draw the world’s attention to the importance of forests like the Amazon in pulling planet-warming carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Brazil has slowed down deforestation under President Lula’s administration. It is seeking global investments for a new forest preservation fund.
Still, with just two months left, many countries say they’re still trying to lock in affordable rooms. That is threatening to derail the entire negotiations. Instead of preparing for the talks, delegations are calling up agents and brokers in Belém, searching for apartments or even boats with beds to rent. Everything has been “astronomically expensive,” Ms. Seid said.
The frustrations burst into public view when a Panamanian diplomat, Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez, took the most undiplomatic step of venting on LinkedIn, saying “the current arrangements are impossible.”
“This is about whether we take this international process seriously. Whether we respect one another. Whether we respect ourselves,” he wrote. “Right now, we are not doing any of that.”
Ms. Seid said she appreciated that Belém had been chosen to showcase the Amazon but found herself asking, “Will it hinder the work we need to do?”
Richard Muyungi, a Tanzanian climate scientist and government official who will lead the African group of negotiators at COP30, said that, given the shortage of affordable rooms, delegations from the continent would have to bring fewer people. Delegations often include a wide range of people like heads of state, student activists, academics and entrepreneurs.
“We were told that the importance of hosting this in the global south was inclusivity, but how can we manage inclusivity with so little space?” Mr. Muyungi said.
Mr. Corrêa do Lago said 66 countries had confirmed accommodations, an additional 63 were continuing to negotiate, and 57 countries had not yet booked rooms. “Not everybody will get all the rooms they want,” he said, adding that Brazil would ensure that all countries would be accommodated. “We’ll have to keep negotiating.”
Several times, delegates from other countries pressed Brazil to move at least a part of the conference to a bigger city in Brazil where there are more rooms available. Brazil has refused. “It will be in Belém,” Mr. Corrêa do Lago said late last week.
Somini Sengupta is the international climate reporter on the Times climate team.
Max Bearak is a Times reporter who writes about global energy and climate policies and new approaches to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
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