Indigenous groups blockade Cop30 conference entrance in protests – as it happened

8.41pm GMT
That's a wrap for day 5 of Cop30, here's what you need to know:

There is mounting anger at the deployment of armed security forces to the Cop30 venue, in response to peaceful protests by Indigenous peoples demanding their right to be included.
The move to beef up security appears to have been instigated by Simon Stiell, the UN climate chief, who complained to Brazilian authorities, according to a letter reviewed by the Guardian.
Ana Toni, the chief executive of Cop30, denied that Indigenous People were being excluded, and said protests would be allowed to continue despite the influx of military and police.
Chief Raoni Metuktire, the indomitable Indigenous leader and forest protector, called on the Brazilian president and Cop30 delegates to protect nature and Indigenous peoples: “If we continue destroying everything on this earth, there will be many consequences, there will be chaos on this earth.”
Amid growing frustration over who gets access to the UN climate summit, new analysis confirmed that one in every 25 delegates at Cop30 are fossil fuel lobbyists, bringing the total to 7,000 oil, gas and coal affiliated participants over the past five years.

That’s all from the blog for week one. There will be plenty of Cop30 stories over the weekend and the blog returns on Monday morning. For week two, my colleagues Fiona Harvey, Jon Watts, Damien Gayle and Damian Carrington will be in Belém so hit them up with tips and good vibes.
Until then, have a restful weekend comrades. Tenham um ótimo fim de semana, camaradas.

Updated at 8.45pm GMT

8.18pm GMT

Between 2023 and 2025, the Amazon region went through one of the most severe periods of drought and fires ever recorded in its recent history, according to a new study by the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (Coiab).
A survey found that the area under extreme drought jumped from 873,000 hectares in June 2024 to more than 21 million in September – a 2,300% rise in just three months, impacting more than 160 Indigenous Territories.
This extreme drought was driven by a combination of factors including El Niño, the warming of the North Atlantic, deforestation, and forest degradation.
According to Coiab, the demarcation or legal recognition of Indigenous territories is the most effective way to mitigate against the impacts on Indigenous peoples. There are currently 29 Indigenous Territories ready for demarcation in the Amazon, should the Brazilian government want to show that it is actually listening to Indigenous people.

8.05pm GMT

My colleague Damien Gayle has been gathering more reaction to the deployment of armed security forces to the UN climate talks venue, in response to Indigenous peoples assertively but peacefully demanding their right to be included.
Zahra Al Hilaly, a Palestinian ecofeminist, said:

The heaviest policing at Cop30 isn’t aimed at polluters, it’s aimed at Indigenous peoples in Belém. That tells you everything about whose power is protected and whose lives aren’t.

Tyrone Scott, senior movement building and activism officer at War on Want, said:

Indigenous peoples have been defending the Amazon long before the world cared to pay attention — yet at Cop30, their voices are being pushed outside the gates while police lines and military patrols move in. This level of securitisation doesn’t create safety, it creates fear. It stands in stark contrast to the hope, solidarity and determination felt across our movements. If world leaders want real climate solutions, they must open space for Indigenous leadership, not close it down.

Paolo Destilo of United for Climate Justice said:

The increased securitization of the COP30 venue with army, national guard and military police personnel just shows how unaccessible the UNFCCC negotiations processes have been to the wider Indigenous communities and populations most affected by climate change. That is why we demand that these negotiations open up to the demands of the Indigenous communities, affected communities and activists that came from all over the world.

Orion Camero of the California Allegory project said:

Increasing the military presence at Cop30 as a response to Indigenous peoples calling for more tangible action and less hollow words, is a perfect example of the world we are in today. Fossil fuel lobbyists freely enter the negotiations halls while Indigenous communities are shut out of entry. True climate justice is centering Indigenous sovereignty as world leaders navigate solutions and ushering the end of the fossil fuel era. Armed intimidation will not stop us from fighting for the planet.

Jes Vesconte, an American climate justice activist and artist, said:

The use of militarised police by the UN Cop30 secretariat mirrors the Trump regime’s authoritarian repression on the streets of Los Angeles against anti-fascist immigrant rights organisers. It is the same police militarisation that murdered George Floyd, that assassinated the Indigenous land defender Tortuguita in Atlanta’s Stop Cop City environmental justice movement, and that oil interests marshal to assassinate land defenders here in Brazil and across the world.

As long as the forces of authoritarianism and fascism obstruct the participation and advocacy of those most affected by the climate emergency, particularly Indigenous peoples, there can be no climate justice and no just transition. This militarized police response is antithetical to the mission of the Cop30 negotiations, the UNFCCC, and the principles of the UN Charter.”

It’s worth noting that the UN claims to be “the one place on Earth where all the world’s nations can gather together, discuss common problems, and find shared solutions that benefit all of humanity.”

7.39pm GMT

We’ve been reporting on Indigenous leaders from the Amazon who feel excluded and unheard by the powerbrokers at the UN climate talks. This morning I head from a youth climate activist in Uganda, where state security forces have been cracking down on peaceful protests against the internationally funded East African Crude Oil Pipeline (Eacop), one of the largest fossil fuel infrastructure projects currently under development globally.
Nalwadda Shamim, 22, is among 11 young people currently detained at a maximum security prison since 1 August. She describes herself as a prisoner of conscience and is a member of Students Against EACOP Uganda.

As global leaders gather in Belem for Cop30, it’s important for them to scale up the phaseout of fossil fuels and take real action beyond the endless discussions in the negotiation rooms. We must have a Cop of truth that defends the interests of people and the planet. As I, together with 10 other student activists, remain in detention for four months now at a maximum security prison, our struggles against the construction of the deadly East African Crude Oil Pipeline correlates with the Indigenous voices from the Amazon.

In our collective struggle, we are already experiencing the vast effects of the climate crisis as a result of accumulated carbon emissions. Further drilling, extraction and developments of deadly oil infrastructural projects like pipelines and refineries will create a pathway for human extinction and mass deaths. Global leaders and governments must act now.

Nalwadda Shamim was along the activists arrested on 1 August during a demonstration near a Ugandan bank providing financial support to Eacop, and have been held in jail since - in violation of international due process norms, according to Human Rights Watch. They are among dozens of peaceful student protesters who have been investigated and jailed, and whose plight has been condemned by human rights experts including Mary Lawlor, the UN special rapporteur for human rights defenders.
If fully constructed, the Eacop will stretch 900 miles through fragile ecosystems and villages from western Uganda to the eastern coast of Tanzania, from where the oil will be exported to international buyers. The project will generate an estimated 379m tonnes of CO2 over its 25-year life span, more than the UK’s national emissions in 2022.
The fossil fuel corporation behind Eacop is at Cop30; the climate activists protesting it are in jail.

Updated at 7.41pm GMT

6.58pm GMT

Indigenous activists bear the brunt of Cop30 militarization
My colleague Damien Gayle has been looking what’s behind the rise in armed security forces around the Cop30 venue. Spoiler: Simon Stiell
Civil society campaigners have said their ability to participate in Cop30 has been curtailed following a complaint by the UN climate chief to Brazilian authorities about security around the summit.
Designated protest spaces have been reduced, and numbers of armed security personnel around the conference centre where the summit is taking place have multiplied after Simon Stiell ordered the Brazilians to beef up security.
The shift in tone has been a disappointment to civil society groups who had hoped to for greater opportunities to communicate their messages in the first Cop summit in four years to be held in a democracy.
“There’s been a huge intensification of security,” Thomas Joseph of the Indigenous Environmental Network told the Guardian.

They are heavily armed as well, it’s not just riot gear like with batons and shields. They’re carrying weapons. And the military police is also here as well, and they have a tank out in front that you have to walk by in order to get in.

Joseph said the increased militarisation around the Cop begun on Wednesday, and then ramped up on Friday morning. He said Indigenous protesters had been particularly targeted by security forces.

We feel like we’re in a police state. We feel like we’re being overly policed and that they’re using intimidation tactics [to stop] being able to address the concerns that we find with Cop, with the operations of the UNFCCC.

Another campaigner, from the UK, said:

Now you can’t go anywhere without the really heavy military presence, which is quite intimidating. Inside it’s more militarised, too. It’s very tense. Security has ramped up massively. There was designated areas in which we [could] do actions, the next day they were cut down.

The increased securitisation follows a letter sent by Stiell to André Corrêa do Lago, the Cop30 president, on Wednesday outlining “urgent concerns” over security following an incident in which about Indigenous protesters and their supporters tried to gain access to the summit’s restricted zone.
According to the letter, now seen by the Guardian, about 150 protesters who had broken off from a sanctioned march “forced their way onto the UN premises causing damages to property and minor injuries to security staff tasked with securing the venue”.
Stiell complained that despite security pre-agreed security arrangements, security forces “failed to take action or enforce the agreed security plan” when protesters deviated from the arranged route of the march. Stiell wrote:

This represents a serious breach of the established security framework and raises significant concerns regarding compliance with the host country’s security obligations. The security forces and command structure required to execute the security plan were all present on the ground during the incident but failed to act.

6.31pm GMT

Ana Toni, the chief executive of Cop30, has denied that this climate summit has not been inclusive to Indigenous People – despite two separate protests in the past three days by Amazonian community leaders demanding to be heard.
On Wednesday, protesters forced their way through security barriers and tussled with security guards and then, this morning, a group of around 50 people from the Munduruku community, an Indigenous people in the Amazon basin, blockaded the entrance for several hours. They only dispersed when André Corrêa do Lago, the Cop30 president, arrived to talk to them.
Toni said that the siting of the Cop in the Amazon rather than a major Brazilian city was to “celebrate” Indigenous people and claimed that it has been the most inclusive UN climate summit ever, with 900 Indigenous representatives accredited for the event.

We are in dialogue with them, they are there. We are probably going to hear from Indigenous people throughout this Cop, the reason to have a Cop in the Amazon is to hear from people who are most vulnerable, to embrace their different ways of protesting.
We will continue dialogue with the legitimate calls that indigenous people have, we are listening to them, the manifestation they had was legitimate. They were asking about processes not just about Cop but national policies.
We have been debating throughout with indigenous people, I think they feel included.

This is in stark contrast to what Munduruku protesters, upset at plans to privatize rivers in their region, said this morning. “We were always barred, we were never listened to,” one community member said. “Enterprise is being brought without our ears. Every type of venture is being invested without listening to us.”
Security has been noticeably beefed up in the past few days, with large numbers of soldiers and riot police deployed on the roads leading to and around the convention center. Toni said that people will still be able to protest and fully access the talks despite the influx of military and police.

Updated at 7.05pm GMT

6.20pm GMT

The US is mostly absent from Cop30 thanks to the Trump administration exiting Paris and boycotting proceedings, as well as the federal government shutdown which just ended after a record 43 days.
Dharna Noor, a Guardian US environment reporter, sat down with the only federal lawmaker who has made it, Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator for Rhode Island and long-time climate action advocate. Whitehouse said that the US absence might actually benefit negotiations:

When you consider how horribly corrupt the Trump administration is on this subject, it’s probably actually a great relief to everyone that they’re not here.

Some countries are also concerned about potential backdoor meddling from the US. At an international maritime organization (IMO) meeting last month, American officials thwarted the enactment of a proposed carbon fee by threatening tariffs on supportive countries and even menacing global delegates during coffee breaks.

The Trump administration destroying that is consequential. But behind the immediate effect is the foul spectacle of the power and might of the United States government being used to bully and intimidate and humiliate other countries to achieve a political goal for a bunch of donors. It was a double blow to US decency and prestige and a signal of what to expect.”

Asked whether the US can build back its rapidly declining reputation on the global stage, Whitehouse said “the economic effects of climate change” are forcing Americans to wake up to the realities of the warming world. Homeowners insurance prices amid increasingly destructive extreme weather events, as are utility costs - a trend expected to pick up speed as Trump shoots down clean energy growth.

The fossil fuel industry is the cause of the affordability problem. The quicker that becomes clear to Americans and the quicker the complicity of the Republican Party in that becomes clear to Americans, the quicker we’ll make the political correction so that we no longer have a government we have to apologize for.

Updated at 6.52pm GMT

5.52pm GMT
Key event

If we continue destroying everything on this earth, there will be chaos
Sitting by the edge of a tree-lined lake in Belém, the world’s most venerable rainforest defender Raoni Metukire, articulated a message to Brazilian president Lula da Silva and the Cop30 delegates.
“Please reflect on Nature, on the Forest,” he said in a shaking but powerful voice. “Listen to me, and demarcate Indigenous territories, so that the forests can be protected by us, to guarantee our survival on this land in the future.”
The words of the Kayapo leader are intended as a reminder that this first Cop in the Amazon rainforest must reach far beyond the air-conditioned conference rooms and discussions of mechanisms, schedules and roadmaps.
Recognised around the world for his distinctive lip disc and yellow-and-red feathered headdress, Raoni has been fighting for the Amazon since his youth. In the 1980s and 1990s, he built a global coalition of friends, admirers and supporters, including the rock singer Sting and Prince - now King - Charles of the United Kingdom, that encouraged the Brazilian government to demarcate swathes of Kayapo land.
Much of that is now under threat from illegal miners, land grabbers and the ravages of the climate crisis, which is pushing up temperatures, lengthening droughts and intensifying fires.
Raoni welcomed the climate summit as a chance to draw the world’s attention to these issues:

I think the first COP meeting in the Amazon can help the forest. We haven’t had an opportunity like this before. We can talk about what’s happening, the destruction, the deforestation. And I’m very happy, pleased, with this opportunity, which is important for all of us, to be able to speak, to be able to shout, so that the authorities can hear us. That’s important for us.

He also welcomed Brazil’s flagship initiative, the Tropical Forests Forever Fund, which has so far received promises of $5.5 bn of investment to conserve standing forests. For the first time, it was co-designed with Indigenous representatives and will include direct payments to indigenous and other traditional peoples for the work they do in maintaining this globally important ecosystem.

It will play an important role in defending the territorial rights of Indigenous peoples… [and] can strengthen our work and continue this fight that we are waging. For a long time I have been telling the world that if we continue destroying everything on this earth, there will be many consequences, there will be chaos on this earth.

Although Raoni is grateful to Lula for launching this initiative, he had harsher words for the government’s recent announcement that it would approve oil exploration off the Amazon coast. “These large projects that affect us, Indigenous people, and I don’t accept it, I don’t agree, because it’s a very bad thing for us.”
Raoni’s age is uncertain, but he is thought to be in his nineties. Although he now needs a wheelchair and travels with a nurse, he will continue to fight.

I will continue defending the Amazon rainforest. And also ask that people respect the Amazon, that the forests within the Amazon remain alive and contribute to our lives, contribute to our survival. I will continue fighting. As long as I can, I will continue fighting.

Updated at 7.17pm GMT

5.09pm GMT

Here’s more from the youth-led protest which my colleague Dharna Noor attended earlier
Arina Bilai, a Fridays for Future activist from Ukraine, reminded the crowd that that “Russia’s war on Ukraine is still happening”.

Just today, Russia attacked Ukraine.

Arina was among many activists calling for an end to conflict as a key aspect of climate justice.
“What do we want? Climate justice. When do we want it? Now,” went the chant.

Updated at 5.19pm GMT

4.48pm GMT

One in every 25 Cop delegate is a fossil fuel lobbyst
My colleagues in Belém have been reporting on the efforts Indigenous people are having to go to get their voices heard at the climate talks. Meanwhile more than 1600 fossil fuel lobbyists representing among the worst polluters on the planet are swanning around the corridors of power and negotiating rooms. This is despite the Brazilian presidency claiming this would be the Indigenous Peoples Cop.
Tom BK Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, told the Guardian:

The NDCs at this COP30 were supposed to be the ones to align with the 1.5⁰ C climate limit that science and climate justice demand. But no, this is the conference of the perpetrators representing more than 1600 fossil fuel lobbyists given access to COP30.
It is unethical to give access to these Big Polluters that continue a road of ecocide, terracide and genocide against Mother Earth, Father Sky, nature and humanity. It is immoral to call this the Indigenous Peoples Cop when local Indigenous Peoples are forced to lift their voices to gain entry when the fossil fuel lobbyists can freely waltz in with no struggle.

Pim Sullivan-Tailyour from the UK Youth Climate Coalition said:

To achieve a just transition, we must create the conditions by which fossil fuels can no longer have the social license to continue business as usual, making billions in profit, dwarfing the climate finance countries are scrambling to agree on. While local indigenous peoples struggled to enter the conference, fossil fuel lobbyists walk in freely. My generation deserves Just Transition policies that reflect what people and planet need, not what polluters’ profits demand.

Related: Fossil fuel lobbyists outnumber all Cop30 delegations except Brazil, report says

Updated at 7.08pm GMT

4.34pm GMT

Good afternoon friends and colleagues in Belém - and our readers across the world. This is Nina Lakhani in New York City taking over the blog for the next few hours. Thanks to Matt Taylor, he’ll be back with you next week.
Boa tarde, amigos e colegas em Belém – e nossos leitores em todo o mundo. Aqui é Nina Lakhani, em Nova York, assumindo o blog pelas próximas horas. Graças a Matt Taylor, ele estará de volta na próxima semana.

4.27pm GMT

Brazil’s president has called Cop30 the “Cop of Truth,” and earlier this week 12 countries signed a Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change, marking the first time any states have formally committed to fighting against climate disinformation.
With this in mind it is worth reading this excellent piece from my Guardian colleague George Monbiot today, which uncovers the dark forces at work.

Related: Dark forces are preventing us fighting the climate crisis – by taking knowledge hostage | George Monbiot

4.15pm GMT

The sight of Andre Correa do Lago, president of Cop30, holding the baby of one of the protestors outside the conference centre on Friday morning, amid a heavy military presence and tense crowds, will surely be one of the abiding images of the Belem Cop.
The veteran Brazilian diplomat has been playing the same conciliatory role, minus infant, within the conference halls.
Delegates are stuck on the “big four” issues that emerged as countries tried to agree an agenda last Sunday, before the start of the two weeks of talks.
Do Lago’s idea was to hive off these issues - on climate finance; trade; transparency; and how to address the inadequacy of nations’ recently submitted national climate plans - into a separate set of “presidency consultations”, so that the rest of agenda could continue.
Now Brazil has gone a step further, by invoking the language of love and healing, to try to unstick the snarled-up consultations.
Delegates were reassured that the sessions were a “safe space”, where they could talk freely of their feelings about the contentious issues. They should think of the sessions not as negotiations but as “therapy”, where they would be listened to with empathy.
Do Lago wants parties to send him “love letters” - confidential missives, to be read only by the presidency, in which delegations can set out frankly their real feelings on the conduct of the negotiations and the issues, their fears and their hopes.
This is a new approach for Cops, where the restatement of entrenched positions is always far more likely than any kind of insight or forward movement.
But perhaps if negotiators can be encouraged to try to process the anger, grief and trauma of the last 29 Cops, they will be in better psychological shape to make some kind of progress at this one.

4.01pm GMT

Of all the representatives from 193 countries present at crucial UN climate talks in Brazil, only one has summoned the courage to take the stage and publicly denounce the absent and hostile Trump administration – the climate minister of tiny Tuvalu.On Monday, Maina Vakafua Talia told leaders and diplomats at the Cop30 summit that Trump had shown a “shameful disregard for the rest of the world” by withdrawing the US from the Paris climate agreement.At a gathering where Trump has loomed large despite refusing to send a US delegation to Belem, Talia’s public rebuke is in stark contrast to mostly private murmurings from delegations aghast at attempts by America to halt climate action but wary of potential retribution from the White House.“We can’t remain silent while our islands are sinking, we can’t remain silent while our people are suffering,” Talia told the Guardian. Tuvalu is a nation of atolls and reef islands in the south Pacific and is considered acutely vulnerable to sea level rise and fiercer storms caused by the climate crisis.“The US has withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement and I think that’s a shameful thing to do,” he said. “We look to the US for options, for peace, but it seems they are going in the opposite direction and we should hold them accountable. Just because the US is a bigger country doesn’t mean we have to be silent. What matters to us is our survival.”While other countries have been afraid to speak out, Talia doesn’t hold such anxieties, pointing out the Trump administration has already cut climate adaptation funding for his island nation. He said that he watched Trump’s speech to the UN in September, where the US president called the climate crisis a “con job”, and said he found it “entertaining.”“The president is imposing sanctions, levies - for us, we have nothing to trade with the US,” Talia, who was wearing a geometric shirt and traditional islander teuga when we chatted. “This is a moral crisis. He has a moral duty to act, the world is looking at him, looking at the US.“We listen to the president of the United States, we looked to find hopes and options but what we got was doom. It was condemning us and our ability to survive. We need the US in the equation, we need them to engage.”

3.45pm GMT

Some more pictures from the conference in Belem which so far today has been dominated by protests – particularly by the demands of indigenous peoples who are calling on world leaders to listen to their concerns – rather than those of the ubiquitous fossil fuel lobbyists.

2.14pm GMT
Key event

Joyce Koech, a youth climate activist, made the journey from Kenya to Brazil for Cop30. The African continent is on the frontlines of the climate crisis, she noted.
“I’m here to for justice for my people, and also to highlight the atrocities in Sudan for everyone,” she said.
The ongoing war in Sudan has been exacerbated by the climate crisis, particularly the cycle of flooding and drought - a hallmark of global warming.
It’s not the only part of Africa being ravaged by climate and conflict, she noted: violence in the Congo has also been linked to environmental devastation. At Cop, she is calling on leaders to make those connections.
“We can’t address climate justice without addressing war,” she said. “We need leaders to see that.”

Updated at 2.15pm GMT

1.56pm GMT

My colleague Oliver Milman has just filed this report on this morning’s blockade of Cop30.
Protesters demanding to speak to Brazil’s president about the plight of the country’s indigenous peoples blockaded the main entrance to the Cop30 venue here in Belem for several hours, eventually leading to an extraordinary meeting with André Corrêa do Lago, the summit’s chief.
A group of around 50 people from the Munduruku, an indigenous people in the Amazon basin, blocked the entrance with some assistance from international green groups. Behind them was a huge phalanx of riot police with shields, soldiers and military vehicles.
A huge swell of delegates and journalists jostled, sometimes aggressively, around the Munduruku as they sang and chanted, some holding babies or bows and arrows. They brandished signs reading ‘Munduruku indigenous territory is sacred. Enough of the invasion and disrespect’ and ‘No to predatory tourism in the territory of the Munduruku people.’
The group demanded to speak to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva but instead had to settle for do Lago, the tall, amiable Cop president who spent over an hour listening and occasionally talking to the group’s representatives. At one point do Lago held one of the babies.
“We demand the presence of president Lula, but unfortunately we are unable to do so, as always,” said one of the protestors. “We were always barred, we were never listened to. Enterprise is being brought without our ears. Every type of venture is being invested without listening to us.”
Several protesters said that they were unhappy about their rivers being essentially privatized for commerce by Brazil’s government, a move they see as a threat to their way of life. Others mentioned they were being subjected to deforestation. mining and fish being killed by mercury poisoning.
“It’s not a negotiation meeting,” said one protester who spoke to the crowd. “We don’t negotiate the lives of our children, no. Ours was Munduruku. So we’re here to demand and we’re here to fight and know.”
She continued to say that “Brazil has a Constitution that does not respect the population” and that the privatization of rivers is “violating the right to our life, our culture and the way of life of the peoples.” She called the river “our lady” and said that “she is life, she is sacred. Nobody’s going to believe it here, bro. Nobody here is going to negotiate mining or work on our land.”
do Lago then held the hands of two of the protestors and led the entire group through a scrum of onlookers, some having to be pushed aside by the Munduruku so they could get past.
Amid the rather sweaty melee, I was able to get alongside a rather overwhelmed-looking do Lago and asked him what he had told the group. He just said “Yes, yes. I want to help, I want to help.”
The Cop president then led the entire Munduruku group to a building separate from the Cop venue, likely a presidential office, that sits behind a tall, secure gate. We will have to wait for the outcome of his talks with the group.
The venue has now reopened, albeit with a mass of people waiting in long lines to get in. A UN spokesman called the blockade a “peaceful demonstration” and that people should expect longer wait times. The incident comes after Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief, reportedly raised concerns with the Brazilian hosts about security, as well as air conditioning and the state of delegate offices, at Cop30.

1.33pm GMT

Norway and the United Arab Emirates - both significant fossil fuel producers - are among the ministerial pairings announced by the Brazilian Cop30 Presidency. The task of the pairings is to consult with countries on specific issues and report their views back to the presidency, to help the negotiations progress.
The ministers from Norway and the UAE will work on the “global stocktake”, the strand of the talks about the big gap between the carbon emissions cuts needed and the real world. At its heart is cutting fossil fuel emissions, which makes it a target for obstruction by petrostates. The UAE hosted Cop28 in 2023, which delivered the first ever mention of fossil fuels in a Cop outcome.
The pairings match a developing country with a developed one and also include the UK and Kenya, who will work on finance, a critical issue underpinning the whole UN climate process.
The UK has been a significant climate donor but declined to contribute to the Tropical Forests Forever Facility launched by Brazil at Cop30. Kenya is a prime mover behind the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force, which is promoting ideas to raise climate funds including taxes on flights and financial transactions.
The other pairings are:

Gambia and Germany, working on adaptation
Egypt and Spain, working on mitigation, i.e. cutting emissions
Mexico and Poland, working on just transition, i.e. making the switch to a clean economy fair
Australia and India, working on clean technology transfer from rich to poor countries
Chile and Sweden, working on gender, i.e. ensuring climate action addresses gender inequality and empowers women

1.27pm GMT

“We cannot negotiate with the melting point of ice.” That is the striking message on the cover of a report from the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI), launched at Cop30 on Thursday evening.
The melting of the ice sheets, glaciers and permafrost that make up the planet’s cryosphere is already vast - 30 million tonnes an hour from Greenland alone. It leads to the most profound long-term impact of the climate crisis: sea level rise that will drown cities and towns that sit on the world’s coastlines.
Pam Pearson, ICCI director, is blunt: “The damage to coastal and downstream communities is already tragic, but only the beginning. A child born today and living 2-3 metres above sea-level will almost certainly lose their home within their lifetime if current emissions continue. Within the lifetimes of their own great-great grand-children – by 2300 – that might rise to 15 metres if we do not course-correct by phasing out fossil fuels.”
“Either global leaders and the public still do not understand the scale of threat from cryosphere loss, or have become resigned to such global destruction,” she says. António Guterres, UN secretary general has warned that rising seas threaten “a mass exodus of entire populations on a biblical scale”.
The report says that global temperature rise will have to be returned to 1C next century to slow ice melting and sea-level rise to rates that allow feasible adaptation and minimise the damage.
“There are feasible pathways that address the root fossil-fuel causes of global warming, and halt the current global insanity that would lock in thousands of years of human suffering and species loss” the report says.
“All involve the phase out of fossil fuel use: first of coal (2040s), then gas (2050s), then oil (2060s),” the report says. “After that, feasible methods of carbon dioxide removal [from the atmosphere] can bring down temperatures to as low as 1.2°C – lower than today’s temperatures. By 2150, we can be below the 1C mark that major findings published this year indicate as the true safe planetary boundary for both ice sheets and mountain glaciers.”

1.15pm GMT

Back inside the conference my colleague Fiona Harvey has this on the state of the negotiations.
In a sign of how tough the negotiations are on the four issues on which the presidency is taking special consultation, the official negotiating hours were extended on Thursday night to 9pm in Belem, with a similar extension due for Friday night.
In practice, talks could go on much later on Friday as Brazil strives to achieve progress in the consultations ahead of a stocktake session on Saturday, at which the presidency is supposed to have resolved the question of how to proceed on each of the four thorny issues.
The four are: finance, and the interpretation of Article 9.1 of the Paris agreement which requires developed countries to provide climate finance to the poor world; trade, in particular “unilateral trade measures”, such as the EU’s green tariffs; transparency, focusing on the biennial transparency reports that must be filed by all parties under the Paris agreement; and the key question of how to deal with the fact that the current crop of nationally determined contributions (NDCs), which set out how far and how fast countries will cut their greenhouse gas emissions, are inadequate to stay within the 1.5C global heating threshold set out at Paris.
Parties must decided on how to adopt these matters into formal agenda items and move forward with them, or drop them.
On the plus side, however, as Brazil hived these difficult questions into separate consultations, the negotiations on the rest of the agenda can proceed - if delegates are able to make their meetings on time, as the protests outside have disrupted entry.

1.04pm GMT

Disasters such as droughts, floods and the spread of pests have cost the world more than $3 trillion in losses to agriculture over the past three decades, much of it worsened by the climate crisis, new research has found.
Nearly 5bn tonnes of cereals, about 3bn tonnes of fruit and vegetables, and close to 1 billion tonnes of meat and dairy produce were destroyed in total by disasters between 1991 and 2023, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN.
Nearly $100bn a year was lost, which was about 4% of global GDP from the agriculture sector over the period, according to the report entitled The Impact of Disasters on Agriculture and Food Security 2025.
Nearly half of the losses afflicted Asia, amounting to about $1.5 trillion in damage. The Americas accounted for about a fifth of the global share, more than $700bn. Africa suffered less in terms of the value of its products – about $700bn in total over the period – but this was the highest proportionally to the size of its economy, resulting in a loss of more than 7% to the continent’s GDP.
The FAO report found: “In economies where agriculture accounts for a significant share of employment and income, these losses have had severe consequences for food security and rural stability.”
Marine heatwaves, which have been intensified by the climate crisis, have also damaged fisheries: about 15% of global fisheries have been affected, with $6.6bn in losses between 1985 and 2022.
Qu Dongyu, director general of the FAO, wrote in the foreword: “The findings presented here call for urgent action from all stakeholders. Governments must integrate disaster risk reduction into agricultural policies and investments. The private sector must engage in partnerships that ensure equitable access to digital innovations. Development partners must shift resources from emergency response to anticipatory action and resilience-building. And the international community must recognise that investing in agricultural resilience is not a cost but a foundation for sustainable development, peace and prosperity.”

12.39pm GMT
Key event

Simon Stiell, the UN climate chief, has written a letter to Brazilian authorities outlining “urgent concerns” about security lapses, high temperatures and flooding at the Cop30 conference venue.
Stiell complained that the Brazilian authorities had failed to respond properly to protesters who tried to force their way in to the summit on Tuesday evening, as well as to other protesters inside restricted areas on Wednesday morning.
And he compiled a list of infrastructure problems that have affected the venue, in the Amazonian city of Belém, including inadequate air conditioning, leaks around electrical fixtures, water shortages in bathrooms and long lines for food.
The three-page letter addressed to Cop30 president André Corrêa do Lago, which was first reported by Bloomberg and subsequently confirmed by Brazilian media, was sent on Wednesday, the day after about 150 indigenous community members and their supporters tried to force their way into the summit venue.
“The security forces and command structure required to execute the security plan were all present on the ground during the incident but failed to act,” Stiell was quoted as saying.
“This represents a serious breach of the established security framework” and raises “significant concerns” about whether Brazil is complying with its security obligations, he added, according to Bloomberg.
Stiell also complained that there had been “serious concern regarding the poor condition of delegation offices”, and other parts of the conference venue. High temperatures had already led to “heat-related health concerns”, while leaks around light fixtures posed “potential safety hazards”

Updated at 12.49pm GMT

12.20pm GMT

Nothing shows the urgency of fighting the climate crisis more dramatically than the harm human-caused global heating is already wreaking on people and places, writes Guardian environment editor Damian Carrington.
Today brings the latest example, with the news that the direct economic damage caused recently in the Philippines by Super Typhoon Fung-wong was increased by about 40%, because of the CO2 pumped into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. That’s homes, businesses, hospitals, roads and more, all hit much harder because of climate change.
The estimate, made by researchers at Imperial College London, used a method called attribution. This involves comparing the actual intensity of the typhoon today, with a modelled typhoon in a world without global heating - more details here.
With fossil fuel emissions setting a new record in 2025, typhoons will become even more destructive. In a world with 2C of global heating, the economic damage would be 62% higher than an unheated world, the scientists found.
The study also found that human-induced warming of the climate intensified Fung-wong’s rainfall by 10.5% and strengthened its wind speed by 5%. The climate crisis also intensified Typhoon Kalmaegi, which also struck the Phillipines, where it killed at least 224 people.
“Our studies capture only a partial view of the far-reaching human and economic costs caused by Typhoons Kalmaegi and Fung-wong,” said Dr Emily Theokritoff at Imperial College. The analysis does not, for example, include the long-term harm to health.
“As Cop30 unfolds, this serves as a powerful reminder of the urgent economic case for cutting emissions now, and the moral responsibility to rapidly scale up international finance for loss and damage and adaptation in vulnerable countries,” she said.
The climate crisis is already causing many searing heatwaves that would have been impossible without fossil fuel emissions, and heat is killing about one person per minute on average. Attribution studies are also increasingly relevant in lawsuits aiming to hold polluters to account. Carbon emissions from the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies were directly linked to dozens of deadly heatwaves for the first time in September.

12.15pm GMT

Today, the international youth climate group Fridays for Future are holding a global climate strike in cities across the world. I met the organizers of the march in Belém early this morning by the city’s port as they prepared for the strike.
Among the first to arrive: Sueley Cavalcante, a 26-year-old Fridays for Future organizer and art history student. She came to Cop from Sao Paolo, Brazil.
“We have to face a lot of contractions at this Cop,” she told me. The biggest one, she said, is the exploitation of resources taking place to make the conference happen.
“Brazil wants to be considered a global climate leader but they just do this to show off. It’s just discourse,” she said. “They cannot do that while opening new oil exploration. For us, doing this Cop in the most sensitive zone in the Atlantic is even worse.” Read more about those concerns here.
Officials say the oil exploration will create jobs for families who need them, but oil jobs require a lot of technical expertise and experience, Cavalcante told me. “The oil is not going to help those families,” she said.
Fridays for Future is the “first contact” many young Brazilians have with activism, said Cavalcante.
“Fridays for Future is an invitation for young [people] to discover themselves, to discover that if they care about climate there are so many ways for them to get involved.”
Luca Ernemann from German youth climate organization Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union has come to the youth strike to pressure governments to do more on climate.
“Cops happen, but emissions go up. Our governments have to make real solutions and have more ambitions especially on the NDCs,” he said. (That’s Cop-talk for “nationally determined contributions, or countries’ plans to curb carbon pollution.”)

12.00pm GMT

Some more pictures of this morning’s protests are coming through. And my colleague Oliver Milman has arrived at the scene and says Cop president Andre Correa do Lago is now talking to the protesters.

11.51am GMT

My colleague Dharna Noor has this update on the day ahead.
Negotiations at Cop30 are moving along, but it has become clear which issues will become major sticking points. Among those problems: trade, transparency regarding emissions reporting and finance, and the need for countries to regularly submit action plans (known in Cop-talk as “nationally determined contributions”) to draw down planet-heating pollution. We’re hoping to have an update on these challenges on Saturday from Brazilian officials.
Parties are also working through disagreements on finance for adaptation to the climate crisis. But Cop is not merely about politicians’ negotiations. This year, the conference has also sparked a colorful array of events held by civil society groups. “That’s where it’s really all happening,” Susana Muhamad, former environment minister for Colombia, told my colleague Jon Watts and I on Wednesday evening.
Friday will bring the continuation of the people’s summit, where movements from around the world are holding events focused on promoting climate justice. There, the programming, put together by 1,100 organizations, is focused on themes such as land and food sovereignty, environmental racism, the need for climate policy to uplift workers, the preservation of democracy, sustainable and just development, and gender equity.
Meanwhile, youth in Belem and around the world will hold a climate strike demanding the swift and justice-oriented phaseout of fossil fuels. Follow the blog to see our coverage!
The issues being raised during Cop, both inside and outside the negotiations, may seem too vast to grasp. But remember: the climate crisis is reshaping every facet of society. The UN’s top climate science body told us back in 2019 that averting climate catastrophe will require “unprecedented changes across all aspects of society”.
In other news: If you’ve been following the drama over which country will host Cop31, know that Australia and Turkey are still butting heads. We’ll keep you posted!

11.40am GMT

Good morning Matthew Taylor here and I will be hosting the liveblog for the next few hours.
We are getting reports from Belem that dozens of Indigenous protesters are blocking the front of the COP30 summit venue demanding that the Brazilian government halt all development projects in the Amazon, including mining, logging, oil drilling and the building of a new railway for transporting mining and agricultural products..
The protesters staged a sit-in creating long queues and forcing delegates to use a side entrance to resume their negotiations on tackling climate change.
Colleagues are on their way to the protests and we will should have more information soon.