Brazil destroys Amazon rainforest for climate conference

Brazil is destroying swathes of the Amazon rainforest to build a highway for the UN’s COP30 climate conference in November.

The summit will be held in Belém, Pará, where developers are now cutting down large tracts of protected forestry to build a four-lane highway. The road is being built to accommodate the roughly 50,000 attendees expected to attend the conference. Pará authorities are defending the move by saying the road will be “sustainable”—equipped with solar lighting, bike lanes, and wildlife crossings.

But that explanation has not mollified critics who are pointing out the irony of destroying the environment so the rich and powerful can gather to lament the destruction of the environment. And the environment impact is not the only negative effect. Some residents also depend on the rainforest for their livelihood. Claudio Verequete has been supporting his family by harvesting the açaí berries from the trees that have now been felled.

"Everything was destroyed," Verequete said. "Our harvest has already been cut down. We no longer have that income to support our family."

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, however, says the COP30 summit “will provide an opportunity to focus on the needs of the Amazon, show the forest to the world, and present what the federal government has done to protect it,” according to the BBC.

Lula: We need a global government to protect the rainforest

In 2023, Lula called for the formation of a world government to impose climate mandates and suggested the United Nations be outfitted for that purpose. He made the remarks in a broadcast at the start of the Amazon Summit hosted in Belém, Pará, where eight South American countries converged to discuss protection of the Amazon rainforests.

“Brazil has been investing in a new global governance,” Lula announced, explaining that without a global authority, countries will remain sovereign and pass their own laws about climate change. “If you make a decision here in Belém about the climate issue and there isn’t a commitment to comply, it goes back to the national state, and the congresses don’t always approve and then things don’t work,” he said. 

“So, we have to have a new global governance. The UN has to be transformed. The UN cannot remain with the same structure that was created in 1945,” Lula added.

‍