World leaders arrived in Brazil on Friday ahead of the much-anticipated COP-30 Climate Summit scheduled to commence next week, officials said.
They will be hoping to find ways to combat the pressing issues, such as global warming, despite the US’s absence from the annual summit. The White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week that the “US won’t send its official delegation to the COP-30 summit.”
The official negotiations open on Monday in the city of Belem on the Amazon River delta. The Brazilian government said leaders from more than 50 countries and regions, including the European Union, will attend two days of high-level negotiation in the run-up to the main event.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said “the window” is quickly closing to take action. He stressed, “For the first time in history, a climate COP will take place in the heart of the Amazon. In the global imagination, there is no greater symbol of the environmental cause than the Amazon rainforest.
Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has cautioned world leaders attending the summit that the climate crisis is “accelerating”. He said, “It’s no longer time for negotiations. It’s time for implementation, implementation, and implementation.” He also called on all parties to show leadership in the race to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
The US, which remains the world’s second biggest emitter, will pull out from the Paris Agreement in January next year. The decision of not sending the delegation raises pressure on the other nations to not only hasten their efforts but also designate a significant chunk of resources towards climate action goals.
