By Muhammad Amaan
Ahead of the official start of the annual United Nation Climate Change Conference, dozens of world leaders are meeting Thursday and Friday in Belém, Brazil.
The meeting would be discussing urgent measures to curb global warming.
European leaders attending included; German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, French President, Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, alongside top officials from the European Union and the United Nations.
The Brazilian hosts hope the summit would give momentum to the two-week conference known as COP30, which will officially begin on Monday with tens of thousands of participants from around 200 countries.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has called it the “COP of Truth,” said the conference is aimed at delivering tangible results.
But the political environment is challenging: wars and economic worries dominate the headlines; the fiscal outlook of many global powers is uncertain at best.
The United States under Donald Trump is pressing ahead with its fossil fuel agenda.
The Trump administration did not intend to send a high-level delegation to COP30, the White House has said.
On Thursday, the leaders formally launched a new multibillion-dollar fund to protect tropical forests, which act as the “green lungs” of the planet.
Time is running out: in 2019, 140 countries pledged to halt deforestation by 2030, but according to the environmental pressure group WWF, nearly seven million hectares of primary forest were lost in 2024 alone.
The summit would also issue a joint call to action for international forest fire management and promote Brazil’s sustainable fuels initiative, which aimed to quadruple production and use by 2035.
A declaration addressing hunger, poverty and climate protection is also planned.
