Rain thundered down with urgency, as if the Amazon itself was begging for change. Inside the conference tent, the daily downpour felt like an imminent threat, as if the structure could burst at any moment. It never did. Instead, it held strong amid the storm in a show of resilience.
Belém, Brazil, is the capital city of the northern state of Pará. Belém is a port city on the coast, at the mouth of the Pará River, an important part of the Amazon ecosystem. Holding the 30th United Nations Climate Chance Conference (COP30) in Belém, often known as the gateway to the Amazon, did not come without criticism. Concerns ranged from the 8 miles of highway built through protected rainforest to the capacity of the many development projects aimed to prepare the city for an influx of tourists. The conference, held from November 10 through 21, 2025, took place just over 100 miles away from the equator in the heat of early summer. I felt the weight of these decisions as I saw the rainforest for the first time from the airplane window.
The impacts of COP30 on the city are undeniable. Critics argue—with great reason—the irony of a climate conference necessitating further deforestation for its accommodation and shame this decision. Yet, the story is not one-dimensional. Belém also experienced lasting benefits from infrastructure improvements: one third of the population is expected to be impacted by drainage and sanitation retrofits, renovations to historic markets will improve hygiene and safety for vendors and buyers, and 279 streets were repaved to improve city-wide accessibility.
One thing is clear: the world’s population is growing, and with that comes an increasing demand for infrastructure to support new residents. Demand for roads, demand for homes, demand for space, demand for forests removed to accommodate the human needs of the present. Situations like this, in which deforestation is the first answer in order to expand the capacity of a city, will continue to repeat themselves if we continue on our current trajectory—forced to weigh environmental protection against the urgent needs of communities.
“We want the COP attendees to see the reality of the challenges of development in a changing climate.” a member from the COP30 presidency communication team reported to the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation. “Belém looks like most of the rest of the world: people who are trying hard to achieve basic standards, much less grow wealth and prosper. The story of this place should help inform the negotiations.”
Throughout my week in Belém for COP30, I increasingly understood why a conference on climate change would strategically make these difficult tradeoffs to host visitors in a city without a centralized sewer treatment facility that faces intense heat exacerbated by urban expansion. Each day, delegates entered the conference hall sweating, some attendees even passing out from heat during sessions. Each afternoon, delegates were soaked by torrential rains, a reminder of the looming risk of flooding. These are not abstract projections—they are daily realities of climate change and lived experiences that cannot be ignored.
The fire breaking out in the venue seemed to be a turning point. On the second to last day of COP30, part of the tent in the conference caught fire, causing an evacuation and temporarily delaying negotiations. In 2024, 3.3 million hectares of the Amazon rainforest were destroyed by fires. The irony was clear: the changing climate threatens us all, even if we don’t all spend the majority of the year in extreme heat, within flood zones, or among forest fires. It is easy to read the statistics about how many lives are lost and ecosystems are at risk. It is much harder to convey the lived experience of climate change, and the fragility and preciousness of these ecosystems, to those far removed from its front lines, even when they hold decision-making power that affects global populations. The decision to host COP30 in Belém attempted to scratch the surface of this urgent reality.
Many conversations centered around the personification of nature and the idea of granting ecosystems long-overdue rights and recognizing conservation for its undeniable role in climate solutions. I hope the forest spoke to everyone the way it spoke to me. I have always felt immense appreciation for our natural resources but standing in the preserved Amazon rainforest just outside the city of Belém in Utinga State Park, surrounded by the sounds of the forest, I felt its power more than I could have ever imagined. We were just at the very edge of the massive rainforest, but I was consumed by the nature around me—trees seemingly taller than any building I knew, leaves that could cover me, gorgeous colors and whimsical flowers in every direction I turned, and monkeys that greeted us as they hopped from branch to branch. Momentarily, the rainforest was so vast and intricate that I forgot about the development threatening its existence. Now, more than ever, as evidenced by the daily confrontations of the changing climate, it is essential to protect our primary forests.
I left COP30 with an even greater urgency than I had before, and I believe the message stuck with many other conference attendees as well, across industries and professions. While the challenges on display in Belém were disheartening, they were matched by examples of possibility highlighted in conference sessions: frontline communities building resilience, scientists dedicating their lives to understanding the complexities of the Amazon, and cross-sector collaborations translating research into action. In every case, progress began with individuals.
This, to me, was a call to action and reminder that every little step counts. It is very easy to feel disengaged with the looming threat of the changing climate. Although climate change is a daunting challenge, as massive and expansive as the Amazon, the real work happens by people with ideas, commitment, and persistence.
Hosting COP30 in the gateway to the Amazon, while controversial, gave attendees the opportunity to engage personally with the ecosystem. Conversations around the conference venue restored hope in me that the inspiration of the forest was widespread, and the motivation behind COP30’s location did not go unnoticed. The “COP of the Forest” had its criticisms but still succeeded in sharing the urgent need for solutions around the world to protect essential ecosystems and people who depend on them.