COP30: Why Belém? Why Brazil?

The question seemed both simple and provocative: “Why did you choose the city of Belém to be the site of COP30 this November?”

We were talking about a month ago to a member of the communications team for the COP30 presidency. A recent stream of stories has emerged about Belém, which has in turn fueled rumors among regular COP attendees. The city has been criticized for being far from ready for the descent of tens of thousands — and perhaps more than 50 thousand — for the COP over a two-week period. Concerns about sufficient housing, water, and even sanitation have come up. Can the city handle a global conference? Indeed, a new road is being built to increase access to the city in advance of the COP, which has received a lot of attention. Belém is the capital of the state of Pará, at the mouth of the Amazon River. Cutting rainforest for a road had not made for good press.

Hence my question: in a country with many good airports, extensive hotel space, and professional conference facilities, why choose a city that is hard to get to, hard to house people, and hard to convene for such a hard place to work?

His answer was striking: We want the COP attendees to see the reality of the challenges of development in a changing climate. 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. 

I’m not crazy about the road either or the idea of staying in a boat and getting bused in every day, but with his words my view of the COP shifted from caution to patience, empathy, and a desire to help.

Perhaps a larger question this COP demands is, Why have a COP in Brazil in the first place?

The question isn’t trivial. Brazil hosted the Rio Summit in 1992, which launched three UN conventions: UNFCCC (climate), UNCCD (desertification), and UNCBD (biodiversity) — the “Rio trio.” That was also a long time ago. Brazil did not have a special role with these going forward. Moreover, now is a geopolitically sensitive period to be showcasing international cooperation as the tide of multilateralism, peace, and global progress recedes. I can imagine that Brazil’s role on the global stage will not automatically seem relevant or meaningful to its citizens — though personally I have deep admiration for a country stepping into this role precisely at this time. Is there a story we can tell about Brazil in this time that might inspire its citizens as well as those of us working to build resilient societies? I believe there is. And that is the story of the hard work the country is doing to build resilience deep in its institutions. 

Almost a year ago, AGWA began working with Brazil’s national water agency (ANA) and environment ministry (MMA), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and a team at the University of Ceará to test a grand theory: that to achieve resilience at a large scale, we needed to mobilize water as the medium to both see risk _and_ resilience. And that risk and resilience existed vertically within ministries as well as horizontally between them. Together, we wanted the country’s leadership to understand that climate shifts were making the tenuous threads of water more brittle, fraying the commitments for new infrastructure, a prosperous food system, and data and energy systems that can sustain advanced manufacturing and services. Indeed, as water risks exposed the fractures within investments and between sectors, the country could lose ground and capital, as it almost lost the city of Porto Alegre last year. That Belém might never find its path. We knew that these gaps could be foreseen and managed. The Water Resilience Tracker would be the instrument for seeing these gaps and instilling an awareness of resilience as a fundamentally new approach to managing not just water but other forms of climatic, economic, and political uncertainty itself.

The day after I met the COP30 communications team, the full Tracker team — ANA, MMA, IDB, Ceara, and AGWA — sat in a windowless room with a large group of ministries to talk about how water and climate connected them based on data and interviews. 

In one sense, our findings were shocking: they showed that ministries understood water as a simple economic input — a fixed number in a spreadsheet. And one number among many others. Institutionally, they did not see water the way we did: a strategic asset, one that is highly variable, shared, and which can change in profound and sudden ways. Water is not just a “challenge,” however, but a tool that — when wisely shared and managed — builds wealth in conjunction with natural and social capital. 

AGWA’s lead in Brazil has been Mario Lopez, an old friend of mine whom I once heard called an “apostle” for water in his native Mexico, though his reputation and work extend across Latin America and indeed globally. He understood the core issues that the Tracker explores as soon as he saw the Tracker’s questionnaire: “Resilience is a new mindset. It is a new way of seeing the world. And you cannot unsee resilience once you begin to grasp the heart of these issues.”

And through this insight, new investments, projects, and programs should follow.

Mario waded into the room and asked the ministries and executive office their opinions. One of the very first to speak set the pattern: “How could we have not been using water as the key to climate change already? It is unthinkable to separate water and climate as issues.” That was the reaction we needed and wanted: for a country hungry for irrigation, for abundant energy and data, for safe water for every citizen in its cities, for vibrant and flourishing ecosystems, freshwater was the key.

When people elsewhere think of Brazil, they often leap to images of the Amazon and perhaps of the wealth of São Paulo, the largest city in the Americas. But the strategic reserves of the country’s water are actually limited and often far from where the demand exists. They are also not fixed but changing in complex, uncertain ways — even as their use is intensifying.

I understand why people worldwide are upset about the new road to Belém. I also think we need to respect a country that is trying to show its daily realities to the rest of the world, even as its government does the hard, necessary work of preparing for the climate to come. Perhaps the most important phrase I have heard from my Brazilian colleagues is, “That’s not resilience.” We can do better. We must do better. We must get ready. And mostly they mean we need to implement water resilience. 

I am not sure what to expect from COP30 this year. There are many signs flashing yellow on the global landscape out of the control of our Brazilian hosts. But I know my colleagues in Brazil are doing this work for themselves, for their families and communities, and for their country. I hope the rest of us can learn from their doing.

John Matthews

Corvallis, Oregon, USA