As the sun set on the Amazon, the promise of a “people’s Cop” faded with it. The latest UN climate summit – known as Cop30, hosted in the Brazilian city of Belém – came with the usual geopolitics and the added excitement of a flood and a fire.

The summit saw Indigenous protests on an unprecedented scale, but the final negotiations were once again dominated by fossil fuel interests and delaying tactics. After ten years of climate (in)action since the Paris agreement, Brazil promised Cop30 would be an “implementation Cop”. But the summit failed to deliver, even as the world recorded a devastating 1.6˚C of global warming last year.

Here are our five key observations:

Located in Amazonia, this was branded the summit for those on the frontlines of climate change. Over 5,000 Indigenous people were there, and they certainly made their voices heard.

However, only 360 secured passes to the main negotiating “blue zone”, compared to 1,600 delegates linked to the fossil fuel industry. Inside the negotiating rooms it was business as usual, with Indigenous groups remaining as observers, unable to vote or attend closed-door meetings.

The choice of location was nicely symbolic but logistically tough. Hosting the conference in the Amazon cost hundreds of millions of dollars in a region where many still lack basic amenities.

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