Built with traces of the stylesrt nouveau and neoclassical, the São Brás Market was reopened in Belém, Pará. The historic building houses more than 300 markets and stores selling food, herbs, crafts and clothing. The restoration of the site is the first in a series of interventions that are being completed in the city in the coming months.
Belém is preparing to host the 30th United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP30), which will take place from November 10 to 21, 2025. The conference is an important international meeting to deal with the environment and decisions that contribute to stopping warming global, causing climate change and environmental disasters.
Construction sites, fences, traffic interventions and signs with the inscription Capital of COP30 can be seen throughout the city.
“There are more than 30 structural works being carried out in Belém, carried out by the federal government together with the city hall and the government of the state of Pará. The investments have a reason and a meaning. We are providing infrastructure for a wonderful city that will have a great legacy”, informed the extraordinary secretary of COP30, Valter Correia.
Linked to the Civil House of the Presidency of the Republic, the Extraordinary Secretariat for COP-30 was created by the government in March 2024 to coordinate the preparation of the Amazon to host COP30.
Hotel expansion
However, to face the magnitude of the conference, which is expected to receive more than 60 thousand people, including heads of state, diplomats, businesspeople, investors, activists, journalists and delegations from the 193 member countries, a sector needs to face the challenge of more than double in size: the hotel industry.
“The hotel industry in Belém is at full steam. All hotels are undergoing renovations to comply with COP30”, informed the president of the Brazilian Association of the Hotel Industry of Pará (ABIH-PA), Antônio Santiago, in an interview with Brazil Agency.
“The main challenge is still to increase the number of existing beds,” said the president of ABIH-PA, who expects to receive 40,000 visitors to the city.
Santiago details that the capital currently has 18 thousand hotel beds and hopes to reach COP30 with a number between 45 thousand and 50 thousand, although a double bed counts as two beds.
According to Santiago, with the opening of hotels, the number of beds should reach 22 thousand. Belém will gain three high-standard hotels, built by international groups for audiences A and B. One of them will be in the Porto Futuro II area; another in an old building that belonged to the Federal Revenue Service; and the third in Castanhal, outside the capital, but in the metropolitan region.
Alternatives
Negotiations are being made with virtual platforms such as Airbnb and Booking, to register properties and increase the supply of rooms available for the COP30 period. In addition, two transatlantic ships are expected to serve as floating hotels with 5,000 beds.
Seventeen public schools will be transformed by the Pará government into types of hostel temporary. “With all this we hope to reach another 22 thousand beds”, highlighted Santiago. Approximately 2,500 people are currently employed in the sector. “For COP30, the estimate is that 40% more workers will be hired.”
According to the president of the association, neighboring cities within a 150-kilometer radius should also be in demand for hotel rooms.
According to the Extraordinary Secretariat for COP30, R$224 million was allocated by the state-owned company Itaipu for the construction of Vila Líderes, which will provide around 500 five-star standard rooms. The accommodation will serve part of the delegations and, after COP30, the location will function as the state government’s administrative center.
The federal government also allocated R$100 million, through the General Tourism Fund (resources from the Ministry of Tourism), to improve the quality of hotels and tourism services.
The government of Pará informed the Brazil Agency which encouraged the modernization of the hotel chain by exempting the sector from Tax on Circulation of Goods and Services (ICMS) for purchases of items such as minibars, televisions, air conditioning and furniture.
Antônio Santiago, from ABIH-PA, projects that the COP will leave a legacy of a better-prepared workforce and new hotel developments of excellence for the Belém hotel chain.
Movement
COP30 will be held in November 2025, but Belém and hotels are already experiencing an increase in traffic. According to Santiago, since the beginning of the year, the occupancy rate of the hotel chain in the city has increased from 50% to 82%, on average.
On December 15th, the Minister of Tourism, Celso Sabino, was at Belém airport to celebrate the record of 3.9 million passengers in 2024, a number around 8% higher than that recorded in the same period in 2023.
According to the ministry, the International Airport handles up to 7.7 million passengers per year, “a scenario that, with the necessary adaptations made, will satisfactorily serve visitors to Belém during COP30”.
Urban legacy
The main activities of COP30 will take place at Parque da Cidade and Hangar Centro de Convenções, which are connected and located in the Souza neighborhood, around a 20-minute drive from Belém International Airport.
Parque da Cidade occupies the area of an old airport and is still under construction, with around 70% of the work completed. After the conference, the park will be turned over for public use. The final project includes preserved green areas, an artificial lake, sports facilities, an aviation museum, a creative economy center and a gastronomic boulevard.
The federal government’s investment in preparations for the Climate Change Conference amounts to R$4.7 billion. The interventions, carried out in conjunction with the state and municipal administrations, are aimed at urban infrastructure, security, sustainability, transport and mobility, such as the completion of the BRT Metropolitano (fast bus system on exclusive lanes), expansion of roads and construction of four viaducts.
Rua da Marinha, in the COP30 polygon, will go from two to six lanes. “The work will benefit the population of six neighborhoods, draining traffic and improving mobility”, says a statement sent by the Pará government.
Assessment
Professor Roberta Menezes Rodrigues, from the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), considers that any investment that the city will receive “tends to be seen very favorably”.
“Belém is a capital, but it is a city that has huge deficits in infrastructure and quality in terms of housing. It is a city in the North region that has always been relegated to the background in terms of investments, especially in areas related to urban infrastructure”, he highlighted.
The teacher’s assessment of Belenenses housing is confirmed by the 2022 Census of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE)which showed Belém as the urban concentration with the highest proportion of inhabitants living in favelas (57.1%).
Rodrigues, who participates in research funded by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) on the legacy of COP30, considers that it is still too early to have clarity on the topic.
“Talking about legacy now, in fact, is talking about doubts”, stated Rodrigues, who already sees a contradiction between interventions that are being carried out in the city and paths that should be followed precisely to obtain sustainable environmental development.
“As much as we have large investments happening in the city, part of them is still tied to a logic of investments and forms of intervention of this model that we are questioning”, he pointed out.
“We are opening more roads, highways, deforesting the few green areas that remain in the city and prioritizing, for example, individual transport, the car, instead of prioritizing public transport.”
The professor recognizes that the city will gain important assets in terms of infrastructure, places such as the City Park and cultural facilities. “Belém has never seen so much investment happening at the same time”, he highlighted.
However, she warns that some initiatives may favor real estate appreciation in certain regions, instead of benefiting the population in general. In some cases, people even face evictions, she says, referring to families who lived on Avenida Tamandaré, where construction work on Parque Linear is taking place.
“It is a type of investment that is closely linked to real estate appreciation.”
Environmental legacy
Professor Lise Vieira da Costa Tupiassu Merlin, from the UFPA Institute of Legal Sciences, highlights the fact that the most important international event on the environment is being held in an Amazonian city. “Currently there is a great lack of Amazon protagonism in climate discussions.”
“Although the whole world recognizes the importance of the Amazon in the fight against climate change, solutions and debates are almost always shaped without the participation of people from the region.”
For the professor, Belém was an appropriate choice to play this role, because “it has the largest scientific institution in the Pan-Amazon, UFPA”. She also highlighted the “ancestral knowledge” of the local population.
Tupiassu Merlin adds that, on the other hand, Belém is located in “a state that contains a large mosaic of socio-environmental conflicts, which contribute to the intensification of climate change”.
In Lise’s opinion, increased protagonism depends on a more strategic positioning of local actors, “but also on a genuine desire of other actors to want to open up to a new perspective of climate justice”.
“COP30 will, without a doubt, be an opportunity for this, but there is still a lot of work ahead for this opportunity to result in lasting benefits for the population”, he concluded.
