After a five-day mission, the team from the United Nations Secretariat for Climate Change (UNFCCC) ended its visit to Belém this Friday (24), to monitor the actions and learn about the work plans for the 30th Conference on Climate Change (COP30), which will be held between the 10th and 21st of November.
The group visited COP spaces, works in progress, such as Parque da Cidade, hotels, spaces that will be transformed into accommodation, such as public schools and the Port of Outeiro, which will be adapted to receive two transatlantic ships with 4,500 beds . Transport, health and safety conditions were also presented.
According to the deputy executive secretary of the UNFCCC (acronym in English for United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), Noura Hamladji, who coordinated the mission, considered that there had been many advances since the first UN visit to the city.
“This mission we did now is not the first, we had a mission in October 2023, so we can make a comparison. Since 2023 we have had a lot of work done, a lot of progress and we were very impressed in a positive way”, he stated.
According to her, the main objective of the visit was to support the teams working on preparations for the conference.
“The most important thing is to share the experience. We have experts who have been working at COP for years and can share valuable advice on this point, because our common goal is to make COP a successful conference. A unique COP”, he says.
On the last day of the mission, the UN representative; the president of COP 30 Amazônia, ambassador André Corrêa do Lago; Miriam Belchior, executive secretary of the Civil House of the Presidency of the Republic; Helder Barbalho, governor of the state of Pará; and Valter Correia, extraordinary secretary for COP 30, presented an overview of the activities and the work plan during a press interview at the Pará government headquarters, in Belém.
Noura also highlighted that preparing for the COP is a challenge for any country. “It is firstly a political challenge and also a logistical challenge for all the cities in the world that host the COP, because it is the largest United Nations Conference, with more than 50 thousand people, up to 60 thousand people. Second, it’s very long. It’s three weeks. A week of preparation for the coordination of negotiators and two full weeks of negotiation”, he explained.
She also thanked the city of Belém for its hospitality and hosting COP30 in the heart of the Amazon, which she called a “very powerful symbol” for debates on climate emergencies. “This experience in the Amazon, of the hospitality of the people here, is also a human experience of culture, gastronomy and history”, he highlighted.
