TRANSCRIPT:
A chant of protest ahead of the 30th international climate summit in Belem, a city in Brazil's vast Amazon rainforest.
COP30 is being hailed as the most significant COP meeting in ten years, coming a decade on from the Paris Climate Agreement to limit global emissions.
Oxfam Brazil Executive Director Viviana Santiago says expectations are high.
"We're talking to the world that it's time to make some change. We have this idea that it seems that the world's leaderships are really taking a nap while the world is on fire. So it's time to change, please wake up.”
COP is an annual week-long meeting between nearly 200 countries that have signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
And while all parties and observers agree there's an urgent need for action, there are doubts over how much will be achieved.
Leaders of the world’s three biggest carbon polluters - China, the United States and India - are not attending, U-S President Donald Trump making his views clear at a meeting of the U-N Assembly in September.
"Climate change, if it goes higher or lower, whatever the hell happens there's climate change. It's the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion.”
Then there's the location.
A small section of the Amazon rainforest was cleared for a road so Belem could host the conference, at a time when Brazil continues to grant new licences for oil and gas exploration.
Ironically, it's also ten years [[on November 5]] since the Mariana dam collapse, Brazil's greatest environmental disaster- with indigenous leaders like Célia Xakriabá issuing a warning that speaks to the urgency of environmental protection.
"Even as we understand the process of reparation, we recognise there is something you cannot bring back. You can’t bring back the 19 lives or the clean, healthy river."
Forest protection will be a significant plank of COP this year, with the launch of a global fund to pay developing countries for every hectare of forest kept standing.
Brazil has also laid out a plan, with other leaders, to scale climate finance for developing countries to $1.3 trillion dollars.
But the major focus is on emission targets.
Under the Paris Agreement, 195 countries have agreed to limit global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and well below 2 degrees.
But the United Nations Environment Program has warned the world is already on the brink of reaching 1.5 and beyond.
Greenpeace Australia Pacific COP31 leader Dr Simon Bradshaw says that's a wake up call.
"When you add up all national climate plans, we're headed for under 3° of warming. Now, that's still catastrophic, and so we need a band that emissions curve down much further and faster."
This year, signatories to the Paris Agreement were supposed to submit updated targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in order to reach that goal.
But only a third of parties have done so.
Based on those submissions, the U-N projects emissions will fall to ten per cent by 2035 - but that's still far short of the 30 per cent needed to reach net zero by 2050.
That's led to tension about the desired outcomes of the summit with some countries, like host nation Brazil calling for a focus on delivering current pledges, and others, like the Pacific Island nation of Palau, pressing for more ambitious commitments, as Adelle Thomas explains.
"So every 10th of degree has ramifications on communities, on ecosystems around the world. It is particularly important for those vulnerable communities and ecosystems that are already being impacted and where every 10th of a degree counts. When we think about sort of the immediate short term, it matters. It matters in heat waves, it matters and ocean heat waves and the destruction of coral reefs. It matters long-term when we think about sea level rise."
Australia has a target to reduce emissions by 62–70 per cent by 2035, which is slightly lower than Europe's goal of 66 to 72.5 percent.
But Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has drawn criticism for NOT attending the summit year, despite Australia bidding to co-host it, along with Pacific Island nations next year.
He's even written a letter to the President of Turkiye who has launched a competing bid, although there's no word if he received a reply.
Hosting rights for the 2026 event will be decided during this year's COP summit - and Dr Simon Bradshaw says his absence sends an odd signal.
"If ever there was a moment for Australia, for the Prime Minister, to show up this is it. Because we are an important player in the scheme of things, we're an influential middle power, we're a major energy producer; we really need to be there helping set an ambitious agenda."
