COP30: Protesters call for more urgent action to combat climate crisis

Activists from several environmental organisations protested on Wednesday in the Brazilian city of Belem on the Amazon river.

Ahead of the 30th edition of the annual United Nations climate change summit, they were highlighting slow progress saying the clock is ticking for the planet.

They are calling on delegates to COP30, which gets underway in the city in a few days’ time, to take greater action to combat climate change.

Oxfam Brazil’s executive director, Viviana Santiago, said world leaders were taking "small steps" when it comes to tackling climate issues and called on politicians to "wake up".

Demonstrators wearing giant heads depicting them, including Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and US President Donald Trump lounged on hammocks next to a giant clock.

“They’re taking a nap and we need to rush, wake up. We need these people to wake up to the urgency of the climate crisis,” she said.

For the past 30 years, world leaders, scientists, and diplomats have gathered at United Nations negotiating sessions to try to curb climate change.

Yet the Earth's temperature continues to rise and extreme weather worsens.

In 2024, the 1.5 degree Celsius limit for temperature increase – long seen as a threshold for very dangerous warming - was breached for a whole year for the first time.

Experts say past pledges from nearly 200 nations have fallen far short and new plans submitted this year barely speed up pollution-fighting efforts.

So, activists are hoping for fewer promises and more action when the main summit gets underway on Monday.

The protests come as dozens of world leaders, including from Africa, meet in Belem ahead of the gathering, hoping to advance progress.

But missing from the lineup are the leaders of four of the world’s five most-polluting economies – China, the United States, India, and Russia.

US President Donald Trump will not be attending the main summit, having last month branded climate change a "con job" at the United Nations General Assembly.

He is not sending any "high-level" officials to the gathering.

Unlike past climate negotiations, this year’s conference isn't primarily aimed at producing a grand deal or statements. Organisers and analysts frame it as the “implementation COP”.

What is needed now is more money and political will for countries to put decades of words and promises into action and policy to reduce heat-trapping gases and stop deforestation.