Eve of COP30 in Belém: Paris is working. The Amazon needs us to move. Faster.
By: Oluwaseun Lawal
The air in Belém feels heavy. River-wet. Alive. You can hear the city getting ready—cars, voices, a rush of suitcases and lanyards—because the world is coming here, to the doorstep of the Amazon, from 10 to 21 November 2025. And the message, clear as a bell and a bit like a drum, is this: the Paris Agreement have delivered real progress. Real, not pretend. But the forest that holds so much of our future is asking for speed. Not tomorrow. Now.
It’s not abstract anymore, if it ever was. When Hurricane Melissa tore across the Caribbean, roofs weren’t theories. They were tin and timber, and they flew. When Super Typhoons smashed into Vietnam and the Philippines, families didn’t watch a map or a graph, they watched their streets turn to rivers, then to scars. A tornado in southern Brazil? It didn’t ask for permission; it just ripped. People knows the score. The damage is already here, already personal, and it’s piling up faster than polite language can carry.
So what needs to happen at COP30? Not fancy. Not complicated. Three things, simple and hard. First, a signal. Loud, un-missable, like a lighthouse when the fog is thick. Every country on board, and not the kind of on board that means smiling for the cameras. The kind that means decisions with teeth, timelines with dates, and commitments that actually budget out. Countries is on board, or they aren’t. The world can tell the difference.
Second, speed. The right kind. The kind that moves across sectors, not just within them. Energy, transport, industry, buildings, food systems, finance—everything get pulled into the same current. No more isolated wins that look good on slides but don’t add up in the atmosphere. Implementation must go wide and deep, because emissions don’t care about our ministries or our silos. And yes, that means new policies, faster. It means public finance that shows up, and private capital that follows, not in drips, but like a river in flood. It means accountability that lands, not just lands softly.
Third, connection. We’ve all heard it—people want to feel this in their lives, or it won’t last. Climate action is not a niche conference thing. It’s food on tables, clean air in lungs, jobs that pay and are safe, buses that run on time and don’t poison kids at the curb. It’s factories that hum on clean power and homes that stay cool without bankrupting families. It’s energy bills that don’t scare you at the end of the month. Done right, the benefits don’t trickle, they pour. Growth gets stronger, health gets better, pollution drops, communities feel safer. This is the point. If people don’t feel it, we haven’t done it.
Simon Stiell has been here before. This is his fourth COP as UN Climate Chief. He’s watched the late nights and the early flights, the tense rooms that somehow turn into handshakes, the text that gets bracketed to death and then revived. He knows what it looks like when countries stop protecting their corners and start building the middle. It isn’t tidy. It never do. But it happens. Again and again, it happens. Differences get bridged. Deals get made. Progress—sometimes thin, sometimes thick—shows up.
And yet, here, in the Amazon’s shadow, the stakes feel different. They are. This place holds massive stores of carbon, rain, life. It shapes weather far beyond Brazil’s borders. Lose too much, and the forest tips. Lose the forest, and a lot more tips with it. That’s why the call here is not soft. We must step on the accelerator—not reckless, just real. Protect and restore forests. Shift finance so it rewards guardianship, not destruction. Strengthen indigenous and local community leadership, because they’ve been doing the hard work, often without a microphone, for generations. Support Brazil and its neighbors with serious partnerships, not press releases.
Look, the Paris Agreement set us a long road. And we’ve already walked some of it. Emissions trajectories bending. Renewables booming. Electric vehicles moving from niche to normal. Policies that once felt impossible now matter-of-fact. But the math keeps us honest: we need more, faster, fairer. We been here before, at the edge of a big moment, wondering if this time will be different. It can be. It must be.
So here’s the vibe as the doors open in Belém: enough talk that circles back on itself. Enough performance. The mission is to send the world a clear message, push implementation through every sector and every budget, and make the outcomes land in everyday life. Stronger growth. More jobs. Less pollution. Better health. Affordable, secure energy. That’s not a slogan; it’s a checklist.
If that sounds ambitious, good. Ambition is the minimum viable product now. The climate doesn’t grade on a curve, and neither does reality. This week, in this city, with the river moving and the forest watching, is about turning intention into outcomes, and outcomes into benefits people can feel.
Roll up sleeves. Keep phones on silent. Find the common ground, then stand on it. And then, kindly, move. Let’s get on with it.
