Tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest are being cut down to build a four-lane highway for the COP30 climate summit.
The highway, which cuts more than 13 km through the rainforest into the Brazilian city of Belém, is being constructed to ease traffic for the conference, which will host over 50,000 attendees, including world leaders, in November. Logs are already piled high along the cleared land, and diggers are paving over wetland in the protected area.
The state government of Pará had previously shelved plans for the highway, known as Avenida Liberdade, due to environmental concerns. However, the project was revived along with other infrastructure plans ahead of COP30. Adler Silveira, the state government’s infrastructure secretary, described the highway as an “important mobility intervention” and a “sustainable highway.”
“We can have a legacy for the population and, more importantly, serve people for COP30 in the best possible way,” he said.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has defended the project, saying the summit will be “a COP in the Amazon, not a COP about the Amazon.” Lula said the conference would highlight the needs of the Amazon and show the world what the federal government has done to protect it.
The Amazon plays a key role in absorbing carbon from the atmosphere globally. Environmentalists have raised concerns that clearing rainforest for the summit contradicts its self-stated climate-focused goals.
The construction comes amid wider environmental challenges in the Amazon. In August 2024, large fires burned across the Amazon, Cerrado savannah, Pantanal wetland, and Sao Paulo. Many of the fires were man-made and used for deforestation and pasture management.
The Amazon River also fell to record lows for a second year, prompting some countries to declare a state of emergency and distribute food and water to affected residents. A major tributary of the river in Brazil dropped to its lowest recorded level.
The environmental impact of COP conferences has faced criticism in recent years, particularly regarding the use of private jets by attendees. COP28 in Dubai was linked to 291 private flights, which produced an estimated 3,800 tonnes of CO2. Alethea Warrington, head of energy, aviation and heat at climate action charity Possible, described the use of private jets at climate summits as “blatant hypocrisy.”
“Travelling by private jet is a horrendous waste of the world’s scarce remaining carbon budget,” she told The Times.
“Each journey produces more emissions in a few hours than the average person around the world emits in an entire year.”
Similar concerns arose at COP27 in Egypt, where 36 private jets landed at Sharm el-Sheikh during the summit, and a further 64 flew into Cairo. The Gulfstream G650, one of the most frequently used private jets at the event, burns approximately 1,893 litres of fuel per hour. A five-hour flight on this model would emit around 23.9 tonnes of CO2.
However, the UK’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy recommends multiplying this by 1.9 to account for the non-CO2 emissions produced at high altitude, bringing the total to 45.3 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per flight. This means a single private jet trip to COP27 could have produced more emissions than the average person emits in a year.
A similar pattern was seen at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, where 65 private jets landed in the week leading up to the summit – nearly double the number that arrived at COP28. Forty-five of those flights arrived on the Sunday and Monday as the conference began.
“For CEOs who claim to care about tackling the climate crisis, using a private jet to get to COP shows blatant hypocrisy,” Warrington said.
Despite the criticism, government leaders have defended the practice.
A UK government spokesperson said that their delegation’s flight to COP27 was “on one of the most carbon-efficient planes of its size in the world” and that emissions were being offset.
However, environmentalists have argued that such emissions contradict the purpose of the summits.
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