A portion of the Amazon rainforest destroyed... to host COP 30

Translated from https://www.epochtimes.fr/une-portion-de-la-foret-amazonienne-detruite-pour-accueillir-la-cop-30-2898360.html

A few months before COP 30, a new four -lane highway is under construction in Belém, Brazil. Designed to improve access to the conference, it actually crosses tens of thousands of hectares of protected Amazon forest.

COP 30, a World Climate Summit organized by the UN, will take place in Belém (Brazil) from November 10 to 21, 2025. To accommodate the expected 50,000 people, the authorities have recourse to deforestation…. To build a new four -way highway crossing thousands of hectares of protected Amazonian forest. According to the BBC, the latter is built to improve access to the conference. Difficult not to grimacle by learning such information.

On more than 13 km through the tropical forest to Belém, the host city of COP 30, trees are stacked on cleared land. Faced with the controversy, the Government of the State of the Para, of which Belém is the capital, highlights the "sustainable" aspects of the project. "The highway will include animal passages, cycle paths and solar lighting," said Adler Silveira, infrastructure secretary at the BBC.

But for environmentalists, this deforestation contradicts the very spirit of the summit. The Amazon, nicknamed the lung of the planet, plays an essential role in the regulation of the climate, the sequestration of carbon and the preservation of biodiversity. Scientists are also concerned about the impact of a road that divides the forest into two separate areas, threatening the balance of the ecosystem and the travel of animals.

Local people worried

Claudio Verequete, installed about 200 m from where the road will be built and questioned by our colleagues, assures that he can no longer support his needs, when he used to recover Açai berries on destroyed trees: "Our harvest has already been reduced. We no longer have the necessary income to provide for our family, "he said to the BBC.

Still according to the latter, it is not impossible either that he will be expelled from his home in the years to come: "Our fear is that one day someone comes to tell us:" This is money. We need this area to build a service station or a warehouse. And then we will be forced to leave. […] Where are we going to go? »»

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva and the Minister of the Environment claim that this summit will be historic because it is a "COP in Amazon, not a COP on the Amazon". According to the president, the meeting will be an opportunity to show the forest to the world and to present the measures taken by the federal government to protect it.

But according to Silvia Sardinha, a veterinarian specialist in wildlife and researcher in a university veterinary hospital which overlooks the site of the new highway, these discussions will take place "at a very high level, between businessmen and civil servants" and the inhabitants of the Amazon "are not heard".