'Shocking' COP30 lodging costs heap pressure on Brazil's host city Belem
RIO DE JANEIRO: "Belem is ready," Brazilian officials have insisted ahead of the COP30 gathering in November -- but eye-watering lodging costs in the northern city have panicked many would-be attendees.
President President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has personally championed the symbolic choice of holding the major UN climate conference in the Amazon. And with months to go before the November 10-21 meeting, work is in full swing, AFP journalists witnessed recently.
But members of national delegations, civil society, and the media have been faced with a major dilemma: how to find a room at a decent price?
"I've never seen anything quite like the situation unfolding in Belem. The soaring accommodation prices, which mean it will now cost thousands of dollars a night for even basic rooms," Mariana Paoli, with the NGO Christian Aid, told AFP.
The steep rates are "not just shocking, it is exclusionary," said Paoli, a Brazilian who has attended several UN climate summits before.
"Delegates from across the Global South, particularly grassroots activists, Indigenous leaders, and civil society groups, already face immense barriers to participation... Now, they're being priced out entirely."
In recent months, AFP has seen hotels offering rooms at $1,200 a night. On short-term rental platform Airbnb, some rates were even higher.
With a total of 50,000 people expected to attend, Claudio Angelo of the Brazilian Climate Observatory collective warned that delegations are mulling cutting back on the number of attendees.
"Everybody's concerned because at this point, five months to the date, everybody should have hotels and no one has," he told AFP in Bonn, Germany, where technical negotiations have been held over the past two weeks.
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