At a glance
•Donald Trump has reignited criticism of Brazil over the building of a four-lane highway for the Cop30 climate summit in Belem
•Brazil has defended the project as sustainable, while conservationists and activists argue it contradicts climate goals and damages one of the planet’s key carbon sinks.
• The US has not sent a formal delegation to the climate summit
Brazil has been accused by US President Donald Trump of “ripping the hell out of” the Amazon rainforest to build a four-lane highway for the Cop30 climate summit.
A new motorway slicing through tens of thousands of acres of trees was built to welcome more than 50,000 people, including world leaders, to the city of Belem in the north of the country.
Cop30 began on Monday, and the latest round of UN climate negotiations will run until November 21, with a raft of measures already announced to protect and fund the world’s rainforests.
Drone footage published by the BBC in March revealed how a thick thoroughfare had been cut into the Amazon, which is often referred to as the ‘lungs of the Earth’, to make way for the new road.
At the time, the Brazilian government had praised the highway’s sustainable credentials but locals and conservationists were left outraged by its environmental impact.
In a post on Truth Social ahead of Cop30, US President Donald Trump wrote: “They ripped the hell out of the Rainforest of Brazil to build a four lane highway for environmentalists to travel. It’s become a big scandal!”
The US has not sent a formal delegation to the climate summit, with White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers explaining the president would “not jeopardise our country's economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals that are killing other countries”.
It comes after Mr Trump pulled America out of the 2015 UN Paris Agreement for the second time as he reentered the White House, marking a significant setback for the global framework that committed countries to pursue efforts to limit dangerous warming to the key threshold of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
Canadian climate activist Mike Hudema has also criticised the new highway, writing on X: “You can't be a climate leader if you're cutting down one of the world's greatest climate solutions to do it.”
Meanwhile, the UK is preparing to stand alongside the vast majority of countries that want to accelerate collective climate action.
In a speech in Brazil on Friday, the Prime Minister said the UK was “doubling down on the fight against climate change” amid the broken consensus.
Sir Keir also staunchly defended his Government’s clean energy policies despite pressure from Mr Trump, who has repeatedly criticised Britain’s green agenda.
But the Government’s decision not to invest in a Brazilian-led rainforest fund, which the UK played a key role in establishing, quickly received backlash from green groups.
The British delegation is understood to be going into the talks with a strategy focused on accelerating the implementation of climate action as well as defending multilateralism and the Paris Agreement from the direct attacks it now faces.
