Floating at COP30: exclusivity and the carbon cost of travel and accommodation in Belém

Conference of the Parties 30, the 2025 annual United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change conference, took place in Belém, Brazil, located right on the edge of the Amazon forest. It was championed by Brazilian authorities as a symbolic centring of the Global South. Nonetheless, as previous studies in this series have shown, long-haul air travel often dominates total emissions, and this was the case for COP30. However, Belém presented a new logistical challenge. Both its location and general lack of adequate accommodation prompted the authorities to charter two large cruise ships to house thousands of delegates over the two weeks of the conference. The expected operational emission from such ships makes them several times more carbon-intensive than standard hotels. Yet the challenge was compounded by the affordability problem for delegates from the Global South, while the complete lack of affordable and accessible accommodation for civil society organisations directly contradicted the symbolic inclusion echoed by the organisers. This paper reports on travel emissions to Belém, highlights the paradox of housing delegates on carbon-intensive cruise ships, as well as the contradictions of not catering to civil society organisations in a supposedly inclusive COP. This paper concludes with a recommendation that subsequent conferences should endeavour to also account for accommodation emissions from participants.