« This is not a logistical hiccup. This is insanity and insulting. » Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez, head of the Panamanian delegation for environmental negotiations, did not hide his anger and frustration after a meeting with Brazil’s COP30 presidency at the end of August. At the center of the tension: accommodation prices in Belém, where the global climate conference is scheduled from November 6 to 21.
Despite a slight improvement in recent weeks, the official event website listed rooms or apartments for prices ranging from $200 to $3,700 per night (or up to $50,000 for the entire conference, roughly €43,000), more than ten times the rates of previous COP summits. Hotels also required a minimum reservation of 10 to 15 nights, and stays were non-refundable. « Invoices must be paid within three days, regardless of national approval processes, » added Gomez in a message posted on LinkedIn. « Information comes piecemeal, delegations are scattered, coordination is made impossible. »
As a result, with two months to go before COP30, the overwhelming majority of delegations still had not found lodging in Belém. According to a mid-August survey by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), obtained by Le Monde, only 18 countries had booked accommodations (10%), mostly industrialized nations, and 87% of states that had not done so cited prohibitive prices. The Brazilian government, for its part, claimed that 61 countries now had accommodations, representing more than a quarter of the participants.
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