· 7 min read
COP30 is coming to the mouth of the Amazon with 50,000 participants and a dangerous case of déjà vu. Soon, Belém's cobblestone streets, steeped in the history of rubber booms, commodity cycles, and the quiet devotion of religious processions, will throng with diplomats and executives, armed with carbon calculators and pledges for a sustainable future. As I walk the Old Town amid the tropical humidity and the final preparations, it all feels like good intentions on replay.
The disconnect is stark. In 2021/22, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) received just 4% of global climate finance (~US$52 billion), a fraction needed to meet even its adaptation targets [1]. In its Eighth Letter, COP30 President André Aranha Corrêa do Lago concedes that efforts are “under-recognized, under-financed, and poorly connected to national planning.”
If COP30 fails to redirect capital's quality and geography, the Amazon will keep living on narrative. From Belém, this is a plea for a new script.
The capital gap
Source: Phenix Capital Group. Caption: Geographic mismatch in climate finance allocation: European and US investors concentrate impact funds in Europe and North America, while Central and South America, home to critical biodiversity and climate solutions, receive disproportionately fewer investment vehicles.
The chasm between global pledges and local action boils down to finance. While transition narratives swell, the financial architecture stays rigid. LAC struggles to attract long-term capital despite “blended finance” models, mixes of public and private funds, being touted to de-risk investments.
The problem is not just volume, but the terms. In 2020, LAC received just 3.5% of global climate finance, about $22.9 billion [1, 2]. Worse, 90% of that finance came from multilateral development banks and green bonds, underscoring a reliance on loan instruments that deepen fiscal and sovereign debt pressures.
As UN Foundation expert Cristina Rumbaitis del Rio states, "We need to elevate adaptation, we need to finance it, and we need to ensure that that finance is fast and fair." Yet, the current structure actively dismisses those on the frontline. Andrea Porro of the World Farmers’ Organisation warns, “Too many opportunities for funds are released in the form of loans, which exclude small and medium-sized farmers due to lack of collateral.”
Consider the math. Brazil’s Amazon Fund, often cited as a key forest-fund, averaged US$53 million annually in project finance from 2015–2020 [1], half the Eiffel Tower's 2018 operating costs [3], the ex-libris monument of the city where the landmark climate agreement was forged. Spread across the Brazilian Legal Amazon, a region larger than Western Europe, that’s US$10.6 per km² per year, or the cost of two London lattes.
This isn’t underfunding, it’s invisibility. After four dormant years, the Amazon Fund was relaunched on 2023, committing US$260 million to new actions [4], showing what political will can achieve, and how far we still have to go.
Forgotten history, unfinished future
Source: Miguel Pinheiro. Caption: Indigenous agroforestry system in the Mid-Xingu region combining banana, cassava, and cacao cultivation. A sophisticated land-use model that sustain the tribe’s livelihood while maintaining forest cover. Pará, Brasil, 2020.
This disconnect between global intention and local reality is not an accident; it is a feature of a long and intricate history. The dominant narrative of technological fixes and market solutions, brought by well-meaning delegates, conveniently omits why the Amazon is in peril. In the 18th century, Pará exported an average of 600 tons of cacao annually to Lisbon [5], establishing an early cycle of agricultural knowledge and wealth. The 19th century brought the First Rubber Boom, where the milk of the Amazonian tree Hevea brasiliensis became the lifeblood commodity of the Industrial Revolution, powering Belém's grand opera house, before subsequent disinvestment led to abandonment.
Ignoring these economic cycles of the past is strategic blindness. The forest and its people proved resilient, regardless of the economic pruning it endured. Today, that resilience holds immense economic potential. In 2024, the state of Pará was responsible for 52% of Brazil’s cacao production [6], and the Amazon bioeconomy was valued at US$12 billion in 2020 [7]. As GAIN's Oliver Camp observed, “Brazil has done amazing work linking climate policy to the fight against hunger and malnutrition”, positioning bioeconomy as a regenerative strategy for ecological preservation and economic development.
This is what makes COP30 different, or at least, what gives it the potential to be. Anchored in the Belém Declaration, covering mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology transfer, capacity building, and transparency, this is the first COP to explicitly frame climate adaptation as survival, not aspiration [8]. It is a summit that, by its very location, is forced to confront the lived consequences of failed climate action. It dares to demand an estimated $1.3 trillion annually by 2035 for developing nations to cope with climate impacts, a figure that makes the tens of billions currently flowing look like a rounding error.
This is the uncomfortable intersection I’ve come to observe, a friction between noble intentions, entrenched structural power, and the deeply political act of capital distribution. The question is whether this COP can finally break the cycle. To do so requires a radical shift in climate integrity narrative. It means seeing the Amazon's inhabitants not as passive victims or romantic ideals, but as the sophisticated political, entrepreneurial, and scientific actors they are. Experts arrive with regenerative solutions, data models, and funding, yet, on the ground, they often land as the latest chapter in a long story of external, unfitting, and unprepared interventions, failing on the first muddy road after a two-hour boat ride upriver.
The insider’s call
Source: Miguel Pinheiro. Source: Riverine floodplain agroforestry integrating açaí and cacao with over 15 native fruit and timber species, demonstrating the productivity of bioeconomy models already proven but chronically underfunded. Acará, Pará, Brasil, 2023.
Navigating between Belém’s port, bustling markets, and riverine communities, I’ve met people who live risk as a daily arithmetic. Families balancing extractive jobs against promises that standing forests will pay. Their stories are clear to me. COP30, however, isn’t. If Belém can’t turn COP30’s six axes into land titles, long-tenor capital, and names on contracts, the Amazon will remain a headline without a budget line.
The collaboration and finance COP30 mobilises are necessary. For those who think like extractors, seeking quick returns, the finance chasm is a problem. But for those who think like builders, sustainable agriculture and bioeconomy in the Amazon isn't a speculative bet; it's a proven model currently underfunded.
This is where the new script must be written. As Gonzalo Muñoz, former COP25 High-Level Champion, remarks: "Six years ago, food and agriculture were almost a ghost in climate negotiations. Now we see a lasting structure built around food systems and regeneration … demonstrating that it is possible to produce more food with lower emissions, restore ecosystems, and empower rural communities."
Belém must not be a mere backdrop for policy theatre but a laboratory where history, knowledge, and agency integrate solutions, so that people on the frontlines stop being footnotes in their own stories. In the Amazon, each river teaches a simple lesson: everything flows somewhere. Our headlines flow into policy briefs. Our photos flow into public opinion. Our omissions flow into silence. At COP30, we must choose what we carry downstream.
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Sources
[1] Climate Policy Initiative — Global Landscape of Climate Finance 2023 (2023).
[2] Zero Carbon Analytics — Promises and Reality of Climate Finance Flows in Latin America and the Caribbean (2024).
[3] SETE (Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel) — Financial Data / Operating Costs (2025).
[4] Amazon Fund, Activity Report 2023.
[5] WALKER, T.W. (2007). Slave Labor and Chocolate in Brazil: The Culture of Cacao Plantations in Amazonia and Bahia.
[6] IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) - 2024 Agricultural Production Data.
[7] World Resources Institute — The New Economy of the Brazilian Amazon (Dec 2023).
[8] COP30 Presidency, Eighth Letter 2025.
[9] Climate Policy Initiative — Following the Money: Financing Bioeconomy in Brazil (2023).
[10] Climate Policy Initiative — The Amazon Food & Forest Bioeconomy Financing Initiative (Mar 2024).
