BONN, Germany — For two weeks, a single concern dominated corridor chatter at this year’s midyear climate talks on the Rhine.
It wasn’t anything on the negotiating table. It wasn’t the unprecedented absence of the United States. It wasn’t even finance, the perennial hot topic at climate talks. Instead, the question on everyone’s minds in Bonn was whether diplomats would have a roof over their head in November.
Brazil, the hosts of this year’s COP30 United Nations climate summit, plans to hold the massive global conference in the port city of Belém, on the border of the Amazon, to showcase the rainforest’s central role in stabilizing the planetary climate.
But their chosen venue has never organized an event of this scale. And Belém, Bethlehem in Portuguese, just doesn’t have enough room at the inn.
