On a damp, equatorial morning in Belém, the river smells faintly of diesel and guava. Vendors at the Ver-o-Peso market hack open açaí with short, brutal thwacks while cranes swing over the new City Park site across town, where world leaders are supposed to talk about saving the planet. In November, if all goes to plan, two cruise ships will moor downriver to sleep negotiators when the hotel rooms run out. It’s a heady mix: rainforest romance and unforgiving logistics.

The reality is more complicated. Brazil has staked its climate prestige on keeping COP30 in the Amazon. The UN’s official notice still lists the venue as Belém’s City Park and Hangar Convention Centre, 10–21 November. And the summit’s incoming president, veteran diplomat André Corrêa do Lago, has told critics there is “no plan B.” But here’s the catch: there may not be enough beds, and the beds that exist are often priced like Davos, not the delta.

This is not a hypothetical headache. After an emergency discussion at the UN climate bureau, Brazil faced pressure to shift at least part of the gathering — perhaps the leaders’ segment — out of Belém. Organisers demurred. Meanwhile, a government-backed booking platform showed rooms at $360 to $4,400 a night, and Brazil’s offer to reserve a handful of subsidised rooms for the poorest countries still overshot the UN per diem, a measure of daily allowance. The labels tell one story; the prices tell another.

Belém is racing to make it work. Brasília says roughly 4.7 billion reais (public and development-bank money) is flowing into airport upgrades, venues and transit fixes. The city boasts a 50% jump in scheduled flights for the COP window compared with last November. And organisers have added those cruise ships, docked at Outeiro, to ease the crunch. On paper, it sounds like progress. It isn’t — unless the pieces land on time and the access is fair.

Air travel is the hinge. The Val-de-Cans airport concession was amended to accelerate apron and terminal works to August — mere weeks before delegates land — though local reporting has flagged heat and construction delays that could complicate operations. You can feel the knife-edge timing in every press release and drone shot.

Why insist on Belém? Because the Amazon is the story. Brazil has engineered a conspicuous shift from oil-rich hosts in recent years to the world’s foremost carbon sink, and the Lula government wants negotiators to look deforestation drivers in the eye. To be fair, enforcement has helped Amazon forest loss fall to a nine-year low; at the same time, drought-fueled fires surged across vast areas last year. Both things can be true. Both matter for climate credibility.

And yet the city’s basic services and urban form were never designed for a 50,000-person, two-week jamboree. Belém routinely appears near the bottom of Brazil’s sanitation rankings; one widely cited analysis found only about 17% of residents connected to a sewage network. That’s not a moral failing — it’s a legacy of uneven investment, a reminder that climate summitry lands in real neighbourhoods with real pipes.

Then there’s the symbolism problem. In March, images of a new four-lane “Avenida da Liberdade” slicing through a protected green area ignited international outrage even as state officials argued the road was long planned and not a federal COP project. The paradox was brutal: clearing urban forest to ease access to a climate summit meant to protect forests. Belém’s defenders note wildlife crossings and solar lighting in the design; critics warn of the “fishbone” pattern of illegal expansion that often follows new roads. The Amazon rarely gives you a clean moral line.

Is there a fallback? Not officially. But something interesting is happening on Brazil’s southeast coast. Days before the COP opens, a COP30 Local Leaders Forum — mayors, governors, the people who move bins and buses — will convene in Rio de Janeiro, the city that hosted the 1992 Earth Summit that birthed the UN climate convention. It’s not the COP itself. It is, however, a tacit admission that a multi-city approach might be the most pragmatic way to include thousands who can’t afford Belém’s bottlenecks.

Meanwhile, business is hedging. Some companies and financiers are reportedly scaling back Belém plans, shifting events to São Paulo or Rio, where hotels, airports and meeting spaces are abundant. The risk is obvious: a hollowed-out core summit in the Amazon with a well-heeled, parallel circuit elsewhere. Climate diplomacy is bifurcated by bandwidth and room rates.

So should COP30 stay in Belém? Yes — with conditions. Because moving it would evacuate the point. The Amazon is where climate, food and health are braided so tightly you can’t tug one thread without the others tightening. Beef and soy supply chains that begin as pasture and clearings upstream ripple into supermarket meat cases and alternative-protein pitch decks far away. Fires and heatwaves feed respiratory illness and strained hospitals. Water security, flooding and sewage are not side stories; they are the texture of climate risk and resilience. Hosting the world here forces the agenda to stop floating above the canopy and come down to the ground.

But here’s what must happen, fast.

First, accessibility. Price gouging needs to be checked by moral suasion and market solutions. Brazil and the UNFCCC should expand the pool of capped-rate rooms, extend the cruise-ship model if needed, and underwrite shuttle networks from satellite lodging hubs so that least-developed countries and frontline communities aren’t priced out of the very talks that shape their futures.

Second, transparency. Publish a live, multilingual dashboard — rooms, prices, transit times, venue queues — so delegations can plan without panic. Fold in the Leaders’ Summit logistics as soon as they’re nailed down; people can’t book what they can’t see.

Third, split smart — formally. Take advantage of the Rio forum to design a sanctioned, high-bandwidth “twin” programme for side events and city-focused sessions, with guaranteed virtual bridges into negotiation rooms in Belém. Don’t let a thousand uncoordinated fringe conferences do this by accident. Organise it by design.

Fourth, leave a legacy that’s more than tarmac. If a highway is being built, hard-wire protection against the land-grabbing and settlement creep that so often follow new access roads. Pair every piece of concrete with measurable gains in sanitation, flood management and green jobs that outlast the motorcades. Otherwise, the summit’s footprint becomes the story, not its outcomes.

Fifth, connect the dots publicly. Use Belém to make explicit the chain from enforcement against illegal clearing (which Brazil has recently strengthened) to healthier forests, cooler cities, steadier rainfall, safer crops and fewer hospitalisations. If climate is a health crisis — as the WHO keeps saying — then COP30’s deliverables should read like a public-health plan as much as an energy one. People understand clinics and clean water. They vote with their bodies as well as their wallets.

Will this be enough? It has to be. Because relocating the COP to Rio or São Paulo might spare the delegates a humid queue and a pricey bed, but it would also spare the rest of us the jolt of seeing the climate’s front line up close. The labels tell one story; the science tells another. If we cannot convene in the Amazon without razing what makes it special — or pricing out the very countries that most need a voice — what does that say about the transition we’re building?

For now, at least, the plan is set: Belém or bust. Amazon will host the world. Whether the world shows up in a way that’s fair, focused, and honest is still up to us.