COP30 Brazil faces backlash over extreme hotel rates and access concerns. Photo / Getty Images
The idea had seemed symbolically fitting at first – a global climate summit set on the edge of the threatened Amazon rainforest.
But as the annual United Nations climate mega-conference, known this year as COP30, draws nearer, what seemed poetic is now turning into a contentious fiasco.
In the Brazilian host city of Belem, the few remaining hotel rooms are going for 10 and 20 times their usual cost.
Residents in high-rises and favelas are offering up their homes at rates often exceeding US$1000 ($1685) per night.
An official booking portal for attendees includes a love motel that costs US$6660, for a 15-night minimum stay.
Even on its own, the cost of participating is staggering – beyond the scale of previous years, when larger cities, including Dubai and Paris, hosted the event.
Belem, one of Brazil’s poorest state capitals, lacks the hotel capacity of even midsize towns in other countries.
To make matters worse, some participants say these extreme costs are undermining an event already criticised for its inequities.
For years, poorer nations – those most exposed to climate change – have said their urgent challenges are ignored by wealthy, high-polluting countries. Now they are expected to again attend the talks, at a price tag many consider prohibitive.
“It is unthinkable,” said Lamin Jammeh, a negotiator from Gambia.
“We cannot bear the cost of rooms,” said Hamid Abakar Souleymane, the lead negotiator from Chad, which is ranked as the country most vulnerable to climate change.
He said paying for a conference like this reduces the resources his country can commit to food shortages and drought.
“If nothing is done” to reduce room rates, he said, “I as the chief negotiator of the delegation will not participate”.
All this comes at a moment when climate leaders admit they should be talking about issues more consequential than room rates.
Political momentum to address climate change has slowed, especially in the United States.
The world is far off course from its major climate goals, and countries are behind schedule in submitting new national-level plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
But it is the topic of lodging, not fossil fuels or rising temperatures, that has inspired recent emergency talks.
In one session last month, the chief climate negotiator from Panama, Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez, suggested a last-ditch change of the host city.
“This is not a logistical hiccup,” he said, according to a transcript of his remarks from the meeting. “This is insanity and insulting.”
Brazilian officials have rejected the idea of relocation and are working to expand the number of beds.
Two cruise ships – the MSC Seaview and the Costa Diadema, with a combined 3900 cabins – will dock 20km from the venue.
Homeowners have been urged to rent out their properties. Officials say the total bed count has now reached 53,000, just above the number of 50,000 expected attendees.
Still, the situation remains strained.
In an interview, Valter Correia, the special secretary and logistics chief for COP30, said Belem had been swept up in a “collective fever” of price speculation, with hotel owners and private renters sensing a chance to make “enough money to solve all their problems”.
Some brokers, he said, even offered courses on how to profit.
He said Brazil’s consumer protection agency is launching investigations into hotel prices – though any actual penalties for abuse would come only after the conference, given time constraints.
For private rentals, Brazil has no tools to alter prices, so it’s relying on public pressure.
“People are starting to feel some discomfort with the negative image this could leave on Belem,” Correia said, and “even on Brazil as a whole”.
Rental prices have begun to tick down – but not enough to shift the dynamic.
Most countries still haven’t booked accommodations, waiting to see if cheaper rooms emerge.
The official COP30 booking portal shows 1677 options available for the event, mostly private rentals. Only 15 cost less than US$250 per night.
Somebody trying to find accommodation for the final week of negotiations would see a range of two- and three-bedroom apartments with a median price of US$1050 per night.
For many countries, the numbers aren’t workable. In most cases UN contributions cover per diem costs for two delegates per country – or three, if it is categorised as less developed. But that daily allowance, US$144, is meant for normal times, not a city in a demand frenzy.
Brazil has promised to cap room rates at US$600 for wealthier countries and US$200 for poorer and small-island states, but only for a limited number of rooms: 10 and 15, respectively.
Many delegations need more space than that.
In gruelling through-the-night negotiations, countries with higher attendance tend to have the advantage.
“We are being offered places that cost four times the UN rate,” Monterrey Gomez, of Panama, said, adding that the country doesn’t “have the money to pay for it”.
Belem is undergoing a facelift before the event. Brazil is funding improved drainage, new green spaces and bike paths, renovating a historic food market, paving roads and expanding the bus fleet.
“I believe Belem can make a leap of 10 years in one in terms of infrastructure,” said Manuel Siqueira, a resident.
Siqueira, a photographer, is one of the people hoping to rent out his home. It has two floors and four bedrooms upstairs. He imagines as many as eight people could stay there during COP, or even 12 “if the group gets along well”.
During the event, he and his wife will stay with relatives. Siqueira says his asking price is among the more realistic ones – about US$920 per night.
In normal times, Siqueira said, a property like his might rent for US$920 per month.
“That is, in less than two weeks of the COP, it equals almost a year of normal rent,” he said.
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