Because they require consensus-based decisions, UN Conferences of the Parties (COPs) on climate change often involve long discussions and negotiations. Each year it is held in a different city, bringing a local flavor to the deliberations (as interpreted by illustrator Gidalti Jr. on this issue’s cover). With an urgent and complex agenda, COP30 arrives in Belém seeking to establish more ambitious greenhouse gas emission targets. Another challenge is to increase the resources allocated to so-called climate finance, used to fund the low-carbon energy transition and to help countries adapt to the effects of global warming.
This will be the first COP held in Brazil, although the country hosted Rio92, a landmark in international meetings on the environment and sustainable development. One of its outcomes was the creation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, a multilateral treaty under which the COP is the main annual meeting. The first was held three years later, in Berlin.
Securing more funding in today’s geopolitical situation—when many wealthy countries are focused inward—is not easy, says geographer Ane Alencar. Considered an ideological issue by many, the polarization of environmental topics also makes the mission more difficult. “For some people, these topics are not seen as problems to be solved,” says the science director at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), an NGO founded in Belém 30 years ago.
Ghanaian climatologist Nana Klutse, who was in Brazil for the 17th General Conference of the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), reinforces the need for collaboration between nations. “We only have one planet, and each country’s actions affect the others”.
Science has provided the data underpinning the consensuses reached at previous COPs, and scientists continue to generate essential knowledge on numerous fronts within this vast field. One example addressed in this issue is the finding that trees in the Amazon are getting bigger, having grown by an average of 3.3% per decade over the last 30 years. This means the ecosystem service they provide—storing carbon—is even more crucial than previously thought.
New knowledge is expected to emerge from 22 scientific expeditions funded by the Amazônia+10 initiative, a collaboration between FAPESP and the research funding agencies of the nine states in the region. The arrangement now includes a large number of institutions and funding agencies from Brazil and abroad, with more than 700 researchers who are beginning fieldwork to collect data, biological and mineral specimens, and cultural records.
For centuries, scientific expeditions to the Amazon have been trying to create maps of the region. Presented as scientific representations of reality, they have historically functioned as political instruments. Now, a global movement called the spatial or cartographic turn is questioning their nature and function. Without abandoning science, but transcending its supposed objectivity, the approach is based on networks of socio-spatial relationships, among other elements. An example is the map created by the Borari Indigenous people, with technical support from the Federal University of Western Pará, for territorial demarcation. It included rivers, trails, and sacred areas that were not included in state cartography. The movement also has an artistic and symbolic dimension, through which maps are seen as platforms for creating new worlds.
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