When Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva announced the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP30, would take place in his home country in the city of Belém, he reflected on the importance of the location for the event.
"I've attended COPs in Egypt, Paris, Copenhagen and all people talk about is the Amazon, so I asked: why not host it in an Amazonian state, so you can know what the Amazon really is?" he said.
Local reporters in the region are preparing now to make sure the Amazon and communities that call it home are in the spotlight when thousands of world leaders, journalists and others related to the climate industry descend this November.
They aim to work with an Amazonian perspective that prioritizes voices of the region and avoids shallow and superficial topics about foreign personalities or touristic aspects of the event. But they’re also having to contend with logistical challenges, including the high price of rentals and travel to the Belém.
Based in Belém, the capital of the state of Pará, journalism platform Amazônia Vox is uniquely situated to meet the challenge. It’s prioritized local sources and communication professionals in the Amazon since its founding in 2023. It also works with the principles of solutions journalism in its reporting on the climate.
“On the one hand, climate journalists have been covering and talking about this subject for a long time, and so we lose out if we don't have this knowledge. But on the other hand, we win when we know the territory and the people who are there and are from organizations here very well,” Daniel Nardin, executive director of Amazônia Vox, told LatAm Journalism Review (LJR). “Our intention and our desire is to try to bring together these two worlds, these two types of knowledge, and then we do distinctive work.”
Amazônia Vox has a permanent staff of 12 people, including journalists and other professionals. The platform started as a tool including a database of sources and another of local freelancers, and then started producing content. For COP30, Nardin wants to focus on local voices, including sources, participants in the event's negotiations and members of social movements.
“It's kind of obvious, but all of our coverage will be based on listening to people here. In the end, of course our desire is to provide quality coverage, but mainly for us to show other journalists around the world all these voices that speak with a lot of knowledge, a lot of consistency, and that they deserve to have more space,” Nardin said.
In addition to the database of experts, Amazônia Vox is also refining its database of freelancers from across the Amazon region that can be consulted for free. The outlet will also offer a paid curation service and hire local professionals for outsiders covering the event. The initiative is one of the ways to obtain resources to finance coverage.
Amid the fight for real estate in Belém, Amazônia Vox still does not have a permanent headquarters for the newsroom. One of the possibilities is to share a physical space with other journalistic initiatives, but Nardin also expects prices to decrease a little over time.
“The COP was very heavily marketed as being a great opportunity for everyone to get extra funding and a great summit for world leaders,” Nardin said “But in reality, there are a lot of journalists coming with all the budget restrictions of being a freelancer or from a smaller outlet.”
Tapajós de Fato team planning meeting, 2025 (Courtesy photo)
Tapajós de Fato, a popular, alternative, independent communication outlet that operates in western Pará, is concerned about raising awareness among the local community about what COP30 actually is. In fact, that’s one of its editorial axes. Founded in 2020 by Marcos Wesley and Isabelle Maciel, the outlet is based in Santarém and focuses on giving visibility to reports of violations of the rights of traditional communities, in addition to empowering social movements through communication. Based on his experience at other COPs, Wesley wants to raise awareness among local civil society about difficulties accessing the conference and negotiation spaces.
“We want to use social media, the portal and our print materials to be able to present the real meaning of the conference to society. There is a feeling that it is much more linked and related to generating jobs and income and boosting tourism, which is not wrong,” Wesley told LJR. “But we understand that there are expectations that make us very worried because we know that they will be frustrated, especially from the point of view of civil society access to the COP. You need to keep your feet on the ground that it’s not going to be easy and it’s not just about getting to the press conference and that’s it.”
In addition to the coverage itself, Tapajós de Fato is also developing a project in partnership with the Federal University of Western Pará, whose communication school focuses on Indigenous peoples and traditional communities. The idea is to discuss the climate coverage and COP coverage agenda and then select scholarship holders to go to Belém and join the Tapajós de Fato team.
“It’s really cool to have Indigenous people and Quilombolas coming to cover their stories and agendas during the conference. We also want to strengthen the networks and independent communication outlets of collectives that already exist in the territories,” Wesley said. “We know that in practice, Indigenous peoples and traditional communities suffer the most from the consequences of climate change. The idea is to guarantee spaces so that these populations can bring forward discussion about their territories on a more recurring basis.”
Wesley has been living in Belém since last year and rented a larger house with the intention of hosting the team during the conference. Tapajós de Fato currently has eight people in the newsroom and four administrative employees and the idea is to accommodate everyone, in addition to the scholarship holders.
Based in Altamira, in Médio Xingu, Sumaúma will also bring together most of the team made up of reporters spread across Belém, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Brasília in a fixed newsroom in the capital of Pará during COP. Founded by journalists Eliane Brum, Jonathan Watts, Verônica Goyzueta and Talita Bedinelli, the outlet produces content with more depth and more meticulous investigation, but the idea is also to publish breaking news about the event.
“We have structured the entire newsroom’s focus with COP in mind. We devised an audience strategy because we want to improve the way our content reaches people from this point forward. We invest so much, put so much effort into the investigation, so we want more people to have access,” Bedinelli, who is editor in chief, told LJR.
Sumaúma will carry out internal online training with experts on topics related to COP. The idea is for the entire editorial team to participate, from those who do fact-checking, to those who set up the pages, those who create social network content, editors and reporters, as well as external scholarship holders and participants in training programs carried out with local communities throughout the Amazon. The goal is for everyone to be on the same page about how coverage will be done.
“There are many ways to cover COP. Our view, we are covering from the forest. We want to know what concerns the Amazon. What impacts the Amazon or can help in some way to change things in the Amazon. It's a different perspective, so you also need specific training for that,” Bedinelli said.
Bedinelli also said that the spaces for political discussion within the conference are very exclusive, with many of the discussions taking place only in English. However, she emphasizes the need for coverage that goes far beyond the official programming and encompasses several parallel events and other spaces of political pressure and protests.
“It’s a big story! For a website that covers politics, the election is the main topic of the year, it is the priority. Newspapers plan ahead for this. For those of us who cover the environment and related topics, the COP is our election,” Bedinelli said.
The newsroom of O Liberal newspaper, headquartered in Belém (Photo by Adriano Nascimento / O Liberal)
Founded in 1946, O Liberal has an integrated newsroom that produces content for the website OLiberal.com and for the newspapers O Liberal and Amazônia. In total, there are around 100 professionals, including 27 reporters, six photojournalists, a social media team, editors and web editors and layout designers, reporting managers and drivers for the reporting team. According to Lázaro Magalhães, journalism and production coordinator at the integrated newsroom, the estimate is that between five and seven freelancers will be hired to meet coverage demands.
“We have two basic fronts: translating the debates, what is being brought here by the climate conference to Belém, for regional readers here at Liberal and stitching this into people's daily lives,” Magalhães said. “We cannot be at the mercy of national or international coverage, letting them dictate exactly how this perspective should be shaped. The importance of local press and regional media in an event of COP’s scale is to provide and contribute to this wealth of details from a local point of view."
