Luiza Amâncio and Gabrielle Borges for Mídia Ninja’s Collaborative Coverage of COP30

The choice of Belém as the host city for the 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30), the most important climate summit on the planet, should be a source of national pride. But what many people in the North perceived was the opposite reaction from much of the press in Brazil’s Southeast and South regions, as well as from international outlets influenced by a view steeped in historical prejudices that still persist about—and within—the Amazon and its peoples.

After the announcement, formalized in January 2023 by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that Belém would host COP30 in Brazil, newsrooms in the Rio–São Paulo axis almost instantly multiplied reports that, instead of investigating the improvements and changes the capital of Pará would undergo, began to question whether the city “had the infrastructure” to host an event of such scale.

The Amazon is constantly treated as something exotic, with its issues reduced to a lack of hotel rooms, pothole-ridden streets, and the price of snacks. The most recent case, during the Climate Summit, an event preceding COP30, was a R$45 coxinha that became a top news priority. Our region is very useful when the topic is forest, yet inconvenient when it claims political and economic protagonism.

The media narrative that formed around Belém and COP30 reveals a profound misdirection of focus, which professor Alda Costa, journalist and PhD in Social Sciences, situates at the heart of geopolitics and communication. In an interview, the expert points to the persistence of structural doubt and skepticism that emerge when an event of global magnitude moves to what is still internally perceived as a peripheral territory:

“The way the city of Belém has been treated by the media (mainly the southeastern and, to some extent, international press) is indeed marked by an underlying disbelief or, at the very least, a structural skepticism,” the professor states.

For her, the dominant narrative around Belém’s logistical and structural capacity—focused on hotel networks, prices, transportation, and basic sanitation—reinforces a view in which the Amazon and its capitals “lack the minimum requirements of ‘civility’ or ‘readiness’ for events of this scale.”

The consequence of this framing is serious: the media risks disqualifying the event before it even takes place. The coverage, according to the expert, reflects a view that still sees the Brazilian North as a territory that must be “developed/tidied up” for the world, instead of as a hub of environmental and social solutions.

For Costa, the central role of mainstream media lies in its ability to translate and contextualize the event: “If mainstream media fails to go beyond ‘what is being said’ (the negotiations) and ‘where it is taking place’ (the construction works), it risks reducing the event to a mere matter of geographic location and an empty political stage,” she warns.

The greatest legacy of COP30 in the Amazon, therefore, will not be merely the coverage of negotiations or urban projects. It is the responsibility of major media outlets to connect the conference’s central themes—climate change, adaptation, financing—to the reality experienced by the 30 million Brazilians in the Amazon: its traditional peoples, the bioeconomy, and its urban challenges.

“We cannot engage with narratives of a ‘we’ and a ‘they,’ separating populations into social divisions—those who should or should not be protected,” concludes professor Alda.