For feeder highway

Rainforest being cleared for UN climate summit

(Bild: guentermanaus)

Tens of thousands of hectares of rainforest in the Amazon are now being cleared for the COP30 climate conference of all things. Paradise has to make way for a feeder highway.

More than 50,000 delegates and countless heads of government and heads of state will flock to the COP30 in the Brazilian city of Belém this fall. However, the "hot-air spectacle" - which will take place from November 10 to 21 - is already being reduced to absurdity. Under the pretext of relieving the already traffic-choked metropolis, a four-lane (!) highway is currently being punched out of the rainforest at full speed.

(Bild: Krone KREATIV)

Tens of thousands of trees in this green Amazon lung have fallen victim to the 18-kilometre highway, which is supposed to bring participants comfortably into the climate-hostile, air-conditioned conference conglomerate - without any consideration for fauna and flora. The indigenous people of the Pataxó tribe were brutally displaced. Their crops have been destroyed and their carefully guarded tribal land devastated.

If the most valuable rainforest is now being sacrificed for the World Climate Conference in Brazil, this UN summit will be an absurdity.

Alexander Egit, Greenpeace Österreich

Environmentalists rightly fear that a path has been cut here for even more deforestation. "This will attract timber companies, gold panners and other desperados," fears indigenous farmer Claudio Verequete. Either way, ancient tribal land would be covered in asphalt.

In Vienna, Greenpeace boss Alex Egit is appalled: "In view of the USA's withdrawal from all climate agreements, the world should be moving closer together on climate protection." But not in this kind of eco-madness.