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Sudanese climate diplomacy researcher Lina Yassin is supporting the Least Developed Countries Group at the U.N. climate summit in Belém, Brazil. The group is composed of 44 countries, including Sudan, whose cumulative emissions amount to less than 1% of total global emissions. "They are the countries that have the least amount of resources to respond to the climate crisis," explains Yassin.
Yassin also discusses the humanitarian crisis in Sudan, where the estimated death toll is now at 150,000. "This is a proxy war funded by foreign nationals who have vested interests in Sudan's resources. … The UAE has been using the RSF militia to illegally smuggle gold out to finance the war and finance their own gold reserves. The UAE is also really interested in Sudan's agricultural lands."
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At the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Belém, Brazil, we sit down with Colombian environmentalist Susana Muhamad, who served as Colombia's minister of environment and sustainable development from 2022 to 2025. Muhamad discusses the U.N.'s mandate to mitigate the acceleration of human-caused climate change and condemns the powerful, diverting influence of the fossil fuel lobby. Muhamad, who is of Palestinian descent, also responds to the United States' attacks on boats in the Caribbean and to the ongoing Israeli genocide of Gaza. "These are not issues that are not correlated," she says. "Humanity can do better. [We] can be very proactive and productive in shifting this situation of climate crisis, rather than continue investing in arms, in armies and in defense."
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As Democracy Now! broadcasts from the COP30 U.N. climate summit, we speak with Kumi Naidoo, the longtime South African human rights and environmental justice activist who is president of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative. He discusses U.S. absence from climate talks, Gaza, and wealthy countries refusing to take accountability for the climate crisis. "We're not asking the rich nations for a charity here. We are asking them to pay their climate debt."
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Democracy Now! is broadcasting from the U.N. climate summit in the Brazilian rainforest city of Belém, near the mouth of the Amazon River, where the COP30 summit has entered its second week of negotiations. The gathering comes 33 years after the Rio Earth Summit, which created the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Countries are trying to find a way forward on addressing the climate crisis, even as global temperatures continue to rise and as the Trump administration boycotts the conference. COP30 is also the first since 2021 with a significant civil society presence, after three successive U.N. summits held in repressive countries that outlawed public protest.
"The beauty of the forest COP, the beauty of the people's COP in Brazil, is that civil society is very active, both inside and outside," says Leila Salazar-López, executive director of Amazon Watch.
We also speak with Viviana Santiago, executive director of Oxfam Brazil, who advises the Brazilian government on sustainable development. She stresses the importance of centering Indigenous peoples and the health of the Amazon in these talks. "People that are most affected for the climate crisis are the people that did nothing to [cause] this crisis," says Santiago.
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