Opinion: Who is leading the fight against climate change?
- Hedda Jarhall
- 6 days ago
- 4 min read
In November 2025, the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 30) will take place in Belém, Brazil, located in the Amazon rainforest. The city is home to over three million species and is one of the world’s biggest restorers of carbon.
The Amazon is the world’s largest tropical forest and its trees are vital to the global climate, releasing over 20 billion tons of water into the air every day. This is essential to the global and regional water cycle. The trees also restore 150 to 200 billion tons of carbon, which helps reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Despite its vital role in protecting the earth, an area of five soccer fields is cut down in the rainforest each minute —17% of the forest. Deforestation does not only affect the three million species in the area but it also affects the 47 million people who live in the Amazon rainforest.
Two million of those people are indigenous to the Amazon rainforest. There are 400 indigenous groups in the rainforest, and the tribes have lived in the forest for centuries, contributing to forest preservation in the way they live. In recent decades, these groups have faced new challenges. Through deforestation and infrastructure development, many of them have been forced to move from homes that have survived for generations, as they can no longer perform their work in a changing habitat.
Multiple climate scientists have researched the Amazon, and agree that the rainforest is essential to the earth's survival and the fight against climate change in particular. With this information, one would think that global climate leaders would value the rainforest and work toward preserving it. The reality is different. Many leaders are being hypocritical as they do not value the rainforest.
Many global leaders do work toward the preservation of the rainforest, such as Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has decreased deforestation in the country by over 30% since his election last year.
Despite the agreement on the importance of the Amazon rainforest, articles in the past three weeks reveal a discovery made ahead of the COP 30 conference that I was surprised to see.
ABC News published an article on March 12 about a highway that is being built in Belém to make the city more accessible for the thousands of climate scientists who will attend the conference in November. It might not sound like anything extraordinary, since new constructions and adjustments have to be made to make large events possible. However, I was surprised to read that they are building a highway in the rainforest because this requires them to cut down trees.
The decision to build a highway that requires deforestation in one of the world’s most essential regions sends the wrong signals. How can the climate scientists expect us, non-climate experts, to take action to save our planet if they contribute to the deforestation in the Amazon themselves?
Climate scientists and global leaders cannot expect us to take action if they do not do it themselves. Leading climate experts, such as Carlos Peres and Carlos Nobre often focus on the protection and preservation of the Amazon, as they are from Brazil. They have to lead by example and promote ideas showing that there is always an alternative to action hurting the climate.
According to a 2019 research study titled “Green transportation for sustainability: Review of current barriers, strategies, and innovative technologies,” transportation systems and specifically cars are major factors of concern about air pollution.
In the article, the researchers tell us to use less fossil fuels and use more green energy. They also tell us to either completely avoid taking our cars to work or to do car-sharing.Nobre often discusses the importance of the Amazon rainforest. He encourages people to speak up for the protection of the rainforest.
“The task of protecting and restoring forests, Earth’s most critical life support system, is not just Brazil’s to solve alone. The Amazon is dangerously close to an irreversible tipping point, beyond which the forest could turn into a self-drying, highly degraded tropical savanna,” Nobre stated in a 2024 opinion piece in Context News.
As an advocate for the protection of the Amazon, I would expect Nobre to go against the highway construction since it contributes to deforestation. However, he, among many other prominent experts, has made no official statements regarding it.
This is where climate scientists and global leaders contradict themselves. They argue for the protection of the Amazon rainforest and ask us to take action but attend a conference that contributes to its deforestation. Most of them do not even question the fact that the conference they will attend contributes to deforestation.
While many climate leaders say that people should avoid using their cars to work, they are supporting a conference that requires a highway to be built for vehicles to be driven at. If they are going to drive a car to their work, then they cannot expect us to bike to ours.
Some environmentalists, however, have expressed concern for the construction of the highway. One of them is Sohanur Rahman, Executive Director of YouthNet Global, an organization that tackles the climate crisis. In an article from March 13 he stated, “It is a cruel irony that a highway destroying the Amazon rainforest is being built for a climate summit meant to protect it.”
Yet, there has been no change. The project is still ongoing and no climate change activists have withdrawn. Their actions speak louder than words. It is not enough to say that you care if you take no action to prevent it. It is even more hypocritical to expect other people to take actions that help the environment and, in this case, the Amazon rainforest, if our leaders cannot do it themselves.
It is time for our leaders and experts to lead by example and show how individuals can take actions that contribute to the fight against climate change. If they do not take action, then who will?
By Hedda Jarhall
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