(24 Nov 2024)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Belem, Brazil – 23 November 2024
1. Aerial shot of Tucunduba River in between neighborhoods ++MUTE++
2. Aerial shot of boat navigating on the river ++MUTE++
3. Boat passing by seen from another boat
++IMAGES OVER SOUNDBITE++
4. SOUNDBITE (Portuguese) Valdemir de Souza, 60 years old, construction worker: “This water was crystal clear. It would only become cloudy when the tide came up. It would become cloudy. It was all bush on both sides, very few houses. It was not as populated as today. It changed a lot around here.
5. Trash hanging on a tree
6. Woman walking, trash along riverside slope, homes in the background
++IMAGES OVER SOUNDBITE++
7. SOUNDBITE (Portuguese) Valdemir de Souza, 60 years old, construction worker: “Do you see how (dirty) it is on the bank of this creek here? The trash truck is now passing by three times a week. I have never thrown a single bag of trash in this river because I know how it was and I wanted it to come back to how it was. But it wont. It will never be like that.”
8. Trash on a riverside slope
9. Valdemir de Souza on his boat
10. Various of stilt houses by the river
11. Egret standing on a tree root next to trash
12. Various of COP30 banners outside constructions sites for the 2025 event
13. Various aerial shots of constructions sites for the COP30 ++MUTE++
STORYLINE:
As COP29 ends all eyes turn to the upcoming COP30 in Belem, the first U.N. climate conference in the Amazon.
Many tout the host destination as symbolizing the forest’s key role in combating climate change.
But when tens of thousands of participants arrive in the host city of Belem next year, they won’t find idyllic images of rainforest, like lush vegetation and clean rivers.
“This water was crystal clear,” recalled 60-year-old Valdemir de Souza on a recent day as he traveled through parts of a polluted Tucunduba River. “It would only become cloudy when the tide came up. It was all bush on both sides, very few houses. It was not as populated as today. It changed a lot around here.”
In Belem, impoverished, crime-ridden and filled with inequalities, most of the 2.5 million residents live in poor neighborhoods. What’s more, only 2% of the city’s sewage gets treated, imposing a heavy toll on its 14 river basins.
Since it was designated host two years ago, this bustling metropolitan area near the Amazon River has been racing to prepare.
In several parts of the city, construction bearing “COP30” signs surround buildings.
Three major hotels are under development, but that won’t provide enough rooms, so organizers plan to get cruise ships that can house up to 5,000 people.
Brazil’s government estimates that 50,000 people will attend COP30, including up to 150 heads of state.
The Tucunduba River, which ends almost three miles from its headwaters into the much larger Guama River, is the receptacle of much untreated sewage and garbage as it crosses through two of Belem’s poorest neighborhoods.
"I have never thrown a single bag of trash in this river because I know how it was and I wanted it to come back to how it was. But it wont. It will never be like that," laments de Souza, a construction worker.
In the stretch next to the Terra Firme neighborhood, its banks have been taken over by stilted houses built informally.
The river pollution is connected to Belem’s chaotic growth in the past decades, when Brazil experienced a massive migration from rural to urban areas. Until the 1970s, most of the Amazon population lived in the rainforest.
AP video by Alan K. Guimarães.
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