Fire derails COP30 climate summit, one day before its scheduled end

“Fire! Fire! Get out!” was heard as thousands of delegates of COP30 in Belém, Brazil, scrambled to get out of the venue on Thursday afternoon after huge flames broke out at the Africa Pavilion in the Blue Zone — the main venue of the global climate summit.

Amid the panic, refugee activist Anila Noor, based in the Netherlands, struggled to gather her thoughts after the terrifying ordeal. Noor, who was at COP to represent marginalised community voices, saw the fire as a grim premonition.

“I am okay but overwhelmed. This is going to happen to all of us. We are not taking it seriously, we are just talking, talking and not preparing ourselves for real conflict and real disaster. This is just a glimpse,” Noor said.

The official reports from the COP30 Presidency and UN Climate Change state that the fire was controlled quickly and that a disaster was averted due to the rapid response of security staff. The exact cause of the fire is still under investigation.

A total of 13 people were treated on site for smoke inhalation and, as a precaution, the Brazilian Government and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change have jointly decided to temporarily close the Blue Zone while the fire department carries out a comprehensive safety assessment. But the Green Zone remains open, with its activities continuing as scheduled.

Late on Thursday night, the Blue Zone was reinstated and resumed operations at 9pm.

But the affected area remains isolated until the end of COP30.

The fire resulted in the cancellation of crucial plenary activity on Thursday night. But the plenary sessions will be open to parties, observers and media, and will be streamed online on Friday.

The fire at COP30, while lacking direct political impact on the negotiations themselves, can have significant practical consequences for the summit’s final day. With only one day remaining and countries still deeply divided, the loss of crucial negotiating hours due to the closure of the Blue Zone is a major concern, according to delegates.

Mattias Söderberg, a climate adviser for DanChurchAid Denmark, said: “There is already a possibility of holding a ‘COP bis’, where the meeting is not closed with decisions, but instead a later date is found to resume negotiations.”

Before the fire, the COP30 Presidency was intensely consulting with core country groups on a draft agreement text that has not yet been publicly shared. The hope is that through these closed-door discussions a consensus can be forged, allowing the text to be adopted in plenary with minimal protest.

But the path to agreement remains difficult, according to observers:

• The Arab group is reportedly unwilling to discuss fossil fuels.
• The European Union is prepared to walk away if there is no strong commitment to emission reduction.

The final hours of the summit are likely to be highly contentious. But despite the deadlocks, a key positive development occurred earlier: UN Secretary-General António Guterres explicitly backed the demand from the world’s poorest countries for a new, ambitious target for climate adaptation financing.

Now, the COP30 Presidency is busy finalising a plan for the resumption of COP activities, which will be focused on negotiations, once the venue has been thoroughly evaluated and deemed fully safe by fire and health authorities.

“We currently anticipate that any meetings that may be able to take place tonight, subject to full health and safety assessments, would be to continue and complete consultations with Groups that were interrupted by the fire,” according to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Evacuation at COP30

The evacuation process on Thursday was filled with panic, chaos and confusion as participants fled the venue and the physical disruption caused by an “anthropogenic” fire (as described by one delegate) fuelled by human materials served as a visceral reminder of the urgency the delegates were struggling to address.

Hevelin Santos, a COP30 volunteer from Belém, Brazil, was unsettled by the nature of the event, stating: “We’re here for climate change and then a huge fire breaks out. It’s really bad.”

Santos was in front of the Thailand Pavilion when the fire started. People started to run, shouting “Fire!” She said: “I didn’t understand what was happening because I didn’t understand what they were saying. Then, I realised, some people had thrown me on the floor, knocked me down. Then I moved away. I stayed in the corner and then I got up.”

She gradually started to understand what they were saying, that there was a fire. Then people started to run.

“I was with my friends and I was looking for them. I went to look for them. But when I came back to where they were, I hadn’t found them. Then I ran to get out. Then my things were in there, and now I’ll have to wait for all this to end to be able to get my backpack,” she said.

The human-induced signal

Samual Dotse from the Ghana delegation said the huge evacuation was caused by a fire that was not natural.

“This is anthropogenic. It’s human-induced. So, which forms part of the issues of emission reduction, or emissions into the atmosphere. But we keep saying that human action is contributing to the impact of climate change. So I think this is evidence that we can say that, okay, whatever amount of CO₂ from the smoke that is going is adding to what we are here to address,” said Dotse.

Sonny Morgan, lead campaigner for the Movement for Debt and Reparations from South Africa, was filming a panel at the Africa Pavilion when the fire broke out.

Morgan said the fire should demonstrate to world leaders the urgency that vulnerable communities face daily, where fires break out and destroy their homes, workplaces and forests.

Morgan said the rapid spread of the fire was a direct indictment of modern construction materials. The venue, composed of old hangers, was encased in a stretch fabric to achieve a “nice and clean look”.

Morgan says that the fire spread quickly because of the vast amount of plastic and white fabric used throughout the venue, combined with significant airflow from the air conditioning. He said that the stand where the speakers were seated burned down completely in about 60 seconds.

Morgan said he remembered feeling anxious and vulnerable, and worried that the fire would quickly get out of control. The fire was relatively small compared to the size of the venue, but Morgan said it was the setup that made it dangerous. He later realised the venue “could have burned down to the ground with all of us inside”.

This vulnerability, a climate meeting venue quickly succumbing to human-made fire fuelled by synthetic materials, served as a terrifying physical manifestation of systemic risks for some delegates.

Morgan also detailed how rapidly the fire consumed the area. According to him, the fire spread quickly because of the vast amount of plastic and white fabric used throughout the entire complex, combined with a lot of airflow from the air conditioning. The venue buildings are old hangers that have been encased in a stretch fabric. This fabric caught fire rapidly, and the stand where four people had been sitting on the stage burned down completely in about 60 seconds.

Delaying crucial climate finance

The fire not only delivered a symbolic warning but also temporarily halted the critical negotiations at the heart of the summit.

The Brazilian Government and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change jointly decided to temporarily close the Blue Zone to carry out a comprehensive safety assessment. Accredited media are expected to be able to re-enter when limited COP operations resume, focusing on negotiations.

This interruption delayed crucial progress on adaptation finance, a turning issue identified by the Global South delegations.

Dotse said groups like the Africa Group, small island developing states, and the least developed countries are making a strong case for developed nations to provide adequate and predictable finance.

However, Dotse said the negotiating text regarding finance was “constantly being weakened to just represent some kind of political decision”, which failed to reflect the necessary science and evidence on the ground.

While the physical flames were put out quickly, the irony is that the delegates who are expected to provide adequate and predictable resources to address global climate threats were themselves forced to flee in panic from a domestic, human-induced threat. DM

Kristin Engel is a freelance environmental journalist and a Danida Fellow participating in the Danida Fellowship Centre’s 2025 learning programme, ‘Reporting from the front line of the global climate crisis in an era of fake news’. The centre is a public self-governing institution under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark.