COP 30 in Belém/PA between concrete and forest

the challenge of urban sustainability

Abstract

The study sought to answer the following questions: to what extent are the urban infrastructure works on Avenida Liberdade and Nova Rua da Marinha, carried out in Belém for COP 30, in line with Brazil's urban and climate regulatory frameworks, especially the 1988 Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil, the City Statute and the National Policy on Climate Change? In a complementary way, the action plans, the 2030 Agenda and the Belém Local Climate Action Plan were articulated with the works in question, considering their contributions and possible contradictions in relation to sustainable urban development. The method adopted was deductive, with bibliographic and documentary research, and data analysis was qualitative. The results showed that urban infrastructure works do not comply with any of the three regulatory frameworks on the subject. And in a complementary way, they are also disjointed from the action plans. Thus, there is a worrying divergence between the sustainable development discourse and the execution of the two works investigated, which signals an exclusionary urbanization strategy that disregards the centrality of the urban environment as a fundamental right.