Floating Diplomacy

What COP30’s Cruise-Ship Solution Reveals About Climate Justice and Global Power

A solemn sight from the COP30 occurred at the gangways of the Outeiro Port, approximately 20 kilometres from the conference centre of Belém. UN badge clad delegates descend off the Costa Diadema and MSC Seaview, carrying laptops and coffee, being ferried between floating hotels to a summit that is supposed to determine the future of a heating planet. The two cruise ships have a combined capacity of approximately 6,000 beds which are chartered by Brazil to fill an accommodation gap that risked derailing COP30 before even a single negotiation text was read.

This might appear like a logistics problem but in reality, it is a political underlying message.

Belém, gateway to the Amazon, was chosen as host to send a powerful message: the forest is not a backdrop to climate talks; it is the main stage. But symbolism was struck against ability. The hotel beds in the city are approximately 18,000 and COP30 is attracting about 45,000-50,000 attendees. With prices soaring, some rooms being priced between $200 and $3,700 per night, and long, non-refundable bookings demanded, the UN climate bureau had to hold an emergency meeting in July to discuss an increasingly developing accommodation problem, even  certain European delegations talked of downsizing or withdrawal.

The reaction of Brazil has been ambition combined with improvisation. The federal government initiated an official accommodation platform, encouraged seasonal rentals, speeded hotel development, equipped army barracks and transformed schools and, most importantly, imported cruise ships to increase capacity. In January, an official update boasted that new beds would be provided to add more than 26,000 additional beds, and cruise ships alone would supply an estimated 4,500 to 6,000 beds.

To most delegations though, the problem was not the number of beds but the ability to pay. When African, Pacific and least-developed country (LDC) negotiators raised an alarm, Brazil started capping prices at approximately $220 a night on some delegations and providing subsidised packages to 72 of the most vulnerable countries. Yet that capped rate still exceeded the UN’s daily subsistence allowance of roughly $149 for many poorer nations.

Then came a more targeted gesture. With days to go, Brazil, working with UNDP and development banks, offered free cruise-ship cabins for delegations from many LDCs, African states and small island nations that were still scrambling for rooms with Reuters reporting that approximately 96 vulnerable countries were prioritised to these solidarity cabins which is a direct effort to avoid price exclusion.

It was a diplomatic turn, though one which shows a greater paradox. Cruise ships are not only a symbol of luxury, but also a symbol of emissions. Research continually identifies cruise ships as having extremely high energy consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions per passenger-kilometre relative to most other forms of tourism. According to recent estimates, even the most efficient kinds of  modern cruise ships can produce about 250 grams of  CO₂ per passenger per kilometre, which is far more than many other modes of air travel, and that the industry contributes  approximately 3.1% of the world shipping emissions, although it carries a very small proportion of total passengers. In addition to CO₂, studies also point to high levels of air and water pollutants such as the impacts of NOₓ, SO₂ and particulate matter impacts on coastal communities and ecosystems.

Thus, the picture is admittedly clumsy: negotiators discussing loss and damage, just transition and 1.5C, while also sleeping on some of the most carbon-intensive symbols of the tourism sector. To those who advocate climate-justice, it forms a nearly-perfect metaphor of a system that speaks the language of emergency but acts in the ways of business as usual. To planners and diplomats it is another thing: a lesson that climate diplomacy is not only limited by political goodwill but also asphalt, concrete and available beds.

This Is Where The All Too Well Known Triangle Of Power, Justice And Pragmatism Comes In.

Power first. In the case of President Lula da Silva, who insists that COP30 remain in Belém, despite the arguments to take it to Rio or a more well-equipped city, this is in part a matter of recovering narrative space. Brazil wishes to become a leader of the Global South, a protector of the Amazon, and an intermediary between high emitters and vulnerable countries. Relocating the summit would have seemed like a back down.

Justice is however evaluated at the bottom. In cases where hotel prices skyrocket beyond the affordability of LDCs, the youth groups and Indigenous representatives, it becomes a matter of inclusion under the conditions of philanthropy and improvisation. AP documented youth organisers who used tens of thousands of dollars of their own money to find alternative accommodation, organised grassroots portals to pair young participants with host families. Le Monde wrote about delegates of youth and civil-society in army barracks, schools, even converted motels, and others in the ships, where they had to endure many long journeys and crowded ships. It is not a trifle; it determines who will be able to spend late nights in contact groups, who will be able to have energy to follow thick negotiations, who will be able to afford spending two weeks.

Additionally, pragmatism is caught between these poles. In the perspective of Brasilia, the decision to charter the Costa Diadema and MSC Seaview makes sense in response to a factual limitation: the city just lacked enough rooms, and the decision to construct an entire hospitality industry around a two-week summit would have been imprudent. The government briefings point out that the cruise ships are but a part of a greater accommodation puzzle which also encompasses new hotels, rentals and temporary accommodations. To that end, the move appears less hypocritical and more like unseemly, reality-on-the-ground climate politics: trade-offs in plain sight.

However, climate diplomacy lives and also dies on perception. COPs are not only supposed to showcase just bargaining sessions but they are also rituals of legitimacy.  When the optics suggest a narrative whereby affluent groups of people choose cabins with balcony accesses as grassroots movement activists slumber three to a room in the outer areas, that undermines the trust, regardless of the number of text paragraphs agreed upon. And sadly those optics are not very strong: floating luxury, diesel-fueled and then framed by the largest rainforest in the world.

There are lesser geopolitical undercurrents as well. Brazilian and regional press reports that sanctions and diplomatic restrictions imply that certain countries cannot even reserve the cruise accommodation at all, which again puts another level of complexity to who stays where. Considering all these, the UN has had to give larger grants to poorer delegations to stay in the game, a lesson that the inclusiveness of multilateralism cannot be ensured by good intentions alone.

What Lessons Can We Then Deduce From This Issue That Looked Like Floating Diplomacy ?

The first is that logistics is justice. When vulnerable countries do not have the resources to attend, they will not be able to represent their interests in the room. That implies that future COP hosts, especially Turkey/Australia and the UNFCCC require more robust, prior planning of accommodation, such as pre-negotiated price limits, special solidarity accommodation, and automatic assistance systems to LDCs and small island states.

The second is that symbolism is important, as well as honesty regarding trade-offs. Yes, cruise ships will not make or break the climate, nonetheless their use at a climate summit like a COP where everything has its own of perception, should certainly come with very transparent form of accounting: disclosures of emissions, commitments to use shore power where possible, as well as clear plans to offset or, better, reduce the footprint in line with decarbonisation pathways for shipping.

The third is that shared responsibility must be planned, and not presumed. The move by Brazil to host the COP30 at a place as symbolic as the Amazon is definitely a very bold assertion of Global South leadership; the accommodation crisis showed that the margin of error can be very thin. Wealthy nations also have a role to play other than criticism through financing and technical assistance of sustainable event infrastructure, and understanding that fair participation is an element of climate ambition.

Approximately 8 percent of the worldwide emissions are attributed to tourism, with the cruise tourism segment a minor but proportionately enormous portion of that cake. As COP30 plays out between the congested streets of Belém and floating decks of Outeiro, it presents us with an image of our greater dilemma, a world attempting to haggle its way out of crisis and continue to live, travel and meet in carbon-intensive modes. The yardstick of success will not be the fact that cruise ships were a good idea or not, but that this is the time to consider access, logistics and responsibility with greater seriousness. To continue being legitimate, climate diplomacy cannot afford leaving the most at risk to fight over rooms, either on land or at sea.