What is Canada’s role at COP30 climate summit? What to know

Federal officials say Canada will continue to play a bridge-builder role to help countries reach a consensus on some of the summit's key issues.

Canadian climate negotiators are headed to Brazil for the next two weeks as leaders gather for annual United Nations climate talks.

The talks come as Prime Minister Mark Carney, whose credentials as an international climate advocate helped win him support in this year’s election, comes under increasing scrutiny for his reversal of some key Trudeau-era climate policies — and his government’s perceived softening on the oil and gas sector, the biggest source of Canada’s emissions.

One focus is expected to be on how the world will adapt to climate change risks — and how countries will pay for those mitigation efforts.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the landmark Paris Agreement, and leaders will face questions about whether the deal is working and if countries are pulling back from their climate commitments, says Catherine Abreu, a leading Canadian climate policy expert.

But she is optimistic: “I think we’ll see strong political signals coming out of (the conference) that the vast majority of the world is definitely still committed to this process,” Abreu, a member of an independent group of federal climate advisors, said ahead of the meetings.

Here’s what else you need to know.

The summit’s name stands for the 30th Conference of the Parties who signed the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

This year, Brazil will host the summit in Belém, a city known as a gateway to the Amazon River.