People use fire extinguishers to put out a fire at the Pavilion of Countries in the Blue Zone at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belem, Brazil, November 20, 2025. REUTERS/Douglas Pingituro TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
COP30 delivered its most unexpected plot twist yet yesterday, when a pavilion in the Blue Zone decided it had had enough of climate diplomacy and attempted to self-immolate shortly after 2 pm. Nothing dramatic — just a fire big enough to send 56,000 people, including heads of state and a small nation’s worth of observers, into an evacuation that looked suspiciously well-rehearsed.
The blaze was contained quickly by the Corpo de Bombeiros Militar do Pará (CBMPA), but the protocols were executed with such textbook precision that you half-expected someone to start handing out grades. In the International Broadcast Centre, where I was trying to file something sensible, we were assured we’d be back at our desks in “a matter of minutes”. Naturally, that meant six and a half hours. I left my laptop sitting there like a hostage and grabbed only my mobile phone and a pack of water, because apparently my crisis instincts are those of a Victorian hiker.
Then the day took a turn. The UN temporarily ceded control of the Blue Zone to the Brazilian Government, which is as close as the climate world gets to a constitutional drama. For a few surreal hours, the most secure area of COP… didn’t exist.
Cleanup crews swept in. Safety checks began. Minutes stretched into hours. And the world’s media — usually a stressed, caffeinated blur — suddenly found itself loitering outside with nothing to do except compare power banks and complain about the heat. The oddest part? It became almost festive. When you force hundreds of journalists to stop working, they start talking. War stories were traded. People exchanged contacts. Some even laughed.
The UNFCCC reclaimed control at 8:40 pm, and the media were allowed back inside to retrieve laptops, collect camera gear, and pretend we’d stayed calm the whole time.
As of this morning at 7.30 am, all pavilions were now locked down until further notice — a far cry from the original promise that only the fire-adjacent ones would be off-limits. Negotiations did sputter back to life late last night, but any dream of a neat, punctual COP30 finale has evaporated into the Amazon humidity.
If you were hoping for a quiet end to the conference, climate diplomacy has other plans. As always.
