With two months to go, the “COP30 Hotel,” spruced up and renamed after the UN climate conference due to take place in the Amazonian city of Belem in November, has zero bookings.

The owners had been hoping to cash in on the conference by filling all the rooms with foreign delegates.

But the hotel’s eye-watering initial rates — a cool $1,200 per night, which it later lowered to try to drum up business — were a turnoff.

Delegations from governments, NGOs and civil society have repeatedly urged Brazil to put a limit on accommodation costs that have soared for the first-ever climate COP (Conference of the Parties) to be held in the Amazon.

It is a symbolic setting given the rainforest’s critical role in absorbing planet-warming carbon dioxide, but also a challenging one.

More than half of Belem’s 1.4 million residents live in shantytowns — the highest rate of any regional capital in Brazil.

And with a shortage of traditional hotel rooms, conference organizers have scrambled to find alternative accommodation in private homes, universities and schools, and even two cruise ships docked in the harbor some 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the conference center.

As many as 50,000 people were expected to attend COP30, though organizers say only 68 of the 198 participating countries have secured their reservations.

“This has never happened at a COP. Normally, everyone has their accommodation sorted three months in advance,” Marcio Astrini of the NGO Climate Observatory told AFP.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has batted away concerns, saying in February that delegates can “sleep under the stars.”

Most exclusive COP?

A free-for-all ensued as Belem residents seek to profit from the one-off event that saw an investment of some $700 million in public infrastructure, including a convention centre.

“Prices spiralled out of control,” conceded COP30 Hotel manager Alcides Moura, adding that “Belem never hosted an event of this magnitude.”

Ronaldo Franca, a 65-year-old pensioner, is one of several property owners hoping to make a quick buck by renting out his weekend house, some 25 kilometres (15.5 miles) from the conference venue.

For a property with three double bedrooms and a swimming pool, he is charging $370 per night.

“I’m not going to charge an exorbitant rent, but the government hasn’t sufficiently monitored prices, and some have skyrocketed,” he told AFP.

Organisers say 60% of delegates will rent rooms from Belem residents.

Hotels “are almost all full,” said Toni Santiago, president of the hotel association of Para state. It has rejected a government request to cap prices.

“No one does this for other major global events, so why should Belem?” asked Santiago.

The government has set up a task force to help delegates find rooms, and Para governor Helder Barbalho told AFP “the availability of beds is guaranteed.”

Airbnb, for its part, said the average price for accommodation has dropped by 22% since February.

However, an online search yielded few options for under $100 a night — the limit requested by the UN for delegates from poor countries.

Astrini told AFP that accommodation concerns were overshadowing “what is truly important, like emission reduction goals or climate financing” — issues on the agenda for COP30.

This COP, added the Climate Observatory, could turn out to be “the most exclusive in history.”

• Congressional approval needed, but Republicans unlikely to oppose.
• Critics argue name change is costly and unnecessary distraction.
• Move would put Trump’s stamp on govt’s biggest organisation.

US President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order on Friday to rename the Department of Defence the “Department of War,” a White House official said on Thursday, a move that would put Trump’s stamp on the government’s biggest organisation.

The order would authorise Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Defence Department and subordinate officials to use secondary titles such as “Secretary of War,” “Department of War,” and “Deputy Secretary of War” in official correspondence and public communications, according to a White House fact sheet.

The move would instruct Hegseth to recommend legislative and executive actions required to make the renaming permanent.

Since taking office in January, Trump has set out to rename a range of places and institutions, including the Gulf of Mexico, and to restore the original names of military bases that were changed after racial justice protests.

Department name changes are rare and require congressional approval, but Trump’s fellow Republicans hold slim majorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives, and the party’s congressional leaders have shown little appetite for opposing any of Trump’s initiatives.

The US Department of Defence was called the War Department until 1949, when Congress consolidated the Army, Navy and Air Force in the wake of World War Two. The name was chosen in part to signal that in the nuclear age, the US was focused on preventing wars, according to historians.

Changing the name again will be costly and require updating signs and letterheads used not only by officials at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., but also military installations around the world.

An effort by former President Joe Biden to rename nine bases that honored the Confederacy and Confederate leaders was set to cost the Army $39 million. That effort was reversed by Hegseth earlier this year.

The Trump administration’s government downsizing team, known as the Department of Government Efficiency, has sought to carry out cuts at the Pentagon in a bid to save money.

“Why not put this money toward supporting military families or toward employing diplomats that help prevent conflicts from starting in the first place?” said Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth, a military veteran and member of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee.

“Because Trump would rather use our military to score political points than to strengthen our national security and support our brave servicemembers and their families – that’s why,” she told Reuters.

Long time in the making

Critics have said the planned name change is not only costly, but an unnecessary distraction for the Pentagon.

Hegseth has said that changing the name is “not just about words — it’s about the warrior ethos.”

This year, one of Trump’s closest congressional allies, Republican US House of Representatives Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, introduced a bill that would make it easier for a president to reorganise and rename agencies.

“We’re just going to do it. I’m sure Congress will go along if we need that … Defence is too defensive. We want to be defensive, but we want to be offensive too if we have to be,” Trump said last month.

Trump also mentioned the possibility of a name change in June, when he suggested that the name was originally changed to be “politically correct.”

But for some in the Trump administration, the effort goes back much further.

During Trump’s first term, current FBI Director Kash Patel, who was briefly at the Pentagon, had a sign-off on his emails that read: “Chief of Staff to the Secretary of Defense & the War Department.”

“I view it as a tribute to the history and heritage of the Department of Defence,” Patel told Reuters in 2021.

• Rubio says it may trigger new strikes, could harden conflict lines.
• Avoids comment on Israeli annexation plans, calls them not final.
• US Secretary of State makes these remarks during Ecuador visit.

The United States has told other countries that recognition of a Palestinian state will cause more problems, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday.

“We told all these countries, we told them all, we said if you guys do this recognition stuff, it’s all fake, it’s not even real, if you do it, you’re going to create problems,” Rubio said from Quito, where he met with President Daniel Noboa and his Ecuadorean counterpart.

“There’s going to be a response, it’s going to make it harder to get a ceasefire, and it may even trigger these sorts of actions that you’ve seen, or at least these attempts at these actions,” Rubio said, adding he would not opine on Israeli discussion of annexation of the West Bank but that it was not final.