World leaders gather in Brazil's Belem for climate talks

Brazilian officials thought Belem, on the edge of the Amazon and not a rich city, would be a forceful reminder for negotiators of the difficulty that climate change and rising extreme weather are bringing to millions of people every day.

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A view of rusted boats on the banks of the Guama river at Vila da Barca, a neighbourhood of stilt houses in Belem, Para State, Brazil on Wednesday.

(Associated Press)

When summer heat comes to the Arara neighbourhood in northern Rio, it lingers, baking the red brick and concrete that make up many of the buildings long after the sun has gone down. Luis Cassiano, who's lived here more than 30 years, says he’s getting worried as heat waves become more frequent and fierce.

In poor areas such as Arara, those who can afford air conditioning — Cassiano is one — can't always count on it because of frequent power outages on an overloaded system. Conditions were so unbearable for Cassiano that he installed a green roof about a decade ago that can keep his house up to 15 degrees Celsius (about 27 degrees Fahrenheit) cooler than his neighbor's. But the heat still makes him extremely uncomfortable, he said. “The sun in the summer nowadays is scary,” Cassiano said. And a lack of green spaces makes the heat worse.

“Here we don't have any parks, gardens, green engineers, experts in environmental matters. They go to Rio's richer parts,” Cassiano said. “It’s negligence. We respond practically on our own.”

As world leaders come to Brazil for climate talks, people like Cassiano are the ones with the most at stake. Poor communities are often more vulnerable to hazards like extreme heat and supersized storms and less likely to have the resources to cope than wealthier places. Any help from the climate talks depends on countries not just laying out pledges and plans to lower emissions. They also need to find the political will to implement them, as well as come up with the billions of dollars needed to adapt everything from harvests to houses to better withstand human-caused climate change.