Hello and welcome to NewsHour live from the BBC World Service in London.
I'm Rebecca Kezby.
World leaders are meeting in Brazil for the pre-meeting meeting ahead of COP30,
being held in Belém, Brazil next week.
Host President Lula is there obviously, Emmanuel Macron and Kirsten Stammer from France and the UK,
and Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa has arrived.
But actually only a handful of leaders are taking part in today's talks.
There will be no representative from the United States and China and Russia have sent junior teams.
It's worth mentioning that those three countries are responsible for about half the world's CO2 emissions between them.
So is international commitment and even interest on the wane?
And with what result?
Let's cross live to Belém in Brazil to our climate correspondent, Matt McGraw, who's on the line.
And, Matt, first of all, this meeting that's happening today,
it's sort of the preamble to the actual summit.
But it's seen as being very important.
How significant is it that so many seats are empty?
I think that's a very important point, Rebecca.
It's a very loud and lively conference centre here.
Lots of Brazilian media out in force to cover this event,
but not so many media from the rest of the world.