Hurricane Melissa shows need for climate action at Cop30 summit, Cabinet hears

The arrival of Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica shows the importance of the upcoming Cop30 climate summit, the Foreign Secretary has told ministers.

Jamaica’s government ordered evacuations from high risk areas and shut down the country’s airports as the Category 5 storm approached on Tuesday.

Hurricane Melissa is expected to cause catastrophic flash floods and landslides, while seven people are already reported to have been killed across the Caribbean region as a result of the storm.

Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said the impending arrival of Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica ‘underlined the importance’ of the upcoming Cop30 summit (Stefan Rousseau/PA) (PA Wire)

In London on Tuesday, Ms Cooper told her Cabinet colleagues that the hurricane “underlined the importance” of the upcoming Cop30 summit in Brazil, with “those affected by climate change unable to pick up their island and move it out of the way of the approaching storm”.

Sir Keir Starmer is expected to travel to the Cop30 leaders’ summit next week, held in the city of Belem near the mouth of the Amazon river.

Confirming Sir Keir’s attendance last week, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said the trip was part of efforts to restore the UK as “a global leader for climate action and green growth”.

In Cabinet on Tuesday, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband told colleagues the UK was “showing important global leadership on climate” and that the summit was “a key moment for international cooperation”.

And the Prime Minister himself said he had “long thought that climate change was the challenge of our time, but also the single biggest opportunity”.

Sir Keir Starmer will travel to the Cop30 summit in Brazil in November, having attended Cop29 last year. (Carl Court/PA) (PA Archive)

Sir Keir attended last year’s Cop29 summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, but had been reportedly considering not making the trip to Brazil this year.

The reports brought charges of “hypocrisy” from the Liberal Democrats, who pointed to Sir Keir’s criticism of Rishi Sunak over suggestions the then-prime minister would skip the 2022 summit.

Mr Sunak did eventually attend the summit in Egypt, and the following meeting in the United Arab Emirates.

The annual Cop (conference of the parties) summits bring together signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to discuss efforts to halt climate change.