Next Friday, 14 November, during the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belém (PA), the Centre for Advanced Amazonian Studies at the Federal University of Pará (NAEA-UFPA) will welcome the Interdisciplinary Observatory on Climate Change and the Climate Social Sciences Network (CSSN) to promote the seminar Climate Obstruction: A Global Assessment. Held in the Professor Armando Dias Mendes Auditorium, on the UFPA Guamá Campus, from 5:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., the event will present the main results achieved in almost three years of organising the collection Climate Obstruction: A Global Assessment, at a panel composed of the publication’s editors Timmons Roberts (CSSN and Brown University) and Carlos R. S. Milani (OIMC Director), moderated by Marcela Vecchione (PPGDSTU/NAEA-UFPA). The discussion panel will be followed by a cocktail reception for those in attendance.

Gathering more than 100 climate obstruction experts from various countries, the book systematically addresses the complex, organised, and well-funded group of actors who have actively opposed political efforts to address climate change. As climate action becomes globalised, efforts to obstruct it have become more sophisticated, widespread, well-funded, and dangerous. Offering an unprecedented assessment of global climate obstruction, this volume deepens our understanding of efforts to delay or block climate change policies, pointing to potential actions to resist obstruction. The research topic is part of the urgent and necessary discussion on climate obstruction, particularly in the case of Brazil, host of COP 30.

Edited by Jennifer Jacquet (University of Miami) and Christian Downie (Australian National University), alongside Professors Roberts and Milani, and published in English by Oxford University Press, the book was developed within the scope of CSSN, an international research network linked to the Institute for Environment and Society at Brown University (USA). Created in 2020, the network brings together social science researchers from various Western countries and some countries in the Global South with the aim of producing knowledge on different topics related to climate denial, geoengineering, and conflicts of interest between the fossil fuel industry and the pro-climate agenda. In October, the Observatory published a Portuguese translation of the introductory chapter of the collection, translated by Prof. Milani, in Caderno do OIMC N. 21.