Outside their run-down home in the Amazon city of Belem, a mother and her little girl laugh as they cool off from the punishing heat in a large blue plastic tub filled with water.

Here in the riverside community of Vila da Barca, tightly packed houses on stilts bake in the sun, in sharp contrast to the dense shaded rainforest canopy surrounding the city of Belem.

Another resident, Rosineide Santos, 56, told AFP that since she moved to the favela two decades ago, “the climate has changed a lot. It’s intensely hot from nine in the morning.”

Vila da Barca lies a few kilometers from the conference center hosting the United Nations climate talks in the Amazon city of Belem.

But Belem is, paradoxically, one of Brazil’s least tree-lined cities.

More than half the population lives in the work

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