A hole shaped like President Trump hangs over climate change negotiations

United Nations climate talks will begin in Brazil on Monday, with delegations from nearly every country expected to gather on the outskirts of the Amazon rainforest to discuss how to tackle the climate crisis.

But US President Donald Trump’s administration will be a notable absentee. The White House has confirmed it intends to send a high-level representative to the summit, making the absence of U.S. officials unprecedented.

Some 50,000 delegates are expected to attend the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP30, with consultations scheduled until November 21.

Anna Aberg, a researcher at the Chatham House Center for the Environment and Society, a London-based think tank, said the international community would likely benefit from the Trump administration not sending personnel to Belem.

“It’s really unfortunate that the Trump administration has pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement for the second time…and it’s really unfortunate that it’s promoting this very strong anti-climate policy not only in the United States but increasingly overseas,” Aberg told CNBC by phone.

“Given this, I honestly think it makes sense not to send senior officials to the COP because we don’t know what kind of contribution they could have made given the way President Trump has talked about climate change.”

President Trump’s views on the climate crisis are well known.

The US president has repeatedly described global warming as a “hoax” and addressed the United Nations General Assembly in late September, calling climate change “the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on the world.”

President Trump also urged other countries to shift away from renewable energy. President Trump said on September 23, “If we don’t get out of this green energy scam, our country will go bankrupt.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are among the leaders expected to be absent from the meeting, but both countries plan to send delegations in their place.

The annual United Nations Climate Summit is seen as an opportunity for the international community to move from setting decarbonization goals to realizing them.

Core issues to be discussed include advancing national climate commitments (NDCs), transforming the global financial system, strengthening adaptation measures, and taking steps to protect nature.

The conference comes at a time when the effects of climate change are becoming increasingly clear, even though the issue has fallen off the immediate geopolitical agenda.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called on world leaders as they prepare for COP30 to take urgent action to reduce global temperatures and keep the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal within reach.

“Every little bit means more hunger, more displacement and more losses, especially for the least responsible people. Ecosystems could cross an irreversible tipping point, leaving billions of people uninhabitable and increasing threats to peace and security,” Secretary-General Guterres said in Belém on Thursday.

Failure to limit global warming would amount to a “moral failure and a fatal mistake,” he added.

Chatham House’s Aberg said one of the most important issues at stake at COP30 is the international community’s retaliation for global efforts to tackle the climate crisis.

“We are in this very tricky geopolitical environment, especially in light of the US withdrawal, and there is a lot that needs to be accomplished in this COP,” Aberg said.

“But really, I think the most important thing we can do is send a signal to the rest of the world that there are still governments and businesses and institutions that want to take action on climate change and are already taking action on climate change.”

Like many others, Aberg said the UN talks were “hugely important” in shaping the debate on how to tackle the climate crisis, but the results were likely to be disappointing.

Business leaders called on policymakers to provide further incentives to accelerate climate action.

For example, Skanska CEO Anders Danielsson said he was confident the Swedish construction company could meet its climate goals, but acknowledged that “we cannot do it alone.”

“There needs to be political will to push this forward,” Danielsson told CNBC’s “Europe Early Edition” on Thursday.

Tobias Meyer, chief executive officer of logistics giant DHL Group, said he “strongly” believes a global carbon price would be the best incentive to curb the rise in greenhouse gas emissions.

“I think we need to get the job done,” Meyer told CNBC on Thursday. “We need CO2 emissions pricing to be enforced on a global scale. That is the best tool. We need to believe strongly in that, and companies need to react to those price signals and use available technology to reduce emissions.”

Meanwhile, Henrik Andersen, CEO of Danish wind turbine company Vestas, urged leaders in the renewable energy industry to continue to speak out in the transition to low-carbon technologies.

“It’s not just about COP,” Andersen said Wednesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.” “It will be a theoretical exercise to calculate what it means for the COP to maintain a 1.5 degree rise, and if that is no longer possible, then my best advice would probably be to reinvent ourselves,” he added.

— CNBC’s Emilia Hardy contributed to this report.