{"id":308144,"date":"2025-11-24T12:00:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T12:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=308144"},"modified":"2025-11-23T07:07:46","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T07:07:46","slug":"cop30-in-the-amazon-and-the-hope-of-indigenous-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/11\/cop30-in-the-amazon-and-the-hope-of-indigenous-leadership\/","title":{"rendered":"COP30 in the Amazon and the Hope of Indigenous Leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

UN Climate Change – Z\u00f4 Guimar\u00e3es<\/p><\/div>\n

20 Nov 2025\u00a0<\/em>–\u00a0The Amazon rainforest, often described as the lungs of the planet, is teeming with life. Thousands of Amazonian land defenders, both Indigenous people and their allies, have traveled to the tropical city of Bel\u00e9m, Brazil, the gateway to the Amazon, carrying their message that the rainforest is at a tipping point, but can still be saved.<\/p>\n

Their focus is on COP30, the 30th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC<\/span>), the official body created after the 1992 Rio Earth Summit to negotiate and implement a global treaty to limit human-caused global warming. Thirty-three years later, the negotiations stagger forward at far too slow a pace than what is needed to avert catastrophic climate disaster.<\/p>\n

That became apparent as the conference wrapped up its first week. Hundreds of activists arrived on several caravans and river-borne flotillas in advance of a major civil society march. On Friday night, an Indigenous-led march arrived at the perimeter of the COP\u2019s \u201cBlue Zone,\u201d a secure area accessible only to those bearing official summit credentials. The group stormed security, kicking down a door. United Nations police contained the protest, but it was a marker of the level of frustration at the failure of the deliberations to deliver just and effective climate action.<\/p>\n

Alessandra Korap Munduruku, president of the Pariri Indigenous Association, was a leader of the protest. In 2023, she was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for her leadership and organizing, forcing British mining giant Anglo American to withdraw from Indigenous lands, including those of her people.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was very difficult for our people who had traveled for so long to get here, and the people wanted to be heard,\u201d Alessandra said on the Democracy Now! news hour, speaking inside the COP<\/span>. \u201cWe came in a large delegation, and we wanted to speak, and we wanted to be heard, but we were blocked. I have credentials to enter COP<\/span>, but many of the Munduruku who are here do not, and so we decided that we needed to stop this COP<\/span>. We needed people to stop and to listen to us\u2026because we are the ones that are saying what the forest is demanding. We are the ones that are saying what the river is asking for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Close to 190 nations sent delegations here to hammer out a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels. Noticeably absent is the United States. President Donald Trump refused to send an official delegation, a first for the US. Trump calls climate change a \u201ccon job\u201d and has ordered the US to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. Jean Su of the Center for Biological Diversity responded to the US\u2019s absence at COP<\/span>, saying on Democracy Now!, \u201cPeople should celebrate the fact that that obstruction is not here, and pass as fast as possible mechanisms like a fossil fuel phaseout roadmap, where the U.S. is not here, but they could be bound by it later.\u201d<\/p>\n

The US is the historically largest greenhouse gas emitter on the planet. Now that urgent action is needed to reverse the damage already done, the US backs out. When asked at COP30 if he thinks Trump might rejoin the talks, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres replied, \u201cHope is the last thing to die.\u201d<\/p>\n

It will take more than hope to save the Amazon rainforest. S\u00f4nia Guajajara is Brazil\u2019s first ever Minister of Indigenous Peoples.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeyond forests, people need to understand that we have culture, we have people, and we have a diversity of people that protect the Amazon,\u201d Minister Guajajara said on Democracy Now! during COP30. \u201cIt\u2019s important that the world know that it\u2019s not only forests and animals that live in the Amazon. There are people living there, people that are being attacked, assaulted. They\u2019re having their rights violated, and they need protection.\u201d<\/p>\n

One important outcome Guajajara is working on at the COP30 negotiations is the recognition of the rights of Indigenous people: \u201cWe are expecting the recognition of Indigenous territories and the demarcation of these territories as a climate policy, one of the most efficient solutions to confront the climate crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Demarcation is the first, difficult step in Brazil to protect traditional Indigenous territories from exploitation by extractive industries like logging, mining and land clearing to make way for cattle ranching. Days after the COP30 protest led by Alessandra Korap Munduruku, her territory and nine others were finally demarcated, a hard-won victory that took years of struggle.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s UN climate summit has the greatest number of accredited Indigenous people in attendance than ever before, nearing 1,000. Among the forces they are up against are over 1,600 fossil fuel industry lobbyists also in attendance. Who wins will determine the fate of the Amazon, and of the planet itself.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Amy Goodman is the host of \u201c<\/em>Democracy Now!\u201d a daily international TV\/radio news hour airing on more than 900 stations in North America. She is the author of <\/em>Breaking the Sound Barrier, released in paperback and now a <\/em>New York Times best-seller.<\/em><\/p>\n

Denis Moynihan is the co-founder of <\/em>Democracy Now! Since 2002, he has participated in the organization\u2019s worldwide distribution, infrastructure development, and the coordination of complex live broadcasts from many continents. He lives in Denver where he is developing a new noncommercial community radio station.<\/em><\/p>\n

The original content of this program is licensed under a <\/em>Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 democracynow.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

20 Nov 2025\u00a0–\u00a0The Amazon rainforest, the lungs of the planet, is teeming with life. Thousands of Amazonian land defenders, Indigenous people, have traveled to Bel\u00e9m, Brazil, the gateway to the Amazon, carrying their message that the rainforest is at a tipping point, but can still be saved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":308145,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[229,2302,547,686,3702,794,3614,849,401,1268,993,1620,866,3530,896,1119,1255,124,70,1594],"class_list":["post-308144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","tag-activism","tag-amazon","tag-brazil","tag-climate-change","tag-cop30","tag-deforestation","tag-disaster-capitalism","tag-ecosystem","tag-environment","tag-european-union","tag-global-warming","tag-indigenous-culture","tag-indigenous-rights","tag-military-capitalism","tag-oceans","tag-plastic-pollution","tag-rain-forests","tag-united-nations","tag-usa","tag-war-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308144"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":308146,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308144\/revisions\/308146"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}