Above photo: Opening ceremony brought together some 5,000 people aboard 200 boats, which sailed along the Amazon River basin.
The People’s Summit began on Wednesday, November 12, in Belém, Brazil, as a space for resistance and an alternative proposal to the official discussions of the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30).
The opening ceremony brought together some 5,000 people aboard 200 boats, which sailed along the Amazon River basin. This initial mobilization represents the arrival of popular movements from 62 countries.
The event, which will run until November 16 at the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), Guamá campus, seeks to counter what popular movements describe as “false solutions” to the global climate crisis.
Organized by more than 1,100 civil society organizations, the Summit is expected to bring together more than 30,000 people who will exchange experiences and denounce those who, according to them, are destroying the environment.
“We are starting the People’s Summit… by reinforcing our resistance to the false solutions presented by COP30, which carries with it the mark of projects to destroy nature, pollute rivers, and poison forests,” said Ayala Ferreira, national leader of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST).
Unlike COP30, which focuses on intergovernmental negotiations, the People’s Summit offers a collective environment and dialogues open to the public. Its program is based on six fundamental axes that include historical reparation and environmental racism, just transition, and food sovereignty.
The organizers emphasize that the answers to a sustainable world come from the people of the waters, forests, fields, and peripheries, who resist with their collective, agroecological, and ancestral practices.
However, in a historic event, the Brazilian indigenous movement, with the support of the federal government, ensured massive participation in COP30. As a result of this coordination, nearly 400 indigenous leaders gained access to the official spaces of the United Nations Climate Change Conference.
In addition, an indigenous village (AldeiaCOP) was established within the UFPA campus in Belém. This meeting space welcomes 3,000 members of indigenous communities, including delegations from traditional peoples from other regions of Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
This mobilization constitutes the largest presence of indigenous peoples recorded in the history of climate conferences, according to the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples (MPI) and the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (Apib).
During the inauguration of AldeiaCOP on the evening of Tuesday, November 11, the Minister of Indigenous Peoples, Sônia Guajajara, summarized the central message of the mobilization. Guajajara emphasized that, although the world knows the Amazon as the largest tropical forest, it often ignores its protection. She also denounced that the biome is being “violated, destroyed by the predatory use of land and nature.”
Along the same lines, she pointed out that “there will be no solution without the indigenous presence,” seeking a legacy of commitment to the demarcation and protection of indigenous territories as a key strategy against the climate crisis.
Both the Summit organizations and indigenous peoples demand that the discussion of the climate agenda be based on climate justice. Sara Pereira, from Fase del Programa Amazonas, commented: “There will be no just transition until the rights of traditional peoples are guaranteed.”
All the forces mobilized will come together in the Unified March on Saturday, November 15, a central event to highlight that environmental justice is directly linked to the defense of life and territories.
Since Thursday, November 6, the atmosphere in Belém has been marked by the presence of presidents, ministers, and heads of state, convened for the Climate Summit and COP30 discussions. However, starting this week, the arrival of flotillas and caravans of activists has altered the official agenda.
The organizers of government events have had to deal with daily marches and public protests denouncing large-scale projects with a high environmental impact in the Amazon region, such as Ferrogrão and oil exploration at the mouth of the Amazon River.
