Complicated climate: how to navigate the sea of contradictions towards COP 30 with popular unity?
The aim is to take the democratic debate from the Amazon to the world The Peoples’ Summit Towards COP 30 (30th United Nations Conference of the Parties on Climate Change), building popular convergence between more than 600 social movements, networks and organisations from around the world, expects to bring together more than 15,000 people in Belém (PA) in November this year. The aim is to hold a democratic debate, from the Amazon to the world, on a popular project for climate justice that is capable of combating inequalities and environmental racism. The Summit is being organised around axes of convergence of proposals, based on the diversity of practices, knowledge, cultures, memory and history shared between the peoples of Brazil, Latin America and the Caribbean. They are: Peoples’ sovereignty over water, land, territories and also food sovereignty, with the right to land and territories, agrarian reform and the diversity of peoples’ agroecological knowledge as real solutions to the climate crisis; The need for historical reparations and the cancellation of illegitimate debts, built on violations of the rights of indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, women and diversity of peoples who, in the secular resistance to colonialism, imperialism, neoliberalism and the death projects of transnational corporations, have built webs of protection for the territories and for solidary social relations; III. The construction of a just, popular and inclusive transition with decent work, based on the organisation and mobilisation of the working class and the reorganisation of an economy centred on the sustainability of life, and not on the continuation of neo-colonial extractivism for the sustenance of great fortunes and private technology companies as well as fossil fuel consumption, which also sustains wars, genocides and the artificial death of human ideas and ideals; Against oppression, for democracy and for the internationalism of peoples and real and radical solidarity as a possibility to recreate political and democratic care and commitment between people, territories and nations, in the fight against fascism and the wars that multilateralism, in crisis and captured by corporate interests, can no longer contain; Just cities and lively urban peripheries, with rights, housing, mobility, healthy food, health, education public systems, also with coexistence and adapted to the climate crisis, without racism and social segregation; and finally, Popular feminism and women’s resistance in the territories because women are at the forefront of the struggles for environmental justice, dismantling the patriarchal structures at the origins of the capitalist system’s accumulation process, which need to be radically transformed if we are to change the world. The Amazon, like the rest of Brazil’s biomes, matters. And, with the exception of the Caatinga, those biomes contain riches in socio-biodiversity and cultures that we share with other South American countries. In addition, the Blue Amazon, within the limits of the Continental Shelf, which constitutes a maretory (sea “territory”) of 360,000 km² area on Brazil’s Equatorial Margin, brings us closer to and connects us with the Caribbean and neighbouring countries on the Atlantic coast as far as the Mesoamerican region. Based on the boom of Latin American and Caribbean struggles in defence of democracy against colonialism, neoliberalism, imperialism, fascism and the ultra-right, the unity among the peoples in defence of democracy, and without amnesty for the coup plotters, builds the popular power needed to confront the climate crisis with environmental justice, dismantling the power of the big transnational corporations and the free trade agreements that benefit them. This is happening on the basis of the concept and political project of Food Sovereignty, the proposals of the working class for a Just Transition with regional integration, the practices of the feminist economy with decent work for all in times of accelerated technological change and the fight for the right of Free Movement for migrant people, not for goods. These are the political agendas of the peoples with whom we have historically shared stories of struggle and solidarity: today, facing the daunting results in Ecuador’s elections, and always. How can we translate these political and practical proposals from the territories and peoples in the region, who are building real solutions for climate justice, beyond the spaces captured by corporate interests at the United Nations? The People’s Summit is a space where movements converge to share a long-term analysis and build a common political agenda beyond COP30. It is already on the move, from the Amazon to the Pampa, from Abya Ayala lands, for some Latin America, to the world. And we have to navigate a sea of contradictions in a world where imperial powers are in decline and at war, so the distance between popular visions and proposals and those of the UN climate negotiations is abysmal. However, in the face of the crisis of capitalism, this is where people’s solutions must be recognised and strengthened, bringing lessons from the Amazon to the world. In 30 years, the climate COPs have not reached a decision on climate financing – apart from the fact that it is operated by financial institutions like the World Bank and with debt-generating loans and funds from private investments and carbon markets. The peoples and civil society are competing with companies, which are increasingly specialised in profiting from climate disasters, for access to and local management of resources to strengthen their territories and social projects, in a legitimate but unequal way, in the limited context of social participation in the negotiations. On the other hand, the social and popular movements of the region, faced with the escalation of hunger and violence in Haiti and the military invasion of Kenya financed by the United States, are demanding the repay of an immoral and illegitimate debt levied by France exactly 200 years ago on 17 April 2025, for having enslaved black people on that Caribbean island, named after its decimated indigenous population, which dared to be the first European colony to liberate itself and gain independence in 1804. They demand not only historical reparations for black and quilombola peoples, but also the effective recognition of their ancestral culture and the
Where do we go with climate negotiations?
In the next weeks, another UN Climate Conference of the Parties (COP 28) will take place in Dubai. The conference will have four main axes: accelerating energetic transition for reduction of carbon emissions until 2030; strengthening the fights against climate alterations, which fulfills old promises, among which turning the climate fund into a concrete reality; placing nature, people, lives and the means of survival in the centre of climate action; establishing itself as a space of inclusion. As we can observe, the challenges are not small, especially if we think about the disputes around it. About energetic transition, the war in Ukraine increased the pressure for reducing the usage of fossil fuels, as it exposed European countries to a risky situation regarding gas supply. Due to that, developed countries started to increase investments for energy transition, with stimulation to wind and solar power, and to the use of electric vehicles, among other measures. It happens that such technologies, which are considered renewable, are responsible for the increase in the demand for metals like lithium, copper and nickel, which lead to the destruction caused by mineral extractivism in the Global South, continuing the colonialist practices which damage environmental justice. Furthermore, energetic transition, as it is being thought, grants protagonism to corporations, specially transnational ones, keeping the concentration of the means of production and not sharing the control nor the technologies. Many corporations in the petrol and mineral sectors have adhered to the discourse on climate change, adopting “greenwashing” policies. An example of that is the adhesion to Net Zero mechanisms ,in which instead of reducing the production and emission of polluting gases, corporations compensate their polluting chain with carbon credits which are dirty, violent and polluting, and which make people lose rights. Not by chance, companies Vale S.A and Braskem will unfortunately be in Space Brazil at COP 28 talking about that issue. Likewise, defending the organisation of the carbon market, governors in Brazilian states founded “Green Brazil Consortium” at COP 26, which must have a more prominent participation in the next conference. That consortium, which will also have panels in Space Brazil, points to the need to build a Brazilian Market for Reduction of Emissions (BMRE) and a national standard of payment for environmental services (PES). The governors are also interested in the Climate Action Plan (CAP 2050) released by the federal government with the goal of reaching net zero emissions until 2050. The plan describes several mitigating policies for economic sectors like transportation, energy and agriculture, creating business opportunities for the state governments with the promotion of climate actions. For COP 28, it is expected that Brazil will be involved in the discussions about the creation of a Loss and Damage Fund, following Sharm El-Sheikh’s Implementation Plan of the Paris Agreements. In 2022, at COP 27, before his inauguration, president Lula highlighted his commitment to fighting deforestation – main cause of emissions in this country – connected to the development of policies against inequality. In his speech, the president mentioned the role indigenous people have in preservation. It remains to be known if that same line of discussion will be kept when decisions about who will have access to the funds need to be made. It is also worth mentioning that the Ministry for the Environment and Climate Change has been making efforts to create the Climate Fund. The droughts in the Amazon and the floods in Southern Brazil are socioenvironmental disasters exemplary of the immediate consequences of climate change. Analysing their consequences, we may observe that the damages are distributed unevenly among poor people, women, black people and rural and peripheral communities. In general, the most serious climate damages are felt in communities which are already weakened by contexts of social inequality and lack of rights and of investments in infrastructure. Considering those inequalities, when announcing a COP which aims to be really inclusive, there must be a paradigm shift so that the central position of nature, people, human life, historic debts and reparations may be in the centre of economy, not a simple ornament for the market. We know that the spaces of COP have been taken by the hegemony of the big transnational corporations’ views and their same old false market solutions which have brought us here with the green economy of the stock exchange’s dollar and focus on profit. Mitigation policies are not connecting the solutions of the peoples with the enforcement of human rights, access and permanence on land and territories of peoples and communities as an action to protect the woods, waters and forests, as can be seen in the best-preserved territories. Instead, they are reducing carbon metrics. Popular movements and organisations of civil society defend a deep rethinking of multilateral climate spaces. We cannot go on building answers for climate alterations which do not confront the root of the problem, i.e. the extremely unequal way we produce, generate, circulate and commercialise in the capitalist society. Likewise, we need to acknowledge that the climate crisis does not reflect only the physical aspects of the planet. That approach is limited and limiting. Actually, climate crisis is intertwined with historical forms of gender, race and class violence, and with colonialism. There is a historical debt of environmental degradation in many countries which cannot be reduced to mitigating policies nor to financial indemnisation by a Fund. The change starts by looking at the big picture of causes and consequences of climate alterations. Rethinking the role that determined actors will have in the negotiations of humanity’s future. In that sense, transnational corporation have a role more as defendant than protagonist in the solutions. Popular movements, women and representatives of civil society have been increasingly absent from the centres which decide about climate governance. The negotiations keep being sieved by the Global North towards the Global South. We recognise that in the last years, climate COPs have become unproductive spaces in which there are no concrete advances in the reduction of Earth’s destruction, precisely due to the
