‘We need involvement’: Indigenous leaders demand change at COP30

“Belém will be the place where science and ancestral knowledge can walk side by side,” Minister of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, Sonia Guajajara, said in a letter on the COP30 website. “May COP30 be remembered as the moment when humanity recognised that Indigenous peoples are not just part of the solution: They are protagonists of the future that we need to build collectively.”

National delegates and climate leaders are meeting Nov. 10-21 in the Amazon, an important carbon sink, now declining because of deforestation, and home to 1.5 million Indigenous people. They will talk about lowering global emissions and securing climate funding, and, by the end of the conference, participating countries will set actionable goals to keep global warming below the 1.5 degree benchmark set by the Paris Climate Agreement 10 years ago.

COP30, which stands for the Conference of Parties, comes on the heels of major natural disasters around the globe, including Typhoon Halong, which wiped out entire villages and displaced hundreds of people in Western Alaska’s Yukon-Kuskokwim region in early October. Extreme weather events, like drought, hurricanes and heat waves, are becoming more dangerous and happening more frequently because of climate change.

Often, it’s vulnerable communities that contribute the least to worsening climate change, like the Alaskan Native villages of Kwigillingok and Kipnuk, that bear the brunt of climate change. This conference has the chance to recognize and lift up those community voices.

Improving from previous years, summit leaders have taken steps to recognize Indigenous environment knowledge and include Indigenous leaders in the climate negotiations. Despite travel and lodging challenges due to the conference’s remote location, 3,000 Indigenous representatives from around the world, including 360 Indigenous Brazilian delegates, are expected to attend the event. This recognition on a global stage has the potential to bring more attention to Indigenous climate initiatives in the U.S.

But the conference has already seen backlash. On Tuesday night, COP30’s second official day, protesters broke through security lines at the conference venue entrance, carrying signs reading “Our land is not for sale,” as reported by Reuters. Two security staff were reported to be injured, and the venue sustained minor damage. Brazilian and UN authorities are investigating the incident, a UN spokesperson told Reuters. Juntos!, a left-wing Brazilian youth collective, was among the protesters.

COP30 leaders have not commented on the protest, and the conference is proceeding as normal.

Indigenous environmental organizations also have boots on the ground in Belém.

Aakaluk Adrienne Blatchford, Iñupiaq/Yu’pik from Unalakleet, Alaska, is representing her community at the conference, first as a mother and community member, she said, and second as the geoengineering outreach organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network.

Calling from the almost 90 degree heat and 80 percent humidity of Belém, she told Buffalo’s Fire that the Indigenous presence at the conference is large. But that doesn’t necessarily translate to significant Indigenous representation in negotiations. First off, she said some Indigenous attendees represent big industry. And second, their presence doesn’t mean they’ll have a seat at the negotiating table.

“Oftentimes, boxes are just checked off,” she said. “We need involvement.”

The Indigenous Environmental Network listed its goals in a press release with the Just Transition Alliance, an environmental justice coalition, before the conference: democratic participation, direct funding for the most impacted peoples and groups and divesting away from “false solutions,” such as carbon capture and storage, that don’t address the causes of climate change — fossil fuels. Blatchford said she’s also pushing for the protection of Indigenous lands and knowledge.

“We’ve stewarded our lands in a way that’s left little to no carbon footprint from time immemorial, with using only resources that we deem necessary,” she said, noting that those lands are at risk because of climate change.

The number of climate refugees is growing, she said, including those displaced by Typhoon Halong. “As Indigenous people we need that connection to our land, our food, our water to be able to thrive.”

COP30 leaders made changes to the structure of this year’s conference, including creating an Indigenous Peoples Pavilion that will host talks led by Indigenous people and organizations. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Roadmap, which lays out goals and concepts to be negotiated at the conference, recognizes the importance of protecting Indigenous land and knowledge.

The Roadmap states, “Adaptation strategies developed over generations by Indigenous Peoples and local communities cannot be undermined, including crop diversification, rotational management, and conservation of local varieties.”

The framework’s main goal is to increase climate finance to 1.3 trillion USD by 2035, building on the financial promises by donors at last year’s conference in Baku, Azerbaijan. The funding from wealthier countries is directed toward lowering carbon emissions and creating climate adaptation plans in developing countries. And it calls for leaders to act urgently.

In the conference’s opening session on Monday, COP30 President André Aranha Corrêa do Lago mentioned recent deadly climate disasters around the world, including Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica and a tornado that tore through southern Brazil on Friday, Nov. 8.

“This is a COP that has to produce solutions,” he said.

Nearly all of the 198 UNFCCC countries have sent representatives to Belém to agree on new carbon emission goals and financing strategies. The United States, the world’s second largest polluter, is not sending an official delegate to the conference.

This story was updated Nov. 12 at 10:24 a.m. to include information about the protest.