by Eugene Walker

Time is ticking, forests are drying. Heat is rising. Nevertheless, we are the ones protecting life in the forest.
—Katty Gualinga, 25, Ecuadorian Indigenous youth leader

It’s unbelievable that there are climate conversations without Indigenous people.
—Lucia Ixchíu, Guatemalan land rights activist of the K’iche’ community

We want the COP outcome to include the demarcation of our lands. We can’t leave this COP without acknowledging that Indigenous peoples are part of the solutions for climate change.
—Angela Amanakwa Kaxuyana, Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon

We can’t eat money, we want our lands free from agribusiness, oil exploration, illegal miners and illegal loggers.
–Nato, Indigenous leader of the Tupinamba community

Action: Food for people not for profit at COP30. Photo: UN Climate Change / Zô Guimarães, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Donald Trump did not come, nor even bother to send a delegation, to COP30, this year’s climate summit, Nov. 10-22, in Belém, a Brazilian city close to the mouth of the Amazon. Who have come in a forceful outpouring are Indigenous peoples throughout Latin America. As The New York Times noted: “They came from the Andes in Ecuador and the Amazon rainforest in Peru. They were joined by activists from the Brazilian forests and savannas. Together, they numbered in the thousands, young and old, women and men.”

Dozens of Indigenous leaders traveled for weeks–from a glacier in the Andes to Brazil’s tropical coast. At this yearly event organized through the UN, the massive Indigenous presence marked a sharp divergence from previous COP meetings where Indigenous peoples’ concerns were mostly ignored. This time, through sit-ins, forceful protests, a People’s Summit outside the main conference and a People’s Summit Declaration, the Indigenous insisted on radical participation. A massive march of thousands occurred just before the start of the second week.

THE RIGHT TO LAND

A major demand of the movement is land rights for people who live on demarcated lands (areas with clearly defined boundaries that are legally recognized as traditionally belonging to a particular Indigenous group), but who have little or no protection from gold mining and oil extraction. Destructive extractions like these are taking place through much of Latin America, including Brazil.

At the People’s Summit, environmental groups and Indigenous groups drafted a Declaration directed to the COP Summit. It is the culmination of two years of preparation. Below are a few excerpts:

Our process brought together more than 70,000 people who make up local, national, and international movements of indigenous and traditional peoples, peasants, indigenous peoples, quilombolas, fishermen, extractivists (traditional peoples who live from sustainable forest extraction), shellfish gatherers, urban workers, trade unionists, homeless people, babassu coconut breakers, terreiro peoples, women, the LGBTQIAPN+ community, young people, Afro-descendants, the elderly, and peoples from the forest, the countryside, the peripheries, the seas, rivers, lakes, and mangroves. We have taken on the task of building a just and democratic world, with good living for all. We are unity in diversity.

***

Gender Justice action at COP 30. Photo: UN Climate Change / Zô Guimarães, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

There is no life without nature. There is no life without ethics and care work. That is why feminism is central to our political project. We place the work of reproducing life at the center, which is what radically differentiates us from those who want to preserve the logic and dynamics of an economic system that prioritizes profit and the private accumulation of wealth.

***

The capitalist mode of production is the main cause of the growing climate crisis. The main environmental problems of our time are a consequence of the relations of production, circulation, and disposal of goods, under the logic and domination of financial capital and large capitalist corporations.

CAPITALIST NATIONS SABOTAGE SOLUTIONS

While it is critical that Indigenous voices and those of their supporters are present, the reality is that the open resistance and weakness of proposed actions from several countries, plus the indifference from still others, make the challenge to force change daunting. Thus:

• The petrostates such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Russia, as well as of course the U.S., have an equal place at the table with all other nations. They’ve used their power at various COPs time and time again to veto any real discussion of fossil fuels in favor of a decontextualized focus on greenhouse gas emissions as the “solution.”
  
• Now the U.S. under Trump doesn’t even bother to show up at the summits. Bullying other countries to buy U.S. oil and gas, and undermining wind and solar globally as well as domestically, is integral to his foreign policy. Lifting barriers to fossil fuel production and use is central to his domestic policy.
  
• 

  Just Transition Action at COP 30. Photo: UN Climate Change / Diego Herculano, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

  Until quite recently, states heavily invested in fossil capitalism blocked COP summits from even talking about fossil fuels, even in terms of “transition” away from them, not stopping their production. Oil production keeps going up and up, as do CO2 emissions.
  

• The Tropical Forest Forever Fund—a proposal from President Lula da Silva of Brazil to create a fund so postcolonial countries could preserve their forests—has been denounced by Indigenous groups and others as a false solution. (Brazil proposes more oil drilling in the ocean near the Amazon to earn money for this fund!) Meanwhile, rich countries are already resisting giving significant funding to allow poorer countries to move toward non-polluting sources for development.
  
• Last year, the rich countries had pledged $300 billion annually for “developing” countries to adapt to the burgeoning impact of the climate crisis by 2035, but COP30 yielded only a weak promise to provide $120 billion a year, and not until 2035.
  
• Many countries and others seem to have thrown in the towel on stopping climate change, counterposing adapting to climate effects against reducing emissions, and some like Bill Gates counterpose those efforts against aid for the poor. Extreme summer heat in India is now the new “normal,” bringing devastating effects to the health, including mortality, of informal workers, such as women vegetable sellers, as well as workers crowded in stifling hot factories with little ventilation. Who and what is going to solve that reality, which is sure to grow worse as climate change grows worse?

CHIEF SABOTEURS: THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION & FELLOW FASCISTS

Just Transition action at COP30. Photo: UN Climate Change / Diego Herculano, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The U.S. has managed to scuttle substantive international action, whether it is boycotting negotiations or not. In August, the U.S., backed by other major oil-producing countries, demanded that a treaty to reduce plastic pollution should include no binding measures; negotiations collapsed. In October, the Trump administration shot down efforts to pass a treaty limiting greenhouse gas emissions from international shipping, by issuing extraordinary threats against negotiators. In November, even without an official presence, Trump helped ensure that COP30 failed, with the final documents not even mentioning the need to end fossil fuel use.

The minimal accomplishments of COP30 come in a context of climate retrogression across the world. Not only Trump but fascist movements internationally, as well as mainstream parties pandering to them, are pushing climate denial/obstruction and rollbacks of the modest measures already enacted, such as the European Green Deal and past U.S. President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Fossil fuel corporations have been very successful in lobbying for expanded oil and gas extraction and reduced regulation. Environmental defenders, many of them Indigenous, are under attack globally, threatened, thrown in prison, assaulted, or murdered.

What the UN COP process has also shown is that “green” capitalism, as an alternative to fossil-fanatic fascism, is hardly the solution. In fact, despite feisty rhetoric from some figures such as UN Secretary-General António Guterres, the actions of most countries betray a denial of the seriousness of the climate crisis—even after climate justice movements and scientists have warned for decades that they need to acknowledge that this is an emergency and to treat it as such. Instead, what predominates is what Greta Thunberg called, four years ago, “blah blah blah.”

Governments and corporations have blocked climate action over and over, so the power of movements from below needs to be unleashed. A much deeper, revolutionary social change is the only viable alternative to the march toward climate catastrophe.