The Peoples’ COP Called On Us to Change the Script

Under the slogan “We are the answer”, traditional and indigenous communities are calling for a new focus in climate justice.

After four years, the COP has once again been held in a democratic country. I say “democratic” but I’m not sure that’s the word to describe a system that allows more than 120 people to be massacred at the hands of the police, even if what happened in the outskirts of Rio just a few weeks ago already seems to be old news. Then again, in Spain we’re still flaunting our impunity regarding the 2014 Tarajal incident and nobody has called our democracy into question, so I guess we can just take the term “democratic” with a pinch of salt.

Anyway, let’s move on. This COP, in contrast to those held in Egypt, Dubai and Azerbaijan, had a strong grassroots turnout. Global media was able to spread the story of the Munduruku people’s protest as they blocked the entrance to the official COP headquarters, the practice of mass public demonstrations was revived, and dozens of fringe spaces popped up, bringing together thousands of people to synthesise and fine-tune alternative proposals. With a strong presence of Indigenous voices in every debate (whether official or informal), as well as the momentum of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) and other traditional communities (ribeirinhos, quilombolas, and so on), this was truly “The Peoples’ COP”. Aside from providing a platform for these groups’ demands to be heard, this diversity could also bring about a much more profound change of direction.

Allow me another tangent. If you have read the manifesto of the Peoples’ Summit, you will have come across the somewhat confusing concept of “extractivist communities”. After all, isn’t extractivism what we’ve been fighting against? In Brazil, this concept was coined by organised Indigenous communities, ribeirinhos (riverside dwellers) and seringueiros (rubber collectors) together with Chico Mendes to refer to traditional practices – fishing, gathering, family farming, and so on – that enable communities to sustain themselves while also preserving ecosystems. Thanks to their efforts, Extractivist Reserves were created in the 1980s to protect these territories and the Indigenous and traditional communities that inhabit them.

Getting back to COP30, much has been said about this year’s mass mobilisation and huge protests, and for that reason I would like to tell a more personal story. This story starts at the end, at the close of the Peoples’ Summit on Sunday, 16 November.

The main tent, set up on the banks of the Guamá river, at the Federal University of Pará, was packed with a sea of hats and t-shirts featuring names and logos of the MST, the MAB (Movement of Those Affected by Dams), fishers and ribeirinhos, the Coalition of Brazilian Women, the World March of Women, the MAM (The Movement for Popular Sovereignty in Mining), and many others. This was the day collective proposals were submitted to André Correa do Lago, president of the COP30. The real excitement, however, was stirred up by ministers Sônia Guajajuara, Marina Silva and Guilherme Boulos, who were also seated at the table.

The submitted document contained clear demands that went against the government’s official line. It was overwhelmingly critical of the TFFF (Tropical Forest Forever Facility) fund, launched by Minister Silva as Brazil’s big pledge to this COP, and also firmly opposed oil extraction in the Amazon. However, people still sang Lula’s praises and got excited by what his ministers had to say. It’s no big surprise – in the heat of the moment, I also got carried away by my emotions, and I think that if we really want to come out of this huge event with any new insights, all we can rely on are our thoughts and feelings – or, as the Zapatistas would say, our senti-pensares.

Marina Silva, Minister of the Environment, seemed quite moved listening to the demands the Children’s Summit made to the COP30 president, and spoke touchingly about her own childhood memories. Here we had a rubber harvester, as part of a government led by an operario (working-class) president, together with a team that included an Indigenous minister (Sônia Guajajuara) and a Black minister (Anielle Franco) who grew up in a favela and whose sister was killed by pro-Bolsonaro militias. At just ten years old, Marina Silva was already gathering rubber, in the 1980s she fought together with Chico Mendes against large-scale landowners, and today she holds a ministerial position.

Despite this government’s many contradictions, and despite the fact that they count many truly nefarious ministers among their ranks, I refuse to believe that they are merely performing, that the emotions they transmit to us – the tears that no other politician has elicited from me before – don’t matter.

There is a message in these public figures. It is not a message of individual victories, but of a fulfilled promise of democracy, of public education and social movements fighting against regimes built on de facto slavery (such as that endured by rubber collecting families in the 1980s). It offers a lesson about the dignity of communities fighting together. We can criticise this government all day long, list its countless contradictions, and mourn the absence of many communities and organisations from this Peoples’ Summit alliance, which has certainly been very friendly towards the government. However, we would be foolish to refuse to be moved at all, to deny a reality that is quite clear: Brazil defeated Bolsonarism, this government is the result of that victory, and no one can deny that.

Our fellow activists from the MST encampment that some days before told us how they put themselves in the line of fire in order to force pro-Bolsonaro militias out of their territory were also there. The social activists, as well as Marina and Sônia, the two ministers that represent the fight against forest fires and deforestation and who have managed to slow the destruction of the Amazon, shared the same emotions on that big tent.

Two thoughts come to my heart and mind when reflecting on all of this. The first is a question: What can we learn from the relationship and dialogue between the government and social movements that Brazil is exploring as the far right surges? I’ve talked about this with many fellow activists, and most of them agree on a few important points: we must not forget the failures of previous PT (Worker Party) governments; continuing to build autonomy among movements and territories is a priority; unkept promises run the risk of becoming fodder for the far right. But they also recognise that there is no comparison, that under Bolsonaro they couldn’t even breathe, but now – even if they still can’t take anything for granted – at least they can keep up the fight.

Thanks to their powerful direct actions, Indigenous communities on the Tapajos river succeeded in meeting with the COP president and the attending ministers, and have secured the government’s commitment to hold a consultation seeking Free and Informed Prior Consent on the waterway project they’re facing. We will see what happens, but I think that this small victory is a good indication of a government that, though it may not achieve miracles or always be an ally, will allow political movements and communities to recover some of their power.

My second thought is that this Peoples’ COP, which some have wanted to equate with the World Social Forum or the countersummits of other COPs, actually had its own very distinct character. It was an Amazonian COP, which not only should have shaken things up in official negotiations, but also inspired and influenced all of us international activists who attended, and by extension it should permeate all of the movements and organisations we work with.

Some spaces were more international, such as the Yaku Mama Amazon flotilla, the Mesoamerican Caravan, and the pre-summit meetings held by ecosocialists, anti-extractivists, and affected communities. However, the most popular spaces, with varying degrees of proximity to and confrontation with the government (Summit of the People, the Peoples COP, The Aldeia COP, Black Zone and others), were attended mainly by Brazilian activists, mostly from the Amazon region. This clearly shaped the agenda under the resounding slogan “We are the answer”, a powerful call to refocus the fight for climate justice.

There was much talk of false solutions and critique of the green transition, of environmental racism and just transitions, but one of the most pervasive themes that kept reappearing in the climate agenda was the control of land and the recognition of territorial rights.

Western media views this as a kind of footnote, an exceptional topic that only concerns Indigenous communities. And in fact, international climate justice movements generally do little more than echo this limited view. This is why I think we need to change the script. We need to approach this conversation not only in recognition of the rights of Indigenous peoples (which is obviously essential) but also by asking how the global climate justice movement can harness this power to reformulate itself.

For example, in addition to the huge (I don’t know if overexoticised) response to the actions of the Indigenous communities present – which succeeded in getting the government to commit to speeding up new territorial demarcations – it would be very worthwhile to also highlight how the MST continues to occupy territory and gain rights over the lands that they cultivate. After all, territorial rights are key to Indigenous and traditional communities being able to preserve their lands, but they are also a fundamental way to drive forward grassroots agrarian reform. Land redistribution could, for instance, bring global temperatures down by spreading agroecological practices and facilitating the construction of alternatives to the corporate blackmail we’re all subjected to. Keep in mind, though, talking about agrarian reform and meddling with private property might still be too taboo a topic for our colonial countries.

It is also worth pointing out that territorial autonomy is clearly a feminist right as well. This was made clear by all of our fellow activists who shared their struggles with the feminist plenary. Territorial rights are an extension of our own bodily autonomy, an extension of the right to say no and a chance to heal and rebuild the fabric of life. This conversation has relevance from the countryside all the way to the fringes of urban life, where, as our comrades in grassroots feminism explained, it is women, trans people and sexual minorities who are keeping life going in the face of threats that are patriarchal and capitalist in nature, but also increasingly climate-oriented.

Beyond the context of Brazil, what do we do with these claims? How do we incorporate the fight for community territorial rights into our own agendas? Two initial ideas occur to me. The first is to give voice to this demand by developing international strategies that ensure the protection of territories as well as the recuperation of land. In Brazil, lands that Indigenous communities manage to regain after being displaced for years – or even centuries – are referred to as retomadas (retaken, resumed). On the international level, the Land Back movement defends this right as a necessary means of decolonial reparation.

The second idea has to do with how we make the slogan “We are the answer” our own. What responses are we formulating? What local struggles need to be activated in order to broadcast these responses?

Community territorial control has been the most effective way to preserve ecosystems on a global level. We’ve known this for a long time now, but this COP30 really drove the point home. So now what do we do about it? We need to think about collective and community control of land not as some remote ideal, but as a key component of our own climate and ecosocial agendas. By doing this we can amplify existing struggles and, more importantly, find a meaningful response to so many of the crises that we experience today.

 

Júlia Martí Comas is a researcher at the Observatory of Debt in Globalization (ODG).