Pauly Denetclaw
ICT
The international climate meeting known as COP30 is coming to a close in Belem, Brazil, a city surrounded by the Amazon Rainforest.
It was billed as the Indigenous COP because of its location and the number of Indigenous people attending this year, and the Brazilian government promised to uplift the voices of local Indigenous nations.
Indigenous attendance broke records. For the first time, the United Nation’s Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform had a delegation of more than 900 Indigenous people from around the globe.
But the meeting, which ends Friday, Nov. 21, has not been without controversy.
On Nov. 11, dozens of Indigenous people attempted to make their way into the cop30 negotiation zone, pushing past security to demand protection of the Amazon and Indigenous land rights. UN security forces violently removed them.
Then, on Nov. 14, members of the Mundurukú tribe from Brazil blocked the entrance to COP30 for about five hours, according to Cultural Survival, an international Indigenous rights organization headquartered in Massachusetts. The international climate meeting, which began Nov. 10, has also been the focus of numerous Indigenous-led marches and flotillas in Guajara Bay.
“You hear people say, ‘Why did the Indigenous people storm COP?’” Leila Salazar-Lopez, executive director of Amazon Watch, told ICT by phone from the meeting in Brazil. “Because their lands are still being taken. Their rights are being violated.”
Salazar-Lopez attended COP30 in person this year and her organization was part of organizing several direct actions over the last two weeks.
The inability of Indigenous Brazilians to enter the negotiation zone has been fraught with tension.
“People would have liked to see more Indigenous presence, and not only as observers,” Salazar-Lopez said.
Protecting the land
Indigenous people from the Amazon have been very clear about their demands. Their lands are not for sale and the Brazilian government needs to increase the demarcation of Indigenous lands in Brazil in order for the Amazon Rainforest to be protected from extractive industries such as agribusiness, mining and oil and gas.
The demarcation status legally recognizes Indigenous Brazilians’ land rights and allows them to challenge extractive industries in their territories through the court system.
They have also been targeted for carbon sequestering, which is the process of capturing carbon dioxide from the air and storing it. Vegetation in forests, wetlands and marshes naturally pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in their bark, roots and tissues.
“Oftentimes those forests or lands with lots of biodiversity that are so great at carbon sequestering are managed by Indigenous Peoples,” said Jade Begay, an international Indigenous rights policy expert who most recently served as a member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council under then-President Joe Biden.
This is the first year since 2015 that Begay was not attended a COP meeting. She was unable to attend because she feared for her safety, and spoke to ICT from the southwestern United States.
Three decades ago in 1992, 197 member states of the United Nations signed a treaty to address climate change caused by human activity. This treaty, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, created the Conference of the Parties, or COP, the annual gathering of member states and the supreme decision-making body of the convention.
The first COP was held in Berlin, Germany, in 1995. In 2015, the Paris Climate Agreement was signed and created a legally binding international treaty to combat climate change by keeping global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius.
Indigenous knowledge can help the world achieve those goals, said Begay, Tesuque Pueblo and Diné, who is also an Amazon Watch board member.
“One of the roles that Indigenous Peoples play in this space — and it’s so important — is this reminder that we don’t need new technologies,” Begay said. “In fact, we have all the information, we have all the science, we have solutions that are tried and true over centuries and centuries that are proven to bring down carbon emissions. One of the most efficient solutions to decarbonize is protecting large swaths of nature that do the job for us.”
COP is viewed as an important opportunity for negotiations to take place to determine how countries can work together to address climate change. The Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform is part of the UN system and was created to enhance participation. It’s also the only meaningful way for Indigenous people across the world to participate in COP negotiation debates.
“This is a body of knowledge holders, and they come to really advocate on behalf of the ecosystems and the traditional ecological knowledge that they want to preserve, as well as the technology,” Begay said. “We know that traditional ecological knowledge is effective technology in curbing climate change. These are the practices, these are the ways of life, that this body comes to speak on behalf of and advocate for within the COPs.”
This year, the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform broke records with its delegation.
“It is limited in its role in the actual negotiations, and this is an important point — for especially tribes in the U.S. — to consider and reflect on as sovereign nations,” Begay said.
Excluded from discussions
The negotiation zone is dominated in numbers by members of the United Nations, their staff, and those representing or connected to extractive industries — especially the oil and gas industry. Over 55,000 people were registered and given accreditation to enter the negotiation zone at COP30, though the actual attendance is believed to have been lower.
Despite the host country promising that Indigenous Brazilians would be able to reach the negotiation zone, only 360 were given access, according to Earth.org, an organization headquartered in Hong Kong.
The Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil, a national Indigenous organization, estimated that 2,500 Indigenous people from across Brazil gathered in Belem for COP30. This would mean just 14 percent were given access.
“Unfortunately, there’s still more fossil fuel lobbyists than Indigenous Peoples, and that’s a huge problem,” Salazar-Lopez said. “Why are they even in here in the first place? They’re the ones that are causing the problem. The COPs, the [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change], they’re flawed is the reality. It’s a flawed system.”
Still, Indigenous Brazilians have been outspoken that their lands aren’t for sale, and that includes through carbon credits.
Indigenous activists from Central and South America made their way in a flotilla through Guajara Bay on 200 vessels to protest “climate solutions” such as carbon markets and to uplift the voices of Indigenous water protectors and land defenders, according to Greenpeace, an international network that works to defend the environment.
“They want carbon markets to be a part of not only the theme, conversation and framing of this COP, but to include it as part of the action agenda,” Begay said. “This is really worrisome because it’s an obvious threat, not just to Amazonian territories, but forests and ecosystems across the world, especially those managed by Indigenous people.”
Carbon markets are a controversial way that allows governments and companies to reach their voluntary emission reduction targets. The goal of carbon markets is to lower emissions or remove carbon from the atmosphere by protecting or restoring forests and wetlands, moving to renewable energy, capturing methane gas or increasing energy efficiency. These activities generate carbon credits which can be purchased or sold.
Wealthy countries and companies can purchase carbon credits from countries with undeveloped forests and more biodiversity that contribute the least to climate change. For example, Climate Impact Projects, a leader in selling carbon credits, has hundreds of projects around the world to reduce carbon emissions. One of them is the Panna Afforestation Project in India that will plant 11.6 million native trees across nearly 50,000 acres. In March, Microsoft said it would buy 1.7 tons of carbon credits that the project would generate over 30 years. In total, the project would generate 3.3 million tons of verified carbon-removal credits.
If an entity purchases enough carbon credits, it could technically be considered net-zero or carbon neutral without limiting any of its environmental impacts. Microsoft and Google rely on carbon credits to meet carbon neutrality. Shell, an oil company, is another top buyer of carbon credits.
Between 2023 and 2026, Pará, a state in Brazil that holds a quarter of the Amazon Rainforest, will generate millions of carbon credits to be sold to international buyers such as Amazon, Walmart Foundation, H&M and Bayer, according to a press release. The 2024 deal, brokered by the LEAF Coalition, is being challenged through the courts for breaking a recent national law that bans the sale of carbon credits that aren’t already generated.
The carbon credits would be generated by Pará’s commitment to protecting large swaths of the Amazon Rainforest from deforestation – which Indigenous people have been doing for generations. The deal also was not approved by dozens of Indigenous nations that protect and defend the section of the Amazon Rainforest that would generate the carbon credits.
In October 2024, a coalition of 38 Indigenous organizations and allies signed a letter condemning the sale.
“It is unacceptable that the government of the State of Pará makes decisions without consulting the traditional communities, which are the greatest protectors of the forests and yet the most affected by the absence of effective climate adaptation policies,” the letter said. “The forest peoples need to be heard and consulted. Our territories are not for sale!”
The Paris Climate Agreement created the carbon credit system and doesn’t include any language about the rights of Indigenous Peoples. Since 2015, Begay has been outspoken about amending Article 6 of the agreement to explicitly include the rights of Indigenous Peoples around the world.
“The impacts that carbon markets have on Indigenous territories globally is massive,” Begay said. “Ensuring our rights are included is essential to a lot of the work that has happened and continues to happen around the COPs.”
Land back in Brazil
A way to keep agribusiness, oil and gas companies and mining companies from developing or taking land in the Amazon is to protect Indigenous land rights, according to Salazar-Lopez.
Some gains were made during COP30 in Brazil’s land back movement. On Nov. 17, the Brazilian government demarcated an additional 10 Indigenous territories, adding to the 11 that already had been demarcated by the government.
According to a press release from the Brazilian government, Indigenous territories in Brazil encompass nearly 300 million acres, which is about 14 percent of the country. It has some of the largest continuous regions of rainforest in the world.
Up to 20 percent of additional deforestation could be prevented by expanding demarcations, according to a study by the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, Amazon Environmental Research Institute and Indigenous Climate Change Committee. The protection of Indigenous lands could also reduce carbon emissions by 26 percent by 2030, the study said.
“The goal is to get not only Brazil, but other Amazonian countries,and other tropical countries, to do the same, to give title to Indigenous lands, to ensure their rights are respected, but also to ensure the rights of nature are respected and biodiversity is protected,” Salazar-Lopez said. “So Indigenous land back, demarcation of Indigenous lands, is key.”
This article includes material from The Associated Press.