Pauly Denetclaw
ICT
OXFORD, England — A record number of Indigenous people are expected to attend the United Nations 30th annual climate conference known as COP30 in Brazil in November to set international climate goals.
Officials hope hundreds of Indigenous people from across the globe will be among the expected 50,000 people attending COP30 — including a growing number of Indigenous people from the United States. Over the last few years, the attendance of Native Americans and tribal leaders has increased at United Nations events, with about 180 people from around the world participating in the Indigenous Peoples Caucus at last year’s COP29.
Globally, Indigenous peoples are at the forefront of protecting land, water and air.
“They’re calling it the Indigenous Peoples COP,” said Andrea Carmen, Yaqui Nation, executive director of the International Indian Treaty Council, a nonprofit with offices in Tucson, San Francisco and Guatemala. Carmen will be attending COP30.
But while the spotlight will be on Indigenous people and the areas they protect, the United Nations’ system of participation doesn’t allow Indigenous people and their organizations to work alongside other nations during the negotiations, Carmen said.
“We’re grappling with how to engage, given these additional opportunities that are going to be offered to us,” Carmen told ICT. “There’s concern. The way that it’s being presented, [it’s] going to showcase us, rather than really take our message seriously, which is always a danger here.”
The conference, officially the Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, is set to be held Nov. 10-21 in Belém, Brazil, the main port for the Amazon River where the most valuable exports are aluminum, iron ore and other metals.
Brazil has a population of nearly 1.7 million Indigenous people from 266 different nations who live across 726 Indigenous territories, according to the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs.
Indigenous activists hope the conference will bring awareness to the deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest for agribusiness, thousands of illegal mining operations, oil development, and climate change that impact Indigenous territories, along with other environmental issues across the world.
“If you look at the data from the last 30 years in Brazil, it is in the Indigenous territories where we have the most preserved areas in the Amazon,” Daniela Orofino, executive director of Amazonia de Pé, a Brazilian grassroots movement for the protection of the Amazon and its peoples.
Indigenous nations hold the key to further protecting the Amazon through control of the lands. A 2023 study showed that collective property rights in Indigenous territories led to a decrease in deforestation, and in places that had been clearcut, an increase in forest restoration.
Of the 726 Indigenous territories, however, more than 240 are still in the process of securing collective property rights, leaving the land vulnerable to mining, farming and timber production.
“We think that securing land rights to the people who have been protecting the forest historically is the most effective thing that we can do, because it’s a public policy that lasts when we secure land rights,” Orofino said.
‘Indigenous voices’
Nonette Royo, Manobo from the Philippines, hopes that Indigenous people who live in rural communities are able to participate in the same way as Indigenous people from urban areas at COP30.
“One is to really ground yourself with the active influencers, from the village up — district, province, up,” said Royo, executive director of the Tenure Facility, which was created to provide financial and technical support to Indigenous peoples in their struggle to secure and strengthen their rights.
“There are always, always, Indigenous voices there, and let’s not forget that. That’s the root,” Royo said. “You can’t just have representations from people who are in the cities, who don’t have lived experience or, just visits, right? They may mean well, I am not saying they’re not well meaning. It’s just that it has to [be] ground [up].”
Getting to Brazil, however, is part of the problem. During the preparation for every COP event, expenses can hinder participation, and there are challenges finding funding for travel, lodging and food.
Carmen said some hotels in Belém are reportedly cancelling reservations to charge higher rates.
“Hotels, you can’t find one, even for $1,000 a night, and that’s a real challenge for participation,” Carmen said. “All of this costs money, and it’s expensive, and it’s very challenging to figure it out with that many people.”
It’s also difficult for people to get accreditation to attend COP30 — an issue that surfaces with most all United Nations events.
“I think the Brazilian government is really bending over backwards to ensure special credentials for Indigenous peoples,” Carmen said. “There’ll be a very large, what they call a ‘Blue Zone,’ which is kind of a surrounding area with booths and pavilions and places to meet.
“But if your credential only lets you in there, you can’t actually get into the negotiation sessions.”
Tackling climate change
All 198 member states have signed onto the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is a legally binding agreement between UN member countries, “created specifically to tackle the crisis of climate change.”
There are essentially three layers of participation at COP. The first would be the negotiation sessions between member states, the second is high-level COP events that include speeches and meetings with heads of state, and the last would be the Blue Zone for side events, booths and protests. All of these require some sort of accreditation to attend.
In a June letter, COP30 president-designate André Aranha Corréa do Lago of Brazil stated this year’s conference will focus on 30 key issues. Among the issues being discussed include the green energy transition to achieve carbon net-zero, protecting the environment to restore biodiversity and building climate-resilient infrastructure.
There was a lot of controversy around COP29, and many people boycotted it. The host country was Azerbaijan and its economy is heavily reliant on exporting oil and natural gas. In 2022, more than 90 percent of Azerbaijan’s exports were oil and gas and it accounted for nearly half of the country’s economy. In an opening speech at COP29, Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliev stated that oil and gas are a “gift from God.” Many criticized the UN for choosing a petrostate as the host country.
In 2023, a report by Freedom House found Azerbaijan had engaged in ethnic cleansing. The ethnic Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh were forcibly displaced and killed.
At COP28 in Dubai, the Indigenous Peoples Caucus was around 300, and attendance dropped by nearly half at COP29. One longtime attendee Caroline Mair-Toby, Kalinago and Warao from the Caribbean, boycotted COP29 because its governing body, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, was moving too slowly in addressing the urgent needs of Indigenous communities and island nations disproportionately impacted by climate change.
Climate finance was a key issue addressed at COP29. Indigenous peoples advocated for direct funding, instead of receiving funding distributed through a UN member state. Funding promises will be a key issue again this year at COP30.
“I’m less enthused about the issue of financing, because I think it gives them an excuse to do whatever to us, and a lot of the losses we’re experiencing don’t have a monetary value — our culture, our sacred sites, our food systems, our ways of life, in many cases, our land,” Carmen said.
“However, if there is compensation for loss and damage that Indigenous peoples can use to save what they do have, or maybe move their village inland, for example, then that should be direct funding to Indigenous peoples,” she continued. “Not channeled through countries and states. We should have some say about how that’s going to be distributed.”
Last year, COP29 adopted the Baku Workplan which outlines six approaches to elevating the voices of Indigenous peoples in climate policy. The Baku Workplan was supposed to go into effect this year, though it’s unclear if or how it will be implemented during COP30.
“We must continue to acknowledge and expand the role and contributions of Indigenous Peoples and of local communities in nature stewardship and climate leadership, while recognizing the disproportionate effects they suffer from climate change,” COP30 president-designate Correa do Lago said in a March letter. “We will also invite leaders among Indigenous Peoples to form a ‘Circle of Indigenous Leadership’ to help integrate traditional knowledges and wisdom into global collective intelligence.”
The National Congress of American Indians, Native American Rights Fund, and the Indigenous Environmental Network did not respond to inquiries about their plans for attendance at COP30.
Royo, from the Philippines, has been working on environmental and climate issues internationally for over three decades.
She’s watched how the United Nations and COP has changed over those years, and she’s hoping for an historic year for Indigenous participation.
“Before, you would be an isolated voice talking about Indigenous peoples,” Royo said. “I felt that, and now it’s just so prevalent, and there’s so many. I can’t believe that could happen.”
Editor’s Note: This story was produced through ICT’s participation in a climate storytelling workshop by The Associated Press during the Skoll World Forum in April in Oxford, England. The workshop was funded by the Skoll Foundation.