Brasil: Indigenous Protestors Storm UN Climate Talks

Indigenous Protesters Storm UN Climate Talks in Brazil Brazil Hundreds of Indigenous and environmental activists clashed with security guards this week at the United Nations climate summit in Belém, northern Brazil, after forcing their way into the conference center to demand stronger protections for Indigenous lands and a greater voice in global climate talks, Al Jazeera reported. Conference representatives said protesters breached barriers at the main entrance late Tuesday, causing “minor injuries to two security staff, and minor damage to the venue.” Witnesses said participants included Indigenous and non-Indigenous demonstrators, some wearing feathered headdresses, holding signs that read “Our forests are not for sale” and chanting “They cannot decide for us without us.” Brazil is hosting the UN Climate of Parties – short for COP30 – where leaders and representatives of 195 countries are meeting this week to discuss efforts to combat climate change. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has sought to showcase COP30 as a milestone for climate cooperation and Indigenous leadership. Lula told world leaders last week that participants would be “inspired by Indigenous peoples and traditional communities – for whom sustainability has always been…(a) way of life.” But observers noted that the protests highlighted growing tensions between the Brazilian government’s public embrace of Indigenous inclusion and what demonstrators described as the ongoing exploitation of the Amazon rainforest by its host countries. Days before the clashes, Petrobras, Brazil’s state oil company, was granted a license for exploratory drilling near the mouth of the Amazon River. Many Indigenous groups and environmental advocates have been calling for Indigenous lands to be freed from commercial exploitation: They criticized Lula’s left-leaning administration for investing in building “a whole new city” in Belém to host the conference – it was also recently designated as Brazil’s temporary capital – instead of in education, health, and forest protection elsewhere, the Guardian wrote. Others also stressed that Indigenous people need to be present at the COP30, considering that the global conference has seen the participation of thousands of lobbyists from the fossil fuel industry in recent decades. This year’s COP30 summit follows a ruling by the International Court of Justice declaring that nations failing to meet climate commitments could be in violation of international law. The absence of the United States – which has opposed recent global climate finance and emissions initiatives under President Donald Trump – has further sharpened divisions over the summit’s direction.