The UN’s climate talks opened on Monday in Brazil’s Amazon basin with urgent appeals to keep fighting climate change, despite the US stepping back.
About 50,000 delegates are in Belem for the two-week Cop30 summit, battling the tropical heat and the challenge of keeping global co-operation on track.
Among some of the powerful voices at the summit are those of Indigenous leaders, who are demanding a greater role in decisions about how their lands are managed as climate change intensifies and industries such as mining, logging and oil drilling expand deeper into forests.
A day before the summit began, a boat carrying dozens of Indigenous leaders arrived in Belem to call for recognition and protection of their territories.
Djalma Ramalho Goncalves, from Jequitinhonha Valley in Minas Gerais, south-eastern Brazil, said he is at Cop30 to press for the demarcation of Indigenous land.
“Demarcating Indigenous territory means demarcating a positive future for everyone, not just for Indigenous people,” he said.
“Protecting Indigenous rights is protecting the future because the demarcated territory – it is life, it is education. It is preserving biodiversity. It is preserving knowledge and seeking a future for the young."
“Society already knows how forests managed by Indigenous people have seven times lower deforestation rates, but we are still not thinking of demarcation as an urgent climate adaptation issue. So for me, it’s important to shift this kind of thought.”
Mr Goncalves said the lithium mining boom in his region is putting immense pressure on local communities.
“My people have been fighting for 20 years trying to demarcate our territory. Now we are facing the threat of lithium mining. My region has 85 per cent of all the lithium in Brazil. So when you hear about lithium in Brazil, you are hearing about my territory," he said.
“They come to our land, take the lithium and leave us with the trash. And that’s the reason why demarcating Indigenous territory is so important."
Mr Goncalves said that his goal at Cop30 is to make the wider public understand that the climate issue affects everyone.
“We are all into it. We are all responsible for it. If the government does not demarcate Indigenous territories, society should respond and say that’s important to us because it’s preserving biodiversity, which regulates carbon in the atmosphere.”
Joana Bento de Sousa, from Maranhao state in north-eastern Brazil, echoed the demand for more land and opportunities for young people.
“Our land is limited and houses many people. That’s why the young people don’t have any place to stay after getting married and they can’t have their own house. So they have to leave our territory," she said. "We want to have more land so that people can live together.”
From across the Pacific, Whaia of the Ngati Kahungunu Maori tribe in New Zealand joined Cop30 to amplify global Indigenous voices.
“My personal message here at Cop30 is to build ocean resilience and ocean advocacy, and also the protection of our saltwater and fresh waterways and all of our relatives who live near those waters,” she said.
“We’re also standing here with our family of the Amazon to support them, to find their pathways into protecting their land and to be safely doing that."
Ms Whaia warned against new environmental threats such as deep-sea mining.
“Some of the challenges we’re facing right now is deep-sea mining, and it’s one of the last untouched places of the Earth that we haven’t desecrated yet. And we’d like to keep it that way.”
As the summit unfolds, Indigenous leaders are ensuring that the fight to protect their territories, and the planet, remains central to global climate action.
