Indigenous peoples and other climate activists clash with security staff at COP30, demanding action at a global summit where the voices of these traditional conservationists hold little sway, reports Reuters.
Despite being dubbed “the Indigenous people COP”, many in the community remained sceptical that the latest edition of the UN climate summit would deliver on its promise to put their voices front and centre. Indigenous communities safeguard much of the world’s biodiversity and often bear the brunt of climate change despite contributing almost nothing to the problem. The scuffle on Tuesday evening came as dozens made their way into the main venue, waving flags and chanting, carrying signs calling for land rights. “They cannot decide for us without us,” some of the group chanted, underscoring the longstanding pattern of exclusion or relegation of Indigenous voices at the summit.
Brazil, hosting COP30 in the Amazonian city of Belém, included some Indigenous people in its country delegation and invited others to do the same. Reuters said it was not immediately clear how many had done so.
[See more: Because of deforestation, the Amazon is losing its ability to generate vital rainfall]
But inclusion doesn’t guarantee involvement in decision-making. “We’re working within a mechanism and an institution that we know wasn’t built for us,” Thalia Yarina Cachimuel, a Kichwa-Otavalo member of A Wisdom Keepers Delegation, told Reuters. “We have to work 10 times harder to ensure that our voices are a part of the space.”
Edson Krenak, of the Krenak people and Brazil manager for Indigenous rights group Cultural Survival, explained the frustration of Indigenous people being excluded from development of policies they are then expected to follow. “We want to design these policies, we want to be involved in really dreaming solutions,” he told Reuters.
Indigenous groups across Latin America sent representatives to COP to demand an end to logging, mining, farming and fossil fuel extraction in the forests that play such a vital role in mitigating climate change. Even the Amazon, known and loved around the world, suffers from ongoing industry and development that has helped push the massive rainforest to the brink of collapse.”We are here [at COP30] to keep demanding real commitments and to reaffirm that the answer is us,” the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil said in a statement.
