"Thousands hit streets of Belém to call for action during crucial Cop30 summit", 15 November 2025

...The streets of Belém echoed with indigenous chants, classical Brazilian songs and calls for environmental justice on Saturday as tens of thousands of people marched to demand urgent action on the climate and nature crisis.

Activists from around the world converged on the Amazonian host city of COP30, urging negotiators to ramp up ambition.

The joyous and defiant demonstration was the first major protest outside the annual climate talks since Cop26 four years ago in Glasgow, as the last three gatherings were held in locations with little tolerance for demonstrations – Egypt, Dubai and Azerbaijan.

The “Great People’s March” comes at the halfway point of contentious negotiations and follows two protests earlier in the week that were led by indigenous activists from the Tapajós region...

The most gothic section of the march was a “funeral for fossil fuels”. A dozen “mourners” dressed in black rallied below two large ghoul puppets and three enormous coffins bearing the words “coal”, “oil” and “gas”...

One of the many anti-capitalist areas of the march surrounded a large banner declaring: “The environmental collapse is capitalist: Lula, the energy transition with Amazon oil is a farce.” Nearby, a sound truck blared out the Italian socialist anthem Bella Ciao. Among those marching here was Maria Melia of the Quilombola Movement of Maranhão. She said she was fighting for the Amazon and against a “hydrovia” water transport project that was cutting through the territory of her community...