Brazil: Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon Call to Action for COP30
"Political declaration of the Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon Basin", June 2025
We, indigenous authorities and leaders of the Amazon Basin, representing the nine countries of the region, together with leaders of the indigenous peoples from all biomes of Brazil...will be the hosts and protagonists of the Thirtieth Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP30), in Belém do Pará, Brazil...
The Amazon, which holds 20% of the world's freshwater, stores up to 100 billion tons of carbon and regulates the global climate, is on the verge of collapse. The Amazon has already lost more than 88 million hectares of forest as a direct result of extractive activities, mainly mining, agriculture and livestock....
We are more than 500 Indigenous Peoples and more than 188 peoples in isolation, holders of ancestral knowledge that has preserved the world's largest forest, territories that today represent the largest carbon sinks on the planet...
There will be no possible future without Indigenous Peoples at the center of global decisions....
We reaffirm the following priorities for COP30:
- Recognition and protection of all indigenous territories
- Direct financing and financial autonomy
- Representation and effective participation
- Protection of indigenous defenders
- Inclusion of Indigenous knowledge systems
- Exploration-free zones in indigenous territories
What happens here reverberates around the world — if the Amazon falls, the planet collapses...
COP30 will be a turning point: it will either put Indigenous Peoples at the center of climate decisions, or it will be remembered as an accomplice to the collapse....
Keeping the Amazon alive means keeping the planet alive.