On the morning that Indigenous protests dominated the entrance to the climate summit, social and environmental leaders said demonstrations were legitimate at a COP with the largest Indigenous participation in history.
“It is a police force based in indigenous lands in the Amazon, and we know that there are emotions, but the space that these populations are claiming is legitimate,” said Caetano Scanavino, Saúde & Alegria project coordinator from Pará.
He added: “We have the highest participation of indigenous people ever, and if we say that the future is the ancestors, there is nothing better than giving more space to their voice, and this does not mean space for violence.”
Scanavino participated in the panel discussion “Bioeconomy and Innovation in the Amazon” held in Espaco Bound In Belem, mediated by the journalist Eliane Trinidad.
The talk show Papo de Responsa Especial COP30, on November 14 and 16, brings together representatives of the Folha de Empreendores Sociais network, made up of finalists and winners of the Social Entrepreneur Award, and representatives from the country’s social and environmental impact ecosystem.
At the helm of 100% Amazonia, an influential company that values biodiversity in a win-win way with riparian communities, Fernanda Stefani said that two years ago, when it was announced that Brazil would host the climate summit, she had no expectations for a climate conference in the Amazon.
“Today I see that it was necessary for the conference to come here,” says she, who has lived in Belém for 20 years. “People living in cities have little awareness of this climate crisis, and many people from outside allow themselves to be penetrated into the Amazon.”
The parties agreed that negotiations at COP 30 should offer few concrete solutions to the climate problem, reflecting a lack of global interest – such as that of the United States, which did not send an official delegation to the summit.
They also criticized the regional occupation model of the region, based on illegal deforestation, low-productivity livestock farming and monoculture, which would have led the region to the worst human development indicators in the country.
They suggest valuing biodiversity and forest rangers as a counterpoint to this model, as well as taxing products that may come from the “dirty economy”, such as soy and meat.
“Why don’t we look at the Manaus free trade zone as the Amazonian Silicon Valley at a time when wealth begins to change its color, from the black of oil to the green of the jungle?” Scanavino said.
Other biomes entered the discussion based on the experience of SOS Mata Atlântica, which came to the COP to bring the issue to the negotiating table.
According to Luis Fernando Guedes, director of the NGO, the Amazon forest is of greater importance globally, and is going through a process similar to that of the Atlantic Forest, which has suffered a lot of deforestation in previous decades – and which today serves as a model of how to confront this devastation.
“The Atlantic Forest could be one of the first places in the world to have no deforestation at all, enjoy widespread restoration and be a global model for how to reverse this course of destruction,” said Luis Fernando Guedes Pinto.
To this end, it is necessary to think about financing not only to adapt to climate change, but also to mitigate the environmental damage that has already occurred. This is the deadlock that led to the disruption of the meetings of the Conference of the Parties due to the resistance of rich countries to bear the responsibility of paying this bill.
“The world spends more money on war than on solving the climate problem,” Luis Guedes said. “If they stop making missiles, we can solve the climate problem.”
He participated in the second part of the debate alongside David Hertz, founder of the NGO Gastromotiva, which uses gastronomy to strengthen vulnerable people and communities.
For Hertz, the scale of resources at risk does not solve the scale of the environmental problem. “The transformation has a long journey and we have to see how this money actually gets to the end.”
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