Roma, 14 Nov. (askanews, online editorial text) – Dozens of indigenous people blocked the main entrance to COP30, the United Nations climate summit underway in the Brazilian city of Belém. A peaceful protest, in which children also participated.
COP30, the peaceful demonstration of indigenous people: the reasons for the protest
“Fighting for our territory means fighting for our lives” is written on the sign shown by some of the demonstrators, from the Munduruku tribe, who are protesting against large infrastructure projects in the Amazon and asking to meet Brazilian President Lula.
Due to a “peaceful demonstration” that presents “no danger”, according to a UN Climate statement, people going to COP30 were invited to enter from a side entrance, after a military checkpoint. The president of the COP, André Correa do Lago, and the director general Ana Toni went to meet the demonstrators to negotiate so that they could free the passage.
Brazilian indigenous leader and environmentalist Chief Raoni attends a press conference during the UN Climate Change Conference COP30 in Belém, Pará state, Brazil (Photo by Pablo PORCIUNCULA / AFP) (Photo by PABLO PORCIUNCULA/AFP via Getty Images)
Oil, agribusiness and infrastructure on indigenous lands
While Cop30 is underway, indigenous peoples and civil society organizations are gathered in the People’s Summit, denouncing that the United Nations conference does not represent original peoples but entrepreneurs. The region in which COP30 is taking place is among the most vulnerable on Earth, marked by oil exploitation, agribusiness and large infrastructure projects in the lands of original peoples. Like the highly contested Ferrogrão, the railway for the transport of soybeans destined to connect Sinop, in Mato Grosso, to Miritituba, in Pará, devastating 16 indigenous areas.
During Cop30, the tribal chief Raoni Metuktire, Brazil’s main indigenous leader, criticized Petrobras’ plan to extract oil off the mouth of the Amazon River – an initiative that enjoys the support of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – and the plan for major infrastructure works in the Amazon rainforest. «These projects destroy rivers and lands and continue to advance, I don’t like them. I said a long time ago that there would be very negative consequences for us and for you too. You are causing these consequences yourselves,” Raoni said in an interview with Reuters.
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