Massive march in Brazil marks first big UN climate protest in years

BELEM, Brazil, November 17 ------ Tens of thousands of people thronged the streets of the Amazonian city hosting COP30 talks, dancing to thumping speakers in the first large-scale protest at a UN climate summit in years.

As the first week of climate negotiations limped to a close with nations deadlocked, Indigenous people and activists sang, chanted, and rolled a giant beach ball of Earth through Belem under a searing sun. Others held a mock funeral procession for fossil fuels, dressed in black and pretending to be grieving widows as they carried three coffins marked with the words “coal,” “oil,” and “gas.”

It 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, the United Arab Emirates, and Azerbaijan. Called the “Great People’s March” by organizers, the Belem rally comes at the halfway point of difficult negotiations and follows two Indigenous-led protests that disrupted proceedings earlier in the week.

Forest ‘massacre’

“Today we are witnessing a massacre as our forest is being destroyed,” Benedito Huni Kuin, a 50-year-old member of the Huni Kuin Indigenous group from western Brazil, told AFP. “We want to make our voices heard from the Amazon and demand results,” he said. “We need more Indigenous representatives at COP to defend our rights.” Their demands include “reparations” for damage caused by corporations and governments, especially to margina­lized communities.

A giant Palestinian flag and “free Palestine” banners appeared throughout the crowds. One protester on stilts dressed as a greedy Uncle Sam denouncing “imperialism,” while another artwork took aim at Donald Trump, the US president who denigrates climate science and champions fossil fuels. “Here we are talking about agroecology, feminism, we are talking about how trade unions are defending the life and better employment,” 33-year-old Giovani Del Prete told AFP.

After a 4.5-kilometer march through the city, the demonstration stopped a few blocks from the COP30 venue, where authorities deployed soldiers to protect the site. Ultimately, the crowd — which organizers put at 50,000 — dispersed peacefully.

High stakes

Inside the venue, COP30 president Andre Correa do Lago conceded the first exhaustive week of negotiations had failed to make a breakthrough and urged diplomats not to run down the clock with time-wasting maneuvers. “The stakes are too high for us to allow procedural tactics or stalled discussions to stand in the way of progress,” he said.

He promised to publish a “note” on Sunday to summarize the positions of parties — a to-do list of sorts for government ministers taking over the negotiations on Monday. “We’re very much up for supporting them on that roadmap. ... We would love to see an outcome on that,” said UK climate minister Katie White, adding such a proposal would need the support of “the vast majority of countries.” Such efforts are fiercely opposed by Saudi Arabia, among other oil-producing nations, and some parties told AFP they strongly doubted the proposal would be approved by consensus at COP30.

Source: manilatimes.net