Brazilian Indigenous leader and environmentalist Cacique Raoni Metuktire (center) during the closing ceremony of the Peoples’ Summit in Belem on November 16, 2025. Credit: Tanka Dhakal/IPS
BELÉM, Brazil, Nov 17 2025 (IPS) – Brazilian Indigenous leader and environmentalist Cacique Raoni Metuktire appealed for support for Indigenous peoples and their land. From the podium of the Peoples’ Summit, Cacique Raoni warned negotiators at the UN climate conference in Belém that without recognizing Indigenous peoples’ land rights, there will be no climate justice.
“It is getting warmer and warmer. And a big change is going on with the earth. Air is harder to breathe; this is only the beginning,” he said on Sunday while addressing representatives of the global climate justice movement at the Peoples’ Summit. “If we don’t act now, there will be very big consequences for everyone.”
Indigenous people and civil activists from around the world took part in the Peoples’ Summit. Credit: Tanka Dhakal/IPS
While Belém city is hosting world leaders, government officials, scientists, policymakers, activists, and more than 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists to decide the future course of global climate action, the Peoples’ Summit gathered frontline voices.
About nine kilometers from the COP30 venue, at the grounds of the Universidade Federal do Pará (UFPA-Federal University of Pará), activists engaged in diverse dialogue for five days and issued the “Declaration of the Peoples’ Summit Towards COP30” in the presence of Indigenous leaders like Raoni, which was handed over to the COP presidency.
The Declaration states that the capitalist mode of production is the main cause of the growing climate crisis. It claims that today’s environmental problems are “a consequence of the relations of production, circulation, and disposal of goods, under the logic and domination of financial capital and large capitalist corporations.” It demands the participation and leadership of people in constructing climate solutions, recognizing ancestral knowledge.
Artists performing indigenous folklore during the closing event of the Peoples’ summit. Credit: Tanka Dhakal/IPS
Sebastián Ordoñez Muñoz, associated with War on Want, a UK-based organization and part of the political commission of the Peoples’ Summit, said the political declaration constructed through the summit process reflects peoples’ demands and proposals. “It has our solutions, people’s solutions,” he said. He explained that crafting the declaration was a convergence of diverse voices, uniting around clarity on what needs to happen to address the climate crisis.
“It is an expression of the autonomy of people’s movements coming together, converging to develop clear proposals that are based on the real solutions happening on the ground-in the territories, in the forests, in the seas, in the rivers, and so on,” he added. “It’s important to hand it over because we need to make sure that our voices are represented there [at COP]. Any space that we have inside the COP has always been through struggle.”
As a space for community members to come together and deliver the public’s point of view, Peoples’ Summits have been organized as parallel conferences of the COP. It did not take place during the last three COPs. But in Brazil, civil society is actively making its case.
The Peoples’ Summit attracted a large number of Indigenous leaders and community members, whereas at COP their access is limited. Credit: Tanka Dhakal/IPS
“We need to continue making our voices heard there, but also not to beg-to state that we have the solutions and that we must be listened to, because none of these answers, none of these solutions are possible without the communities themselves,” Ordoñez Muñoz told IPS News from the Peoples’ Summit ground. “I think it’s a statement and a road map. Where do we go from here?”
Unlike COP30, the Peoples’ Summit attracted diverse groups of community members and civil society leaders. The COP venue follows the process of negotiations, while the summit emphasizes collaboration to find solutions and celebrate unity. It blends discussion with Indigenous folklore and music to bring stories of community.
“If you go into the COP summit, it’s so stale. It’s so sterile. It’s so monotonous. So homogeneous. So corporate,” Ordoñez Muñoz said. “Over here, what we have is the complete opposite. We have such diversity-differences in voice, vocabulary, language, and struggles.”
He added that the COP process is moving in one direction, unjust in nature, and reproducing many of the dynamics that led to the crisis in the first place.
“Over here, we’re all moving together. We have unity.”
This feature is published with the support of Open Society Foundations.
If we do not have our land and healthy territory, we do not have healthy food, and without food we do not survive. Food must become a centerpiece in the global climate discourse, and it is not just about any food, but healthy food that aligns with our ancestry and local traditions and spirituality. —Juliana Kerexu Mirim Mariano, activist
Juliana Kerexu Mirim Mariano, coordinator for the Guarani Yvyrupa Commission that advocates for the rights of Guarani peoples in southern and southeastern Brazil. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
BELÉM, Brazil, Nov 14 2025 (IPS) – A young woman at COP30 speaks about retracing her father’s footsteps. At only 16, her father and her grandfather were among the first families displaced by an unfolding climatic crisis of erratic weather and worsening climate conditions that goes on to date from their ancestral village in Sundarbans. Nearly 60 years later, she is on a mission to reclaim her ancestral lands.
The Sundarbans is the world’s largest mangrove forest, located on the delta of the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna rivers in the Bay of Bengal, straddling the border of India and Bangladesh.
This complex ecosystem is a vital habitat for the Royal Bengal tiger and other wildlife, while also providing critical ecosystem services like storm protection and livelihoods for millions of people. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and faces threats from climate change, rising sea levels, and human activities.
She said farming activities in the Sundarbans have been severely disrupted and degraded by environmental changes, primarily increased soil and water salinity, more frequent and intense cyclones, and sea-level rise. These factors have led to a decline in crop productivity, changes in traditional farming patterns, and a shift in livelihoods towards aquaculture and migration.
But the Sundarbans do not stand alone. From across the global South, delegates are speaking about their shared tragedies of weather patterns out of joint with their farming systems.
Juliana Kerexu Mirim Mariano, the coordinator of the Guarani Yvyrupa Commission, told IPS her organization advocates “for the rights of Guarani peoples in southern and southeastern Brazil, particularly the recovery of their ancestral lands in the Atlantic Forest.
The Belém Declaration on Hunger, Poverty, and Human-Centered Climate Action, launched during the COP30 Leaders Summit, places the world’s most vulnerable populations at the center of global climate policy. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
“Its mission is to organize a political struggle for land demarcation, which is vital for preserving cultural traditions and way of life. The commission works to secure land rights, and its efforts align with the preservation of the Atlantic Forest biome, as the Guarani have lived in the region for centuries and their culture is deeply connected to its biodiversity.”
“Within our territories, we do annual plantations for us to continue producing our sacred food, preserving our traditional ceremonies, which are linked to us and to spirituality. Our spirituality is directly connected to our food, to our plantations, to our land,” she explained.
“But all these are now under threat. We have seen this abrupt change and emergencies caused by climatic changes. So, for example, in our village, we have not been able to harvest food for more than three years.
“We have only managed to keep our sacred seeds because either it rains too much or it rains too little—at the time of the annual plantations, we have only managed to maintain the part of the traditional ceremonies that is spiritual.”
Njagga Touray, Party representative from the Gambia in West Africa, told IPS that “the food situation in the country, just like many others, is not very promising. Climate change leads to land degradation due to increasingly erratic rainfall, which decreases our production; we need to feed a growing population and plan for the next generation.”
Delegates say this progress has instilled a renewed sense of optimism—proving that elevating adaptation and unleashing technology within the world’s farming systems helps the global community to redefine resilience, transforming vulnerability into strength and ambition into action.
Recognizing the fundamental role of combating hunger and poverty for climate justice, a new Climate-Resilient Social Protection and Smallholder Agriculture Finance Partnership has already been launched under the COP30 Action Agenda.
This partnership supports the Plan to Accelerate Solutions (PAS) by setting clear goals to encourage action and monitor progress, which includes helping countries like Benin, Ethiopia, Kenya, Zambia, and the Dominican Republic create plans for social protection, support small farms, and improve access to water.
The PAS brings countries together with international partners and subnational networks to align national ambition with local action, integrate local priorities into NDCs, and institutionalize multilevel governance as a foundation for achieving the Paris Agreement’s goals.
By 2028, the plan is expected to have established a joint coordination group of climate finance donors to align portfolios in support of efforts to combat hunger and poverty. Importantly, the launch builds on the November 7, 2025 adoption of the Belém Declaration on Hunger, Poverty, and Human-Centered Climate Action by 44 countries, a landmark commitment developed with the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty during the COP30 Leaders Summit held just days before the start of the UN climate conference.
Secondly, the AIM for Scale, a farmer-centered AI forecasting tool, could empower over 100 million farmers by 2028 by providing real-time insights that strengthen climate-smart decision-making, risk preparedness, and inclusive innovation across agricultural systems worldwide.
The Agricultural Innovation Showcase high-level event will serve as a media and political platform for governments and philanthropic leaders to announce a multi-billion-dollar package of support to fund agricultural innovations that help farmers in lower-income regions adapt to the impacts of climate change and build resilience. Nearly USD 2.8bn has been announced for farmer adaptation and resilience to strengthen global food systems.
International donors have also announced over USD 2.8bn for farmer adaptation and resilience to strengthen global food systems. In support of the COP30 Brazil Presidency’s call to make COP30 the COP of implementation, the commitments are aimed at increasing support for smallholder farmers in poorer regions who are bearing the brunt of worsening weather extremes. The donor funds will be invested in technologies and tools to help farmers adapt, build resilience, and strengthen local food systems that feed and employ billions of people.
“Agricultural innovation is the engine of climate resilience,” Martin van Nieuwkoop, Director of Agricultural Development, Gates Foundation.
Back to those on the frontlines of climate change, where it intersects with food systems, ancestry, and traditions, like those of Mirim Mariano—it is a race against time.
“If we do not have our land and healthy territory, we do not have healthy food, and without food we do not survive. Food must become a centerpiece in the global climate discourse, and it is not just about any food, but healthy food that aligns with our ancestry and local traditions and spirituality.”
This feature is published with the support of Open Society Foundations.
On a humid morning in August 2025, two small environmental groups in Panama — Centro de Incidencia Ambiental and Adopta Bosque Panamá — found out through social media that they were being sued for “slander” and “crimes against the national economy.” Their offence? Criticising a port project on the country’s Pacific coast.
A few days later, across the border in Costa Rica, two environmental content creators woke up to find their bank accounts frozen and salaries withheld. Their “crime” was posting videos about a tourism project they said was damaging Playa Panamá’s fragile coastline.
In both cases, the message was straightforward: speak out, and you’ll pay for it.
These are part of a growing global trend that is particularly ominous as climate activists, Indigenous defenders, and journalists push their demands upon the upcoming COP30 negotiations. The battle to protect the planet increasingly comes with an additional cost: defending yourself in court.
SLAPPs: Lawsuits Designed to Scare, Not Win
The acronym sounds almost trivial — SLAPP — but its impact is anything but. SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, a term coined decades ago to describe legal actions intended not to win on merit but to intimidate, exhaust, and silence those who speak out on matters of public interest.
According to Transparency International, “SLAPPs are also known as frivolous lawsuits or gag lawsuits, as they silence journalists, activists, whistleblowers, NGOs and anyone who brings facts to light in the public interest.”
These are not just lawsuits; they are in fact strategy. They don’t need to win, they just need to drain your time, your money, and your hope.
The claimants are usually powerful, ranging from corporations, politicians, or investors.
In the Costa Rican case, the company linked to the Playa Panama tourism project did not even allege material harm. Yet the court imposed “precautionary embargoes,” blocking credit cards, freezing wages, even restricting property rights, punishing through the process.
In Panama, the developers of the Puerto Barú port project filed a criminal complaint against environmental NGOs who had challenged the project’s environmental impact assessment before the Supreme Court. Those challenges are still pending. Rather than waiting for the judiciary’s ruling, the company launched a separate legal attack, accusing those NGOs of harming the national economy.
Observers call it “judicial intimidation.” The case triggered several alerts across the EU SEE Early Warning Mechanism, warning of a “chilling effect on civic participation.”
‘Unfortunately, in Panama, judicial harassment of journalists and activists by politicians and businesspeople is already common practice because criminal law allows it. Reform is needed in relation to so-called crimes against honour and the grounds for seizure of assets. International organisations such as the Inter-American Press Association have warned about this,’ says Olga de Obaldía, executive director of Transparency International – Panama Chapter, a national member of the EU SEE network.
In Costa Rica, the embargoes imposed on content creators Juan Bautista Alfaro and Javier Adelfang sparked outrage. Within days, 72 organisations and more than 3,000 individuals — from academics to Indigenous leaders — signed an open letter condemning the action as “an assault on public interest advocacy.”
The backlash worked: members of the Frente Amplio Party introduced a bill to restrict the use of preventive embargoes in cases involving public interest speech.
But for those already targeted, the damage – emotional, financial and reputational – has already been done.
We do not just see SLAPPs deployed in Latin America. Examples of SLAPPs as a means of lawfare by the rich and powerful have been around for a long time across the globe.
In Thailand, Thammakaset sued several members of the NGO Fortify Rights and other activists for denouncing abusive working conditions. Still today content posted by communities or NGOs, or even comments under local government posts, are often picked up and turned into criminal defamation cases.
Despite the existence of anti-SLAPP provisions in the Criminal Procedure Code, experiences indicate that they are largely ineffective. The constant threat of facing litigation based on online content disrupts CSO work and chills free speech.
Climate Activism Under Pressure
As the world heads toward another global climate summit in Brazil – where journalist Amanda Miranda faces a SLAPP by government officials for uncovering corruption – we face a paradox: while governments make promises about protecting the environment, environmental defenders are being prosecuted for holding them accountable.
Brazil’s baseline snapshot on an enabling environment also highlights a related trend: environmental defenders are frequently framed as “anti-development,” a narrative used to delegitimise their work and undermine public support. SLAPPs reinforce this strategy. Beyond draining time and resources, these lawsuits inflict reputational harm, serving as tools in broader campaigns to discredit and silence critics.
According to research from the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, the highest number of SLAPPs – almost half of them – took place in Latin America, followed by Asia and the Pacific (25%), Europe & Central Asia (18%), Africa (8.5%), and North America (9%). Nearly three-quarters of cases were brought in countries in the Global South and 63% of cases involved criminal charges. Furthermore, most individuals and groups facing SLAPPs raised concerns about projects in four sectors: mining, agriculture and livestock, logging and lumber, and finally palm oil.
In an International Center for Non-Profit law – ICNL – study on over 80 cases of SLAPPs across the Global South, out of them “91% were brought by private companies or company officials(…) 41% brought by mining companies and (…) 34% brought by companies associated with agriculture.”
According to data from the CASE Coalition, SLAPP cases have risen sharply in recent years: from 570 cases in 2022 to over 820 in 2023 in Europe alone. Around half of those targeted climate, land, and labor rights defenders. Fossil fuel and extractive industries remain the most frequent initiators.
It is important to remember that those numbers under-represent the extent of SLAPP use, they are based on reported legal cases and can’t include the many cases in which the mere threat of a lawsuit was enough to silence before filing a complaint
The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre has documented that companies linked to mining, tourism, and large infrastructure projects are increasingly using SLAPPs to paralyse critics ahead of international events like COP, when scrutiny intensifies.
The danger of SLAPPs lies in their quietness. They happen behind closed doors, in legal language, far from the marches and hashtags. The trials often do not even end up in lawsuits. Yet their effect is profound. Every frozen bank account, every unpaid legal fee, every public apology extracted under duress weakens the collective courage needed to hold power to account.
Across regions, SLAPPs follow the same playbook: identify outspoken defenders, sue them on vague charges like “defamation” or “economic harm”, drag the process out for years, win by exhausting, not convincing.
Of course, the specific tactics vary by legal context. In some countries, certain charges carry strategic advantages. For example, in the Philippines, authorities frequently rely on serious, non-bailable allegations — including charges like illegal possession of firearms — to keep activists detained for extended periods.
The Philippines remains the most dangerous country in Asia for land and environmental defenders with frequent attacks linked to mining, agribusiness, and water projects.
Authorities have also used fabricated firearms and explosives charges to target activists, journalists, and community leaders, often accompanied by asset freezes, surveillance, and prolonged detention. In these settings, SLAPPs can “weaponise” the criminal justice system itself to remove critics from public life entirely.
SLAPPs have become the invisible front of the climate struggle, a slow-motion suppression campaign that rarely makes headlines.
But implementation remains uncertain. The Vice-President of the European Commission, Vera Jourova, called the Directive “Daphne’s law,” in memory of the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed in 2017 while she was the victim of numerous legal proceedings against her, and whose tragic story helped raise awareness of the issue.
Beyond the European context, similar efforts to counter SLAPPs have emerged elsewhere, for example in Colombia with the Guerra v. Ruiz-Navarro case. This case illustrates the importance of investigating sexual violence and abuse of power, recognising it as a matter of public interest that warrants protection. This ruling sets a strong precedent against the misuse of courts to silence the press by influential figures and underscores that defending victims and informing the public are acts of defending human rights.
In Indonesia, another country where SLAPPs are being deployed, civil society groups continue to advocate for stronger legal protections, including legislation to protect from SLAPPs. A small step forward came in September 2024, when the Ministry of Environment and Forestry issued Regulation No. 10/2024, on legal protection for environmental defenders.
“While the Ministry of Environment and Forestry Regulation No. 10/2024 represents an initial step toward safeguarding environmental defenders, civil society organisations expect its effective implementation, coupled with broader anti-SLAPP legislation, to ensure comprehensive protection against retaliatory lawsuits and foster a secure environment for public participation in environmental governance,” says Intan Kusumaning Tiyas of INFID, national civil society platform in Indonesia.
These include stronger legal safeguards by enacting robust national anti-SLAPP laws that allow for early case dismissal, ensure defendants can recover legal costs, and penalise those who file abusive lawsuits.
Setting up solidarity and support through regional and global networks can quickly mobilise legal assistance, mental health support, and emergency funding for those targeted.
Finally, actions around visibility and accountability are needed to bring SLAPPs into the public eye and raise awareness. SLAPPs need to be framed not as ordinary legal conflicts, but as violations of human rights that weaken an enabling environment for civil society, democratic participation and obstruct climate justice.
At COP30, negotiators will debate carbon credits and transition funds. But the real test of climate commitment may lie in whether states protect the people defending rivers, forests, and coastlines from powerful interests.
Civil society hopes to push a bold message into COP30 discussions: defending the environment requires defending those who defend it and supporting an enabling environment for civil society.
This article was written with the support of the Forus team, particularly Lena Muhs, and members of the EU SEE network.
A new report, ‘Indigenous Territories and Local Communities on the Frontlines,’ calls for secure land rights, free and informed consent, direct financing to communities, protection of life, and recognition of traditional knowledge.
Brazil’s Minister of Indigenous Peoples, Sonia Guajajara, attends a meeting during the UN Climate Change Conference COP 30. Credit: Hermes Caruzo/COP30
SRINAGAR, India & BELÉM, Brazil, Nov 8 2025 (IPS) – A report by the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities (GATC) and Earth Insight paints a stark picture of how extractive industries, deforestation, and climate change are converging to endanger the world’s last intact tropical forests and the Indigenous Peoples who protect them.
The report, ‘Indigenous Territories and Local Communities on the Frontlines,’ combines geospatial analysis and community data to show that nearly one billion hectares of forests are under Indigenous stewardship, yet face growing industrial threats that could upend global climate and biodiversity goals.
Despite representing less than five percent of the world’s population, Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPs and LCs) safeguard more than half of all remaining intact forests and 43 percent of global biodiversity hotspots.
These territories store vast amounts of carbon, regulate ecosystems, and preserve cultures and languages that have sustained humanity’s relationship with nature for millennia. But the report warns that governments and corporations are undermining this stewardship through unrestrained extraction of resources in the name of economic growth or even “green transition.”
One of the main report authors, Florencia Librizzi, who is also a Deputy Director at Earth Insight, told IPS that the perspectives and stories from each region are grounded in the lived realities of Indigenous Peoples and local communities and come directly from the organizations from each of the regions that the report focuses on in Mesoamerica, Amazonia, the Congo Basin, and Indonesia.
Across four critical regions—the Amazon, Congo Basin, Indonesia, and Mesoamerica—extractive industries overlap with millions of hectares of ancestral land. In the Amazon, oil and gas blocks cover 31 million hectares of Indigenous territories, while mining concessions sprawl across another 9.8 million.
In the Congo Basin, 38 percent of community forests are under oil and gas threat, endangering peatlands that store immense quantities of carbon. Indonesia’s Indigenous territories face 18 percent overlap with timber concessions, while in Mesoamerica, 19 million hectares—17 percent of Indigenous land—are claimed for mining, alongside rampant narcotrafficking and colonization.
These intrusions have turned Indigenous territories into sacrifice zones. From nickel extraction in Indonesia to oil drilling in Ecuador and illegal logging in the Democratic Republic of Congo, corporate incursions threaten lives, livelihoods, and ecosystems. Between 2012 and 2024, 1,692 environmental defenders were killed or disappeared across GATC countries, with 208 deaths linked to extractive industries and 131 to logging. The report calls this violence “the paradox of protection”—the act of defending nature now puts those defenders at deadly risk.
Yet the report also documents extraordinary resilience. In Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve, Indigenous forest communities have achieved near-zero deforestation—only 1.5 percent forest loss between 2014 and 2024, compared to 11 percent in adjacent areas. In Colombia, Indigenous Territorial Entities maintain over 99 percent of their forests intact.
The O’Hongana Manyawa of Indonesia continue to defend their lands against nickel mining, while the Guna people of Panama manage autonomous governance systems that integrate culture, tourism, and ecology.
In the Congo, the 2022 “Pygmy Law” has begun recognizing community rights to forest governance, a historic step toward justice.
The report’s findings were released ahead of the 30th UN Climate Conference (COP30), emphasizing the urgency of aligning international climate and biodiversity frameworks with Indigenous rights.
The 2025 Brazzaville Declaration, adopted at the First Global Congress of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities from the Forest Basins, provides a roadmap for such alignment.
Signed by leaders from 24 countries representing 35 million people, it calls for five key commitments: secure land rights, free and informed consent, direct financing to communities, protection of life, and recognition of traditional knowledge.
These “Five Demands” are the cornerstone of what the GATC calls a shift “from extraction to regeneration.”
They demand an end to the violence and criminalization of Indigenous leaders and insist that global climate finance reach local hands.
The report notes that, despite the 2021 COP26 pledge of 1.7 billion dollars for forest protection, only 7.6 percent of that money reached Indigenous communities directly.
“Without financing that strengthens territorial governance, all global commitments will remain symbolic,” said the GATC in a joint statement.
Reacting to the announcement of the The Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) announced on the first day of the COP Leaders’ Summit and touted as a “new and innovative financing mechanism” that would see forest countries paid every single year in perpetuity for keeping forests standing, Juan Carlos Jintiach, Executive Secretary of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities (GATC) said, “Even if the TFFF does not reach all its fundraising goals, the message it conveys is already powerful: climate and forest finance cannot happen without us Indigenous Peoples and local leadership at its core.
“This COP offers a crucial opportunity to amplify that message, especially as it takes place in the heart of the Amazon. We hope the focus remains on the communities who live there, those of us who have protected the forests for generations. What we need most from this COP is political will to guarantee our rights, to be recognized as partners rather than beneficiaries, to ensure transparency and justice in climate finance, and to channel resources directly to those defending the land, despite growing risks and violence.”
Deforestation in Acre State, Brazil. Credit: Victor Moriyama / Climate Visuals
Jintiach, who is also the report’s author, told IPS the Global Alliance has proposed establishing clear mechanisms to ensure that climate finance reaches Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ initiatives directly, not through layers of external actors.
“That’s why we have established our Shandia Platform, a global Indigenous-led mechanism designed to channel direct, predictable, and effective climate finance to our territories. Through the Shandia Funds Network, we ensure that funding is managed according to our priorities, governance systems, and traditional knowledge. The platform also includes a transparent system to track and monitor funding flows, with a specific indicator for direct finance to Indigenous Peoples and local communities,” he said.
The report also warns that global conservation goals such as the “30×30” biodiversity target—protecting 30 percent of Earth’s land and sea by 2030—cannot succeed without Indigenous participation. Policies under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the Paris Agreement must, it says, embed Indigenous governance and knowledge at their core. Otherwise, climate strategies risk reinforcing historical injustices by excluding those who have sustained these ecosystems for centuries.
Jintiach said that based on his experience at GATC, Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’-led conservation models are not only vital but also deeply effective.
“In our territories, it is our peoples and communities who are conserving both nature and culture, protecting the forests, waters, and biodiversity that sustain all of us,” he said.
He added, “Multiple studies confirm what we already know from experience: Indigenous and local community lands have lower rates of deforestation and higher biodiversity than those managed under state or private models. Our success is rooted in ancestral knowledge, collective governance, and a deep spiritual connection to the land, principles that ensure true, lasting conservation.”
According to Jintiach, the GATC 5 demands and the Brazzaville Declaration are critical global reference points and we are encouraged by the level of interest and engagement displayed by political leaders in the lead-up to COP 30.
Map highlighting extractive threats faced by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities across the Amazon basin. Credit: GATC
“We are hopeful that these principles will be uplifted and championed at COP 30, the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, CBD COP 17 and on the long road ahead,” he said.
When asked about the rising violence against environmental defenders, Jintiach said that the Brazzaville Declaration calls for a global convention to protect Environmental Human Rights Defenders, including Indigenous Peoples and local community leaders.
According to him, the governments must urgently tackle the corruption and impunity fueling threats and violence while supporting collective protection and preventing rollback of rights.
“This also means upholding and strengthening the Escazú Agreement and UNDRIP, and ensuring long-term protection through Indigenous Peoples and local communities-led governance, secure land tenure, and accountability for human rights violations.”
Earth Insight’s Executive Director Tyson Miller described the collaboration as a call to action rather than another policy document. “Without urgent recognition of territorial rights, respect for consent, and protection of ecosystems, global climate and biodiversity goals cannot be achieved,” he said. “This report is both a warning and an invitation—to act with courage and stand in solidarity.”
The case studies highlight how Indigenous governance models already offer proven solutions to the climate crisis. In the Brazilian Amazon, Indigenous organizations have proposed a self-determined Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to reduce emissions through territorial protection. Their slogan, “Demarcation is Mitigation,” underlines how securing Indigenous land rights directly supports the Paris Agreement’s goals. Similarly, in Central Africa, communities have pioneered decolonized conservation approaches that integrate Indigenous leadership into national park management, reversing exclusionary models imposed since colonial times.
In Mesoamerica, the Muskitia region—known as “Little Amazon”—illustrates both crisis and hope. It faces deforestation from drug trafficking and illegal logging, yet community-based reforestation and forest monitoring are restoring ecosystems and livelihoods. Women and youth play leading roles in governance, showing how inclusive leadership strengthens resilience.
The report’s conclusion is unequivocal: where Indigenous rights are recognized, ecosystems thrive; where they are ignored, destruction follows. It argues that the fight for land is inseparable from the fight against climate change. Indigenous territories are not just sources of raw materials; they are “living systems of governance, culture, and biodiversity” essential to humanity’s survival.
The Brazzaville Declaration urges governments to ratify international human rights conventions, end deforestation by 2030, and integrate Indigenous territories into national biodiversity and climate plans. It also calls for a global convention to protect environmental human rights defenders, whose safety is central to planetary stability.
For GATC’s leaders, the message is deeply personal. “Our traditional knowledge is the language of Mother Earth,” said Joseph Itongwa, GATC Co-Chair from the Congo Basin. “We cannot protect the planet if our territories, our identity, and our livelihoods remain under threat.”
This feature is published with the support of Open Society Foundations.
The community gets together to repair a school in the city of Saraqib, located south of Idlib, that was destroyed by bombing during the Assad regime. Credit: Sonia Al Ali/IPS
IDLIB, Syria, Oct 16 2025 (IPS) – The war has deprived thousands of Syrian children of their right to education, especially displaced children in makeshift camps. Amidst difficult economic conditions and the inability of many families to afford educational costs, the future of these children is under threat.
Adel Al-Abbas, a 13-year-old boy from Aleppo, northern Syria, was forced to quit his education after being displaced from his city and moving to a camp on the Syrian-Turkish border. He says, “I was chasing my dream like any other child, but my family’s poverty and the harsh circumstances stood in my way and destroyed all my dreams.”
Adel had hoped to become an engineer, but he left school and gave up on his goal. He replaced books and pens with work tools to help his impoverished family secure life’s necessities. He adds, “We are living in extremely difficult conditions today; we can’t even afford food. So, I have to find a job to survive and help my family, especially after my father was hit by shrapnel in the head, which caused him a permanent disability.”
Adel’s mother is saddened by her son’s situation, saying to IPS, “We need the income my son brings in after my husband got sick and became unable to provide for our family. In any case, work is better than an education that is now useless after he’s been out of school for so long and has fallen behind his peers.”
Reem Al-Diri, an 11-year-old, left school after her family was displaced from rural Damascus to the city of Idlib in northern Syria. Explaining why, she speaks with a clear sense of regret: “I loved school very much and was one of the top students in my class, but my family decided I had to stop my education to help my mom with the housework.”
The young girl confirms that she watches children on their way to school every morning, and she wishes she could go with them to complete her education and become a teacher in the future.
Reem’s mother, Umayya Al-Khalid, justifies her daughter’s absence from school, saying, “After we moved to a camp on the outskirts of Idlib, the schools became far from where we live. We also suffer from a lack of security and the widespread kidnapping of girls. So, I feared for my daughter and preferred for her to stay at home.”
Causes of school dropout
Akram Al-Hussein, a school principal in Idlib, northern Syria, speaks about the school dropout crisis in the country.
“School dropouts are one of the most serious challenges facing society. The absence of education leads to an unknown future for children and for the entire community.”
Al-Hussein emphasizes that relevant authorities and the international community must exert greater efforts to support education and ensure it does not remain a distant dream for children who face poverty and displacement.
He adds, “The reasons and motivations for children dropping out of school vary, ranging from conditions imposed by war—such as killings, displacement, and forced conscription-to child labor and poverty. Other factors include frequent displacement and the child’s inability to settle in one place during the school year, as well as a general lack of parental interest in education and their ignorance of the risks of depriving a child of schooling.”
In this context, the Syria Response Coordinators team, a specialized statistics group in Syria, noted in a statement that the number of out-of-school children in Syria has reached more than 2.5 million, with northwestern Syria alone accounting for over 318,000 out-of-school children, with more than 78,000 of them living in displacement camps. Of this group, 85 percent are engaged in various occupations, including dangerous ones.
In a report dated June 12, 2024, the team identified the key reasons behind the widening school dropout crisis.
A shortage of schools relative to the population density, a shift towards private education, difficult economic conditions, a lack of local government laws to prevent children from entering the labor market, displacement and forced migration, and a marginalized education sector with insufficient support from both local and international humanitarian organizations are seen as the causes.
The team’s report warned that if this trend continues, it will lead to the emergence of an uneducated, illiterate generation. This generation will be consumers rather than producers, and as a result, these uneducated children will become a burden on society.
Initiatives to Restore Destroyed Schools
The destruction of schools in Syria has significantly contributed to the school dropout crisis. Throughout the years of war, schools were not spared from destruction, looting, and vandalism, leaving millions of children without a place to learn or in buildings unfit for education. However, with the downfall of the Assad regime, several initiatives have been launched to restore these schools. This is seen as an urgent and immediate necessity for building a new Syria.
Samah Al-Dioub, a school principal in the northern Syrian city of Maarat al-Nu’man, says, “Syria’s schools suffered extensive damage from both the earthquake and the bombings. We have collected funds from the city’s residents and are now working on rehabilitating the school, but the need is still immense and the costs are very high, especially with residents returning to the city.” She explained that their current focus is on surveying schools and prioritizing which ones need renovation the most.
Engineer Mohammad Hannoun, director of school buildings at the Syrian Ministry of Education, states that approximately 7,400 schools across Syria were either partially or completely destroyed. They have restored 156 schools so far.
Hannoun adds, “We are working to rehabilitate schools in all Syrian regions, aiming to equip at least one school in every village or city to welcome returning students. The Ministry of Education, along with local and international organizations and civil society, are all contributing to these restoration efforts.”
Hannoun points out that the extensive damage to school buildings harms both teachers and students. It leads to a lack of basic educational resources, puts pressure on the few schools that are still functional, and causes a large number of students to drop out, which ultimately impacts the quality of the educational process.
As part of their contingency plans, Hannoun explains that the ministry, in collaboration with partner organizations, intends to activate schools with the available resources to accommodate children returning from camps and from asylum countries. This effort is particularly focused on affected areas that have experienced massive waves of displacement.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said in 2025, 16.7 million people, including 7.5 million children, are in need of humanitarian support in the country, with 2.45 million children out of school, and 2 million children are at risk of malnutrition.
The phenomenon of school dropouts has become a crisis threatening Syria’s children, who have been forced by circumstances to work to earn a living for their families. Instead of being in a classroom to build their futures, children are struggling to survive in an environment left behind by conflict and displacement.
COP30 negotiator Malang Sambou Manneh believes the method of countering growth in fossil fuel development lies in technology. Showcasing alternatives that work provides the opportunity for the global South to take the lead and present best practices in renewables.
Climate change is a significant contributor to water insecurity in Africa. Water stress and hazards, like withering droughts, are hitting African communities, economies, and ecosystems hard. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS
NAIROBI, Oct 14 2025 (IPS) – The Gambia’s lead negotiator on mitigation believes that COP30 presents a unique opportunity to rebalance global climate leadership.
“This COP cannot be shrouded in vagueness. Too much is now at stake,” Malang Sambou Manneh says in an interview with IPS ahead of the climate negotiations. He identified a wide range of issues that are expected to define COP30 climate talks.
The global community will shortly descend on the Amazon rainforest, the world’s largest intact forest, home to more than 24 million people in Brazil alone, including hundreds of thousands of Indigenous Peoples. Here, delegates will come face-to-face with the realities of climate change and see what is at stake.
Malang Sambou Manneh.
COP30, the UN’s annual climate conference, or the Conference of Parties, will take place from November 10-21, 2025 in the Amazonian city of Belém, Brazil and promises to be people-centered and inclusive. But with fragmented and fragile geopolitics, negotiations for the best climate deal will not be easy.
Sambou, a lead climate negotiator who has attended all COPs, says a unified global South is up to the task.
He particularly stressed the need for an unwavering “focus on mitigation or actions to reduce or prevent greenhouse gas emissions.” Stating that the Mitigation Work Programme is critical, as it is a process established by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at COP26 to urgently scale up the ambition and implementation of efforts to mitigate climate change globally.
Sambou spoke about how COP30 differs from previous conferences, expectations from the global South, fossils fuels and climate financing, stressing that “as it was in Azerbaijan for COP29, Belem will be a ‘finance COP’ because climate financing is still the major hurdle. Negotiations will be tough, but I foresee a better outcome this time round.”
The Baku to Belém Roadmap to 1.3T is expected to be released soon, outlining a framework by the COP 29 and COP 30 Presidencies for scaling climate finance for developing countries to at least USD 1.3 trillion annually by 2035.
Unlike previous conferences, COP30 focuses on closing the ambition gap identified by the Global Stocktake, a periodic review that enables countries and other stakeholders, such as the private sector, to take inventory to assess the world’s collective progress in meeting its climate goals.
The first stocktake was completed at COP28 in 2023, revealing that current efforts are insufficient and the world is not on track to meet the Paris Agreement. But while the Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate change, set off on a high singular note when it entered into force in November 2016, that unity is today far from guaranteed.
Malang Sambou Manneh with She-Climate Fellows. Credit: Clean Earth Gambia/Facebook
Unlocking high-impact and sustainable climate action opportunities amidst geopolitical turbulence was always going to be difficult. Not only did President Donald Trump pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, but he is now reenergized against climate programs and robustly in support of fossil fuels—and there are those who are listening to his message.
Sambou says while this stance “could impact the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy, many more countries are in favor of renewable energy than against.”
“But energy issues are complex because fossil fuels have been a way of life for centuries, and developed countries leveraged fossil fuels to accelerate development. And then, developing countries also started discovering their oil and gas, but they are not to touch it to accelerate their own development and must instead shift to renewables. It is a complex situation.”
Ilham Aliyev, the President of Azerbaijan, famously described oil as a “gift from God” at COP29 to defend his country’s reliance on fossil fuels despite climate change concerns. This statement highlights the complexity of the situation, especially since it came only a year after the landmark COP28 hard-won UAE Consensus included the first explicit reference to “transitioning away from all fossil fuels in energy systems” in a COP agreement.
As a negotiator, Sambou says he is very much alive to these dynamics but advises that the global community “will not successfully counter fossil fuels by saying they are bad and harmful; we should do so through technology. By showcasing alternatives that work. This is an opportunity for the global South to take the lead and present best practices in renewables.”
And it seems there is evidence for his optimism. A recent report shows the uptake of renewables overtaking coal generation for the first time on record in the first half of 2025 and solar and wind outpacing the growth in demand.
This time around, the global south has its work cut out, as it will be expected to step up and provide much-needed leadership as Western leaders retreat to address pressing problems at home, defined by escalating economic crises, immigration issues, conflict, and social unrest.
It is in the developing world’s leadership that Sambou sees the opportunities—especially as scientific evidence mounts on the impacts of the climate crisis.
The World Meteorological Organization projects a continuation of record-high global temperatures, increasing climate risks and potentially marking the first five-year period, 2025-2029.
Sambou says all is not lost in light of the new and ambitious national climate action plans or the Nationally Determined Contributions.
This past September marked the deadline for a new set of these contributions, which will guide the COP30 talks. Every five years, the signatory governments to the Paris Agreement are requested to submit new national climate plans detailing more ambitious greenhouse gas emission reduction and adaptation goals.
“Ambition has never been a problem; it is the lack of implementation that remains a most pressing issue. Action plans cannot be implemented without financing. This is why the ongoing political fragmentation is concerning, for if there was ever a time to stand unified, it is now. The survival of humanity depends on it,” he emphasizes.
“Rather than just setting new goals in Belém, this time around, we are better off pushing for a few scalable solutions, commitments that we can firmly hold ourselves accountable to, than 200 pages of outcomes that will never properly translate into climate action.”
Despite many competing challenges and a step forward, two steps backwards here and there, from the heart of the Amazon rainforest, COP30’s emphasis on the critical role of tropical forests and nature-based solutions is expected to significantly drive action for environmental and economic growth.
Note: This interview is published with the support of Open Society Foundations.
