Peoples’ Summit brings society’s demands and claims to COP30
Social movements, associations, and grassroots organizations from around the world are gathering Wednesday (Nov. 12) on the banks of the Guamá river in the Amazon city of Belém, Pará state, for the opening of the Peoples’ Summit. With a program that runs until November 16, the meeting should draw thousands of people at the Federal University of Pará (UFPA) with the aim of bringing social and environmental perspectives to meetings parallel to the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30).
Boats will sail along the Guamá river to Guajará bay in a veritable trawl of popular voices calling for climate justice in a gathering of women, young people, riverine communities, fishing workers, indigenous people, quilombolas, family farmers, and all the diversity of the world’s nations willing to join the movement. The Summit Boat Parade will be the program’s first political act.
On the agenda are the contradictions and denunciations of global decisions that are inconsistent with the realities of the territories. “The waters of the Amazon are bringing the voices that the world needs to hear – those who defend life, territories, and the climate,” said Lider Gongora, member of the Political Commission of the Peoples’ Summit, Ecuadorian activist, delegate of the World Forum of Fisher Peoples.
The official opening ceremony of the Peoples’ Summit will take place at 5 pm on the stage set up at UFPA. Activities include debates on food sovereignty, energy transition, combating fossil fuel extraction, participatory governance, environmental racism, the right to the city, and mitigation and adaptation in cities with intersectionality of gender, race, class, and territory.
The idea is to “to strengthen popular construction and bring together socio-environmental, anti-patriarchal, anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist, anti-racist, and rights agendas, respecting their diversity and specificities, united for a future of well-being,” as stated in the Peoples’ Summit’s manifesto.
There will also be a wide-ranging cultural program that includes the Peoples’ Fair, the House of Ancestral Wisdom, and many performances by artists and popular groups from the Amazon and other regions of Brazil. The daily schedule runs from 8 am to 10 pm on the university’s Guamá campus.
