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About five thousand people from sixty countries are expected to travel the rivers surrounding the COP30 host city in a grand political act on the water. One of the vessels will carry leaders such as Raoni in the “Caravan of the Response”.
Belém (PA) — On the next 12 November, starting at 9 a.m., more than two hundred boats carrying around five thousand participants will gather at Baía do Guajará, off the coast of the capital of Pará, in one of the most symbolic moments of the Peoples’ Summit, a side event to COP30. The boat parade will bring together caravans that departed from other municipalities, states and countries to denounce false climate solutions and announce that the answer to a sustainable world is the people of the waters, forests and peripheries who resist with their collective, agroecological and ancestral practices.
The parade will begin at the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), site of the Peoples’ Summit, and will follow the Guamá river which then becomes the Guajará river to reach the Vila da Barca, an area of stilt-houses that is a social enclave, because part of the housing lives without any sanitation. These communities have decades of resistance to real-estate speculation and lack of public attention.
In preparation for the city’s hosting of COP30, the Vila da Barca was to receive a sewage treatment station in a middle-class neighbourhood embellished in recent months to form a tourist landscape. Thus, the area became an example of the contradictions of conferences that make misguided decisions, ignoring those most impacted by extreme weather events.
These contradictions will be displayed in banners and posters adorning large and small boats across a route of seven nautical miles. The expectation is to depart from four ports near the UFPA and sail for about two hours, a timeframe that takes into account the tide strength.
“We are aligned and we believe this is going to be historic!”, says Iury Paulino, member of the Peoples’ Summit Political Commission and coordinator of the Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB). The damming of rivers is among the corporate infrastructures denounced for causing impacts that increasingly contribute to the climate crisis — shifting water courses, sedimentation, species extinction, flooding of once-forest areas and expulsion of guardians of preservation practices.
These impacts are also faced by fishers who maintain a historic cultural relationship with the sea. River-dwellers and fishers worldwide suffer directly from contamination of rivers and coastal zones caused by mineral exploitation and chemical spills. In Brazil, dam failures by Vale in Mariana (2015) and Brumadinho (2019) caused hundreds of deaths, destruction of communities and severe environmental damage, contaminating rivers and ecosystems. In Ecuador, the SOTE oil-pipeline failure, operated by a state company, spilled oil into the Esmeraldas River in March 2025, dumping more than 25 000 barrels of crude, contaminating drinking water, rivers and coastal communities.
Therefore, movements and organisations of the Peoples’ Summit unite to let their voices echo over the waters, denouncing COP decisions that sustain this model of territorial exploitation. And against corporations that dominate decision spaces in the Conferences to block more ambitious goals of natural-resource protection, mitigation and damage repair in the NDCs (Nationally Determined Contributions), which are each country’s commitments to cut greenhouse-gas emissions and adapt to climate change under the Paris Agreement.
Raoni – Among the boats confirmed for the parade is the Caravan of the Response, a mobilisation travelling more than 3 000 kilometres between Sinop (MT) and Belém (PA) with over 300 indigenous, river-dwelling, quilombola and peasant leaders. With support from the Peoples’ Summit, the mobilisation organised by the Alliance End Soy reached out from Santarém on Sunday, 9 November.
The caravan retraces the so-called “soy corridor”, denouncing impacts of agribusiness and major infrastructure works — such as Ferrogrão and the Northern-Arc waterways — on territories and traditional livelihoods. Ferrogrão is a planned 933-km railway linking Sinop (MT) to Miritituba (PA) to transport grains, mainly soy and corn, from Brazil’s Midwest via the Northern Arc. But its execution threatens conservation units, indigenous lands and intensifies deforestation in the Amazon.
During the act, historic leaders of the indigenous struggle in Brazil are set to board, such as chief Raoni Metuktire, leader Alessandra Korap Munduruku and representatives of the Kayapó, Panará, Borari, Tupinambá, Xipaya, Arapiun, Huni Kuin and Kayabi peoples, among others. Their presence symbolises the link between the peoples of the Xingu and Tapajós regions, where the advance of soy and export infrastructure has caused environmental destruction and human-rights abuses.
“Peoples are the response”
Pedro Charbel, of the Alliance End Soy, said the caravan embodies what the movement calls denunciation and announcement. “Our struggle is against these corporate ports, against the waterways and against Ferrogrão, but we also have the answer. The answer is agroecology, it is good food without poison, it is solidarity with people, it is solidarity kitchens, it is giving free food because food is a right, not a commodity. The answer is infrastructure that comes from the people and not the one that benefits agribusiness billionaires. The answer is living territories, demarcated lands, forest standing and clean river, with healthy fish — not the river contaminated with mercury and soy.”
The Peoples’ Summit, which brings together over 1 200 movements, organisations and networks from Brazil and abroad, emphasises that the boat parade represents the spirit of the conference. “It is not just an act, it is a fluvial manifesto. The waters of the Amazon are bringing voices the world needs to hear: those of people defending life, territories and climate,” says Lider Gongora, member of the Peoples’ Summit Political Commission, Ecuadorian activist, delegate of the Mangrove and Sea Peoples (World Forum of Fisher Peoples – WFFP).
“When the peoples of various regions sail together, the world must stop to listen. This is a global message: the peoples who protect the forest, the rivers, the sea and the mangrove are the most concrete and courageous response to the climate crisis,” Lider emphasises.
Towards Belém
The Caravan of the Response, one of the key participants of the boat parade, departed from Santarém (PA) on 8 November, after five days of journey from Sinop (MT). The vessel carries agroecological food produced by family and indigenous farmers that will be used in the solidarity kitchen of the Peoples’ Summit during the conference days. Other caravans and social movements travelling the country will also arrive in Belém to join the boat parade, making the act a major fluvial convergence of civil society towards COP30.
Service — Boat Parade of the Peoples’ Summit
Date: Tuesday, 12 November 2025
Time: gathering from 09:00 and expected arrival at 12:00
Route: from UFPA, Guamá district, to Vila da Barca, Telégrafo district. Route along the Guamá and Guajará rivers.
Foto:Coletivo Apoena Cultural