Around 5,000 people from 60 countries are expected to navigate the rivers surrounding the host city of COP30 in a grand political act on the waters. One of the boats will carry leaders such as Raoni in the “Caravan of the Response”.
Belém (PA) — On November 12, starting at 9 a.m., more than 200 boats carrying around 5,000 people are expected to gather in Guajará Bay, in front of the capital of Pará, in one of the most symbolic moments of the Cúpula dos Povos, a parallel event to COP30. The Cúpula dos Povos Barqueata will bring together caravans that departed from other municipalities, states and countries to denounce false climate solutions and to announce that the response to a sustainable world comes from the peoples of the waters, forests and urban peripheries, who resist through collective, agroecological and ancestral practices.
The barqueata will begin at the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), the territory of the Cúpula dos Povos, and will follow along the Guamá River, which then becomes the Guajará River, until reaching Vila da Barca, a stilt-house community that is a social enclave, where part of the population lives without any sanitation. The area reflects decades of residents’ resistance to real estate speculation and the lack of attention from public authorities.
In the preparation of the city for COP30, Vila da Barca was slated to receive a sewage treatment station for a middle-class neighborhood that has been beautified in recent months to compose the city’s tourist landscape. As a result, the area has become an example of the contradictions of conferences that make misguided decisions while ignoring those most impacted by extreme climate events.
These contradictions will be exposed through banners and signs displayed on large and small boats along a route of 7 nautical miles. The plan is to depart from four docks near UFPA and navigate for about two hours, a time estimate that takes into account tidal strength.
“We are aligned and we believe this will be historic,” says Iury Paulino, a member of the Political Commission of the Cúpula dos Povos and coordinator of the Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB). The damming of rivers is among the corporate actions and infrastructures denounced for causing impacts that increasingly contribute to the climate crisis, such as changes in watercourses, silting, species extinction, flooding of areas that were once forest, and the expulsion of communities that safeguard preservation practices.
These impacts are also faced by fishers who maintain a historic cultural relationship with the sea. Riverine and fishing communities around the world are directly affected by contamination of rivers and coastal areas caused by mineral extraction and chemical spills. In Brazil, the collapse of Vale’s dams in Mariana (2015) and Brumadinho (2019) caused hundreds of deaths, the destruction of communities and severe environmental damage, contaminating rivers and ecosystems. In Ecuador, the rupture of the SOTE oil pipeline, operated by a state-owned company, spilled oil into the Esmeraldas River in March 2025, releasing more than 25,000 barrels of crude and contaminating drinking water, rivers and coastal communities.
For this reason, movements and organizations of the Cúpula dos Povos are joining forces to make their denunciations echo over the waters against COP decisions that maintain this model of territorial exploitation, and against corporations that exert strong influence within conference decision-making spaces to block more ambitious targets for reducing resource extraction, mitigating impacts and ensuring reparations in the NDCs (Nationally Determined Contributions), which are each country’s commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change under the Paris Agreement.
Raoni
Among the boats confirmed for the barqueata is the Caravan of the Response, a mobilization that is traveling more than 3,000 kilometers between Sinop (MT) and Belém (PA) with over 300 Indigenous, riverine, quilombola and peasant leaders. With the support of the Cúpula dos Povos, the mobilization organized by the Chega de Soja Alliance, a coalition of around forty Brazilian and international organizations, departed from Santarém on Sunday, November 9.
The Caravan retraces the route of the so-called “soy corridor,” denouncing the impacts of agribusiness and major infrastructure projects, such as Ferrogrão and the waterways of the Arco Norte, on traditional territories and ways of life. Ferrogrão is a planned 933-kilometer railway intended to connect Sinop (MT) to Miritituba (PA) to transport grains, mainly soy and corn, from Brazil’s Central-West through the Arco Norte. Its implementation, however, threatens conservation units, Indigenous lands and intensifies deforestation in the Amazon.
During the act, historic leaders of the Indigenous struggle in Brazil are expected to be on board, including 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 symbolizes the bond between the peoples of the Xingu and Tapajós regions, where the advance of soy production and export infrastructure has caused environmental destruction and rights violations.
“The peoples are the response”
Pedro Charbel, from the Chega de Soja Alliance, said the Caravan synthesizes what the movement calls denunciation and announcement. “Our struggle is against these corporate ports, against waterways and against Ferrogrão, but we also have the response. The response is agroecology, healthy food without poison, solidarity with the people, community kitchens and the free distribution of food because food is a right, not a commodity. The response is infrastructure built by the people, not infrastructure that benefits agribusiness billionaires. The response is living territories, demarcated lands, standing forests and clean rivers with healthy fish, not rivers contaminated with mercury and soy.”
The Cúpula dos Povos, which brings together more than 1,200 movements, organizations and networks from Brazil and abroad, emphasizes that the Barqueata represents the spirit of the conference. “It is not just a protest, it is a fluvial manifesto. The waters of the Amazon are carrying the voices the world needs to hear, those who defend life, territories and the climate,” says Lider Gongora, a member of the Political Commission of the Cúpula dos Povos, an Ecuadorian activist and delegate of the Peoples of the Mangroves and the Sea (World Forum of Fisher Peoples – WFFP).
“When peoples from different regions navigate together, the world must stop and listen. This is a global message: the peoples who protect the forest, rivers, sea and mangroves are the most concrete and courageous response to the climate crisis,” Lider adds.
On the way to Belém
The Caravan of the Response, one of the main participants in the Barqueata, departed from Santarém (PA) on November 8, after five days of travel since leaving Sinop (MT). The boat is carrying agroecological food produced by family farmers and Indigenous communities, which will be used in the Cúpula dos Povos’ solidarity kitchen during the days of the conference.
Other caravans and social movements traveling across the country will also arrive in Belém to join the Barqueata, turning the act into a major fluvial convergence of civil society on the way to COP30.
Service — Cúpula dos Povos Barqueata
Date: Wednesday, November 12, 2025
Time: Gathering from 9:00 a.m., with expected arrival at 12:00 p.m.
Route: From UFPA, in the Guamá neighborhood, to Vila da Barca, in the Telégrafo neighborhood, navigating the Guamá and Guajará rivers.
Photo: Apoena Cultural Collective