The People’s Summit towards COP 30 intensifies its agenda with events held inside and outside the Federal University of Pará focused on international solidarity with peoples and pressure for climate justice, including a just energy and ecological transition, reparation for damages caused, especially to traditional peoples and rural and urban peripheries, and fair, direct, and public climate financing.
The three central points of the agenda that will mobilize leaders from 62 countries, activists from 5 continents, indigenous leaders, quilombolas, fishermen, rural and urban marginalized communities, social movements, organizations, and articulation networks are the Great People’s March for Climate Justice (Nov 15), the Banquetaço (Public Banquet/Feast), and the delivery of the People’s Letter to the President of COP 30 (Nov 16), André Corrêa do Lago. The presence of President Lula is expected.
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Great People’s March (November 15)
The People’s Summit is expected to bring around 30,000 people to the streets of Belém, the COP30 capital, for the Global March for Climate Justice scheduled for this Saturday, November 15. This major street event will cover 4.5 kilometers with peoples from various countries carrying messages to the world in defense of real solutions to the climate crisis.
Protagonists of real solutions—Indigenous peoples, quilombolas, fishermen, youth, workers, men, women, trans people, and children—mobilized in a broad network of civil society organizations will march for a common goal: to demand reparation for the damages that corporations and governments cause to society, especially to traditional and marginalized communities, by betting on false solutions for eliminating or reducing impacts.
The Global March for Climate Justice reaffirms that there is no time for illusions. So-called market solutions, such as carbon credits, forest offsets, geoengineering, and the privatization of territories, deepen inequalities, allow major emitters to continue polluting, and displace entire communities in the name of a “transition” that is nothing more than greenwashing.
The political document of the People’s Summit denounces that while corporations profit from the crisis, it is the peoples of the territories who have contributed least to global warming who bear the most violent impacts. These include floods, extreme droughts, loss of biodiversity, food insecurity, and the advance of extractivist projects that violate human rights.
Therefore, the Global March for Climate Justice demands that decisions about the future of the climate be based on justice, the science of the peoples, and the defense of life, and not on the economic interests that have historically captured UN negotiations.
The march will also echo the message that there will be no climate justice without social justice, advocating that real solutions already exist and are built daily in the territories through agroecological practices, community management, solidarity economy, ancestral protection of biodiversity, food sovereignty, and traditional practices of water and forest care.
The mobilization aims to symbolically mark the encounter between the peoples of the Amazon and delegations from all continents in a global call: “Climate Justice Now – For the end of false solutions and in defense of solutions coming from the territories.”
Among the key focus areas defended in the mobilization are:
• Historic reparation and accountability of rich countries and corporations for the damages caused.
• End of false solutions that turn nature into a financial asset.
• Protection of territories and maretórios (coastal/maritime territories), immediate demarcation of Indigenous and quilombola lands.
• Just, popular, and inclusive transition, with guaranteed rights and listening for workers and communities.
• Strengthening democracy, tackling environmental racism and inequalities.
• Centrality of maretórios and water territories, recognizing the role of riverine peoples, artisanal fishermen, and coastal communities in the defense of the Amazon and the oceans.
March Route (November 15)
• 7:30 AM – Assembly at the Mercado de São Brás, in the São Brás neighborhood.
• 9:00 AM – Departure from Mercado de São Brás
• 11:00 AM – Arrival at Aldeia Cabana, in the Pedreira neighborhood.
• Route – Avenida Duque de Caxias, Travessa Mauriti, and Avenida Pedro Miranda.
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The Dish is Political: Banquetaço (November 15)
Banquetaço: the popular manifestation that transforms food into a political act arrives at the People’s Summit
On Sunday, November 16, the People’s Summit will hold the “Banquetaço” (Public Feast/Banquet) at Praça da República, at 2:00 PM. This will be the third major moment of direct connection with the streets of the COP capital, where participants will distribute food to the population.
The Banquetaço is a public mobilization created by organizations, social movements, and collectives linked to the struggle for land, agroecology, and food sovereignty in Brazil. It emerged as a direct response to the dismantling of food security policies during the Bolsonaro government, a period when the country saw the end of the National Food and Nutritional Security System and the accelerated return of hunger to millions of Brazilian homes.
In this scenario, community cooks, family farmers, traditional peoples, urban organizations, and agroecology collectives began to occupy squares and streets in various regions of the country with large public banquets. These acts distributed food for free to denounce hunger, demand public policies, and assert that healthy food produced in the territories is a right and not a privilege.
More than a gesture of solidarity, the Banquetaço has consolidated itself as a highly symbolic political action. By serving food to those who need it most, the movements denounce the violence of hunger that is exacerbated by extreme climatic events and the system that fuels these impacts. They also reaffirm the centrality of food sovereignty as a pillar of social and climate justice in Brazil.
At the People’s Summit towards COP30, the Banquetaço was incorporated as an essential part of the programming because food is not just logistics. It is politics. The Summit’s proposal is to ensure that its structure reflects the values it defends as real solutions coming from the territories, through the popular economy, respect for ways of life, and defense of local food production.
Thus, bringing the Banquetaço into the Summit reinforces that the climate struggle necessarily involves the fight against hunger and the valorization of agroecological practices built by traditional peoples and communities.
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Delivery of the People’s Letter to the President of COP 30 (November 16)
On Saturday, November 16, the highlight will be the official delivery of the “People’s Letter” to the President of COP 30, André Corrêa do Lago. His visit to the space of the territories was committed to in a meeting held during the preparations for the People’s Summit. On that occasion, the ambassador also promised to ensure that the letter would be read within the official COP space.
The document, resulting from the intense debates and plenaries of the Summit, will point out horizons for tackling the climate crisis from the perspective of peoples in Brazil and around the world who are outside political decision-making spaces.
The act of delivery symbolizes the pursuit of direct dialogue and the guarantee that the voices of communities, quilombolas, and Indigenous peoples of the Amazon and the Global South will be formally incorporated and prioritized in the official COP 30 agenda, influencing global decisions on climate.
Photo: @rudegalvenus – Carolynne Matos