Belém (PA) – The Minister of the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic, Márcio Macêdo, stated this Thursday, the 2nd, that the People’s Summit will be one of the most important milestones of COP30. He emphasized that there can be no sustainable public policy without popular participation.
The statement was made during his visit to the People’s Summit House in Belém, where the minister met with social movements, civil society organizations, and networks that are building the People’s Summit towards COP30.
The minister said that the government and grassroots movements share the same goals, even though each uses different tools to achieve them. This is because they recognize that social participation is essential for democracy and the effectiveness of public policy.
“The People’s Summit will be one of the great moments of COP30. We are holding COP in the world’s largest democracy of peoples, and there are no sustainable public policies without social participation. Certainly, we will build COP30 together, with many hands, and it will be the COP with the greatest social participation in history,” said the minister.
By affirming the importance of the Summit and announcing greater government support to guarantee infrastructure and act as an intermediary with agencies, governments, and the UN, Márcio Macêdo stressed that the Summit will be a decisive moment to strengthen direct democracy, to present the proposals of the people and organized social movements, so that countries and national states can incorporate them into their public policies.
In defending and fostering dialogue with the government, the People’s Summit recognizes that such openness is possible because movements understand they are engaging with the democratic field represented by the Lula government. And although it brings together a diversity of movements and agendas, the articulation is categorical in affirming there is no space for dialogue with the far right, nor with non-progressive ideas.
“At the Summit, we affirm that indeed we have convergences, such as the defense of democracy, the Lula government’s stance against wars, for an end to the genocide in Palestine, for national sovereignty, and for the climate and environmental agenda,” noted Júlia Martins, leader of the Movement for Popular Sovereignty over Mining (MAM).
The meeting aimed to strengthen dialogue to ensure that the historic demands of social movements regarding tackling the climate crisis are effectively incorporated into Brazil’s climate public agenda and defended by the country in international negotiation arenas, where Brazil has assumed a relevant leadership role.
Real solutions – The organizations present emphasized the need to incorporate the experiences and perspectives of traditional peoples and rural and urban peripheries into actions, plans, and targets for addressing the climate crisis.
The movements argue that real solutions are those born in the territories, that strengthen popular sovereignty, climate justice, and the defense of life. False solutions, on the other hand, which promote the financialization of nature through corporate packages, only deepen inequalities and fail to address the structural causes of the problem.
In this context, the leaders reaffirmed the Summit’s role as an autonomous space of civil society and presented to the minister the urgent need for greater support to guarantee the full functioning of the Summit in Belém, from November 12 to 16, when around 10,000 people are expected to participate in an intense program that includes plenaries, a march, a river flotilla (“barqueata”), a collective feast (“banquetaço”), a children’s summit, cultural activities, and a popular economy fair.
The space is considered strategic to ensure that the voices of the Amazon, Brazil, and the world have real opportunities to participate in the preparation and realization of COP30, preventing corporations from being the only ones heard. During the meeting with the minister, Júlia Martins also stressed the need for the government to coordinate measures to ensure the safety of participants, guaranteeing that the COP remains a plural space committed to social and climate justice.
