UN COP30: Civil Society keep up momentum as we move towards the “forest COP”
10 juillet 2025
Civil society across the world are convening in the hope that the 30th United Nations Climate Conference (COP30) will be “the forest COP” and move away from the petrostate negotiations of previous years. This hope persists despite real concerns about logistics – the official website’s accommodation page has remained statically empty for four months and, as Claudio Angelo of the Brazilian Climate Observatory collective said, “everybody’s concerned because at this point, five months to the date, everybody should have hotels and no one has”. None-the-less, civil society groups are pushing forward, and building momentum.
At the June Bonn Intersessional, activists who had met at the Peoples for Forests gathering joined together with the Biomass Action Network and called for COP30 to support an end to escalation of forest biomass burning. The Climate Action Network, representing more than 1,500 NGOs, also released a new position paper calling on countries and corporations to reduce their reliance on biomass.
Meanwhile, the official Peoples’ Summit released their manifesto, which ends with a reminder of the importance of civil society organising: “none of this will happen without broad pressure and effective participation of civil society. We call upon organizations, networks, collectives, and social movements from various sectors to build the People’s Summit towards COP 30, capable of mobilizing public opinion, strengthening participatory and popular democracy, denouncing and blocking setbacks, as well as pressuring decision-makers in Brazil and around the world.”
Speaking for various Indigenous Peoples organisations across Brazil, The Answer is Us has thrown down the gauntlet, calling out the inadequacy of climate targets and funding, and boldly stating that, as COP30 will take place on their territory, “[w]e will not accept that discussions take place without the proper consultation and participation of our voices and our climate authority. Nothing that threatens the future of life will be tolerated”.
The importance of such wording was underlined at a recent Bogota Group meeting by Lidy Nacpil of the Asian Peoples Movement on Debt and Development, who said: “Governments change, our champions may not be there next year, and they can easily reverse policies or reverse the structural changes unless you have a very empowered citizenry and citizen groupings.”
Although we have roots in different continents and a diversity of campaign focuses, the more that civil society meet, the more clearly our words and objectives align. At the Forest Basins Congress in Brazzaville, representatives of Indigenous Peoples, Local Communities and Afro-descendent Peoples from the world’s major forest basins formulated a declaration of key COP30 asks. They include a more ambitious pledge on Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities and Afro-descendent communities (IPLCAD), the protection of their rights (including securitisation of customary land tenure), and the promotion of direct funding mechanisms. The latter is a deal-breaker for IPLCAD to support new initiatives, such as the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (FW 306), which is expected to be launched at the COP.
Civil society is ready to make COP30 a success, so the only question remaining is whether Belem is ready for us?
Catégories: News, Forest Watch, Brazil
