By Chen Jie, for ROOTS.
For two weeks in November 2025, the heavy humidity of the Amazon clung to every suit and tie that arrived in Belém do Pará. This was the “COP of Truth.” For the first time in thirty years, climate negotiations were held in the biological heart of the planet.
President Lula’s administration worked hard to frame the event as a “Global Mutirão”. This Tupi-Guarani word refers to a collective mobilization where a community comes together to work towards a common goal or purpose. It was a call for a global group effort to finally bridge the gap between the promises made in Paris and the reality of the rainforest.
The “Mutirão” Meets the Market
Inside the official “Blue Zone” (the area set by the UN for official and diplomatic negotiations), the host nation achieved some pragmatic victories. Facing a deadlock where oil-producing nations blocked strong rules on ending fossil fuels, Brazil and its allies launched a “voluntary roadmap” to keep the transition alive. The meeting also launched the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), a bold attempt to create permanent funding for standing forests. Among other major outcomes, COP30 approved the Just Transition Work Programme, which engages employment, industry upgrading and social stability into the climate governance agenda, seeking to guarantee the rights of all people amidst attempts to mitigate climate change.
The Closing Plenary. Source: UN Climate Change/Kiara Worth
But outside, in the sweltering heat of the streets, the definition of success was very different. While experts inside celebrated keeping the diplomatic process alive, civil society argued that “voluntary” measures are too weak for a forest at its tipping point.
The layout of the summit itself highlighted this divide. Inside, an “Agrizone” sponsored by corporate agribusiness giants occupied prime real estate, signaling that the very industries driving deforestation were being welcomed as partners [1]. Meanwhile, over 3,000 Indigenous delegates traveled days by boat to reach the city, only to find that just 14% of them were allowed into the decision-making halls. For them, this was “performative inclusion”—they were invited into the lobby, but the future of their land was being traded in the boardroom [2].
The Alternative: Inside the People’s Summit (Cúpula dos Povos)
While the official Blue Zone was defined by security checkpoints and hushed deals, the Cúpula dos Povos (People’s Summit) was defined by the rhythm of drums. Anchored at the Federal University of Pará (UFPA) but spilling into the streets and waterways from November 12th to 16th, this parallel summit was a village of resistance convened by a coalition of over 1,100 organizations—ranging from the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) to La Via Campesina—who created an autonomous territory for the “excluded” voices of the negotiations. Their slogan was simple: “Nós somos a resposta” (We are the response) [3].
March in Belém with banners saying “We are the response”. Source: APIB.
If the official summit focused on “mitigation” (reducing damage), the People's Summit focused on “Socio-bioeconomy”. This concept, championed by Indigenous organizations and agrarian movements like the MST, is a direct challenge to the corporate version of the bioeconomy. For activists, a bioeconomy isn’t about pharmaceutical patents or mass-producing açaí for export. Instead, it is about Bem Viver (Good Living)—an economic model based on ancestral knowledge and local management of the land.
The core argument here is that a true bioeconomy requires the “demarcation of bodies and territories”. This means legally recognizing that the land belongs to the communities who live there, protecting them from interference by mining companies or carbon brokers.
The movements anchored this vision in the “Belém Declaration of the Peoples”, a document forged through days of intense assemblies at UFPA, which was submitted to André Corrêa do Lago, president of COP 30 at the end of the Summit. It explicitly rejects “green capitalism” and the financialization of nature, arguing that market mechanisms like carbon credits are false solutions that displace communities. Instead, it calls for Popular Agrarian Reform as a central climate technology, asserting that redistributing land to small-scale farmers is the most effective method to cool the planet [4].