Reflections from Belém at the end of Week 1: Climate, Nature and Justice in a Living Landscape

Week one of COP30 saw key developments on climate, nature and justice including the welcome announcement that Colombia's entire Amazonian biome will be off-limits from new oil and large-scale mining. Three threads shaped NbSI's first week: cooperation across the Rio Conventions, the evolving Global Goal on Adaptation; and the centrality of Indigenous rights and land relations. November 17, 2025

Description coming soon — Beyond the formal climate negotiations, the Peoples' Summit mobilised more than 70,000 people for a unified peoples' climate agenda. Photo: The Peoples' March in Belém, 15th November. Credit: Aline Soterroni

Week one at COP30 closes amid a dense weave of negotiation drafts, political signals and action-track announcements. Belém, held on the ancestral territories of the Tupinambá and Pacajás Peoples, grounds this COP in a living landscape of rivers, forests and community. That grounding matters. In the spirit of mutirão, Brazil’s tradition of collective, reciprocal care for shared places, it reminds us that climate, biodiversity and equity are not separate files but interconnected responsibilities. It also echoes the call of the Global Ethical Stocktake: that climate action must be guided by justice, reciprocity and integrity.

As the Nature-based Solutions Initiative, we engaged primarily through the action track: listening to Indigenous and euro-centric science and policy voices, sharing evidence, and supporting conversations on climate-nature-justice alignment. From this vantage point, three threads have shaped our week: cooperation across the Rio Conventions; the evolving Global Goal on Adaptation; and the centrality of Indigenous rights and land relations. Throughout, we have sought to keep the wider global energy transition in view, because without a rapid and fair departure from fossil fuels, neither nature nor justice can flourish.

Amid sobering data, there were also signs of the shift we need. One of the most significant came from Colombia, announcing that its entire Amazonian biome (around 48 million hectares) will be off-limits to new oil and large-scale mining. In a COP where many climate plans still depend heavily on land-based removals even as deforestation continues, this decision stands as a concrete example of aligning climate ambition with ecological integrity and Indigenous leadership.

What follows is our reflection on the most consequential developments so far, and our hopes for Week Two.

Land, forests and the logic of place

The launch of the 2025 Land Gap Report provided essential context. It shows that current national climate pledges collectively assume more than 1 billion hectares of land for carbon removals—an area roughly two-thirds the size of global cropland. The report also introduces the idea of a “forest gap”: under current trajectories, the world remains on course to lose or degrade around 20 million hectares of forest annually by 2030, despite repeated commitments to halt and reverse loss by that date.

The implications are stark. Heavy reliance on land-based removals delays the phase-out of fossil fuels and places untenable pressure on ecosystems, food systems and Indigenous territories. Converting land at this scale risks repeating top-down, unjust approaches—what many here describe as “green colonialism”—unless action is firmly grounded in rights, stewardship and locally rooted governance.

Against this landscape, Colombia’s decision to safeguard its Amazonian biome offers a glimpse of what a different pathway can look like: one where forest integrity, Indigenous leadership and fossil restraint are mutually reinforcing.

For us, the conclusion is clear: protection and strengthening of intact ecosystems must precede any speculative expansion of removals, and climate strategies must align with the territories, rights and knowledge systems of Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

The global energy-climate gap

Alongside the land-use backdrop sits the broader emissions challenge. The 2025 Emissions Gap Report indicates that full implementation of current NDCs would still place the world on a 2.3–2.5 °C trajectory this century. Only if all net-zero commitments are fulfilled (still far from today’s policies!) would warming approach around 1.9 °C.

These numbers reinforce a core message from Belém: ecosystem-based action cannot substitute for rapid fossil fuel phase-out; it can only complement it. Many discussions this week centred on this tension between increasingly nature-positive rhetoric and slow progress on the global energy transition and on the need for policies that honour ecological limits while safeguarding the rights and wellbeing of those most affected.

Indigenous leadership and the Peoples’ Summit

Alongside the formal UNFCCC process, Belém has been host to the Peoples’ Summit, a powerful civil society-led mobilisation of Indigenous organisations, social movements and community groups that have woven their own climate agenda, grounded in rights, justice and territory. Its presence has given COP30 a depth of context rarely felt at international gatherings.

One of the most affecting dimensions has been the vitality and courage of Indigenous presence. The Yaku Mama Flotilla’s 3,000-kilometre river journey to Belém carried stories of territories still under threat: gold mining poisoning water with mercury, soy plantations pressing deeper into forest landscapes, and oil and timber concessions opening new frontiers of violence and dispossession. Outside the Blue Zone, dignified protests by the Munduruku and many others reminded delegates that global pledges for climate and nature mean little if defenders remain unsafe and lands unprotected.

Saturday’s Great People’s March was a defining moment, and it was such an honour to walk alongside so many who have carried these struggles across generations. More than 70,000 people filled the streets: Indigenous leaders guiding a giant inflatable Earth; children holding photographs of contaminated rivers, collapsed tailings dams and razed forests; students calling for an end to mining, oil exploration and agribusiness expansion that continue to threaten the Amazon and its peoples.

To witness this was humbling. Grief and anger intertwined with strength and hope: songs rising above the crowd, vibrant banners reclaiming the Amazon as a living territory, and a shared resolve to protect what remains. Amid the colour and drumming, one message resounded clearly: the Amazon is not a carbon ledger or a reservoir of fossil fuels, nor a vast offset opportunity. It is a home, a source of identity, a great interdependent community of beings. This COP is not unfolding in an abstract venue; it is taking place in a living place, held in relationship.

The Declaration of the Peoples’ Summit Towards COP30 delivers a unified proposal to the COP30 presidency following several years of mobilisation culminating in the Peoples’ Summit in Belém. The proposals include confronting false market solutions, protection and demarcation for lands and territories of Indigenous peoples as well as other local peoples and communities, policies which fight environmental racism and an end to wars and demilitarisation. Read the full proposal in the Carta Final of the Peoples’ Summit.

The Peoples’ March, COP30 Belém, 15th November. Photo Credit: Aline Soterroni

In parallel, Belém also hosted the 6th International Rights of Nature Tribunal, which presented A New Pledge for Mother Nature. Developed by Indigenous leaders, jurists and civil-society organisations, the pledge calls for international recognition of the Rights of Nature; an immediate end to fossil fuel expansion in the Amazon; protection for Earth defenders; and a shift away from market-based “green” mechanisms that commodify ecosystems. Addressed directly to governments and institutions gathered in Belém, it reinforces the broader message of the week: that climate action must be grounded in reciprocal relationships with the Earth, not solely in accounting frameworks.

Synergies across the Rio Conventions

Within the formal process, momentum is growing behind deeper synergies across the UNFCCC, CBD and UNCCD. Our co-hosted side event – From Trade-offs to Synergies: Aligning Climate and Biodiversity Policies – explored how to bring these agendas into closer alignment.

We emphasised that in countries where land-use change dominates emissions, halting deforestation and degradation is the most immediate route to delivering on multiple goals. Restoration matters, but it cannot compensate for ongoing loss. Ethical considerations must guide technical design: collective stewardship, secure rights and locally rooted governance are essential for integrity.

Draft elements for a strengthened “synergies decision” have now been forwarded to ministers. Whether this materialises will signal COP30’s seriousness about integrated climate-nature governance. Several Parties are also calling for a global deforestation roadmap linked to the 2030 goal – an area we will watch closely in Week Two.

Adaptation: indicators, finance and lived resilience

On adaptation, Parties have made visible progress on the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA). Draft indicators and elements of a global framework are now with ministers. Two questions dominate: how to develop indicators that matter in practice, and how to ensure they are supported by finance and capacity so the framework enables implementation rather than reporting alone.

Least Developed Countries have stressed that without a major uplift in adaptation finance, potentially tripling by 2030, the GGA risks remaining an empty shell. Across the action track, and in several analyses feeding into the GGA negotiations, ecosystem integrity has been framed as a foundation of resilience. Forests moderating water cycles, wetlands slowing floods, mangroves sheltering coasts – these are living systems that hold communities in safety. A credible GGA package must connect social protection, locally led adaptation and ecosystem stewardship into a coherent approach to resilience.

Rights, land tenure and forest integrity

Indigenous leadership has provided the ethical compass of this COP. The Political Declaration of the Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon Basin and All Biomes of Brazil articulates a clear vision: full recognition of ancestral territories, an Amazon free from new extractive frontiers, and transitions grounded in self-determination and buen vivir / bem viver.

Two major announcements align with that vision:

The Global Land Tenure Commitment, aiming to recognise 160 million hectares of collective tenure in tropical forest countries, backed by a renewed US$1.8 billion pledge.
The Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), with more than US$5.5 billion in initial pledges and a commitment that at least 20% flows directly to Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

Together, they signal deepening recognition that secure tenure and forest integrity are essential for climate stability and justice. Concerns remain, however, about limited access to negotiation spaces and increasing securitisation around the venue. Safe and meaningful participation is vital for legitimate and durable outcomes.

Hopes for Week Two

As ministerial pairs take up the most politically sensitive issues, several outcomes are crucial:

A 1.5 °C response plan that sets clear pathways for rapidly transitioning away from fossil fuels and for halting and reversing deforestation.
A strong adaptation package with credible GGA indicators, a post-Belém process for strengthening practice, and a clear political signal on scaling adaptation finance.
A meaningful synergies decision under the Rio Conventions agenda item.
A coherent Just Transition Work Programme that aligns climate ambition with equity and social protection.
A global, rights-based deforestation roadmap anchored in the 2030 goal and integrated with finance, tenure and biodiversity frameworks.

Even if the final cover decision falls short of what the world needs, the tone of Week One suggests that justice and inclusivity are being deliberately centred, and that countries are beginning to act in ways that reflect these principles. Our hope is that Week Two turns signals into substance.

Toward a decade of reciprocity

Across the action track, one message has carried through: climate stability and ecological integrity depend on justice, rights and co-stewardship. Science tells us this; lived experience affirms it. The decade ahead must be one of regeneration and reciprocity: stopping harm at source, strengthening Indigenous and community leadership, and aligning finance and governance with the rhythms of living landscapes.

This COP, more than any other previous ones, reminds us that implementation requires more than targets. It requires trust, collaboration and humility: a global mutirão in which those most affected are recognised as co-authors of solutions. Week Two now carries the responsibility to honour that invitation.