Who is COP for, really?

For thirty years, the world has looked at COP as the path to climate progress. But the reality is different. COP isn’t failing; it’s working exactly as it was designed: protecting and further producing capital.

COP has made promises it never intended to keep. It is not about saving the planet, but about protecting profit and power. COP3 was the beginning of the Global North making broken promises. At COP3, the Kyoto Protocol was proposed as a plan to target emissions cuts from industrialized countries. The agreement paved the way for carbon markets, allowing countries and corporations to trade pollution credits instead of actually cutting emissions. The U.S. signed but never ratified it (source), Canada later withdrew (source). Europe met targets in part by outsourcing oil emissions through offsets, often harming and displacing frontline communities (source). What came out of COP3 was not climate justice but a system that let the Global North maintain its power and profit while exporting the consequences.

The broken promises of Kyoto set the blueprint for decades of destructive extraction and dispossession that followed. The Global South is not a side note; it is the beating heart of the climate crisis and the first to bleed. While wealthy countries build their prosperity on fossil fuels, the Global South faces devastating man-made ‘natural disasters’ floods, fires, and droughts. These communities continue to fight to protect land, water, and futures, even as rich nations push “net zero by 2050” while backing fossil fuel interests. Promised climate finance remains late, insufficient, and often deepens debt, while Indigenous leaders and frontline activists are routinely excluded from decision-making.

Decades later, those same dynamics played out in Glasgow during COP26, which ignited a surge of fossil fuel industry influence and greenwashing. While earlier COPs like COP3 set the foundation, COP26 made it impossible to ignore who these summits are really for. Over 500 fossil fuel lobbyists were present, more than any country’s single delegation, and more than the total number of representatives from the most climate vulnerable nations combined (source).

This was not a flaw in the process. This was the process. Inside the Blue Zone, oil executives and carbon traders ran panels while Indigenous people were shut out. The industries fueling climate collapse were prioritized. Frontline communities were left with surveillance, side events, or silence. COP26 didn’t just accommodate fossil fuel power, it handed it a badge and a microphone. Oil companies secured deeper access through sponsorships and side events, pushing carbon markets and voluntary commitments instead of binding action.

At COP28, there were approximately 2,456 fossil fuel lobbyists, over 900 more than the total number of delegates from the ten most climate vulnerable countries, which numbered around 1,500 (source). Indigenous people and other climate activists made up only a small fraction of that number. The UAE’s state oil company had access to summit emails (source), while COP28 president Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber used his power to pursue $100 billion in oil and gas deals (source).

During COP29 the fossil fuel industry dominated the conversation. They bought access by sponsoring events, and shaped the entire agenda. Chevron, BP, ExxonMobil, Shell, Glencore and TotalEnergies pushed carbon trading schemes and false climate solutions while the planet burned (source). This was never about protecting the environment. Indigenous and frontline activists were pushed aside and silenced. COP29 made it clear: these summits serve capital, not people. COP30 is accelerating the greenwashing that is central to COP.

As the international spotlight shines on the Amazon, the greenwashing only intensifies. From November 10-21 COP30 will take place in Belém, the capital of Pará, Brazil in the heart of the Amazon. The summit is being presented as a milestone for climate action while politicians fast track the destruction of the environment. During a visit to Pará in August 2023, President Lula said: “I leave Pará with the certainty that we are going to hold the best COP in history (source). But what is the reality? What does COP30 mean for the people actually living in the Amazon? Who is it really for?

As COP30 draws attention to the Amazon, corporate greenwashing takes many forms. On September 17th, the mining company Vale S.A. and Rock in Rio hosted the music festival “Amazon Forever” (source). The festival was a thinly veiled attempt to sanitize the image of a mining giant with a legacy of poisoning and displacing Indigenous communities in Indonesia (source) and the Brazilian Amazon. In February 2025, Brazil’s Federal Prosecutor’s Office filed a lawsuit against Vale, the Brazilian government, and the state of Pará over heavy metal contamination found in the Xikrin Indigenous people. A Federal University of Pará study revealed dangerously high levels of lead, mercury, and nickel in the hair of nearly all 720 individuals surveyed in the Xikrin do Cateté Indigenous Territory.

This contamination is linked to Vale’s nickel mining operations at Onça-Puma, which polluted the Cateté River, a vital water source for the community. Despite an agreement in 2022 for monthly compensation, health concerns were unaddressed, prompting legal action demanding a permanent health monitoring program and environmental oversight. Vale disputes responsibility, claiming its operations aren’t to blame and that it monitors water quality around its sites (source).

In Pará, a COP30 project called Nova Doca dumps waste in poor Black neighborhoods while sewage systems serve the rich. Untreated sewage flows into local waters. This is environmental racism masked by greenwashing (source).

The contradictions run so deep that even sacred guardians are being turned into COP30’s mascot. Curupira, a forest guardian whose feet face backwards to mislead hunters and invaders, has been chosen as the official mascot for COP30 (source). This choice feels like a mockery of Curupira. The government is pushing laws opening the door for land grabs, extraction, and displacement. Forests continue to burn. Curupira is not a mascot. Curupira does not forgive those who harm the forest. He takes revenge, and many attending COP30 would be the exact people he would take revenge on.

COP30 is sold as a celebration of the Amazon, but the laws and destructive projects being pushed through tell a different story. The government fast tracked construction of Avenida Liberdade, a four lane highway that will cut through Indigenous and Quilombola territories (source).

Quilombola are descendants of enslaved Africans who made Brazil their home, preserving their culture and freedom in remote areas. They have distinct identities and legal rights to their lands, which are constantly threatened by land grabs and development. They have stood in mutual solidarity with Indigenous peoples in Brazil, fighting together to defend their territories and cultures against exploitation.

In Brazil, highways often cut through these lands. BR-163 cuts through Pará and Mato Grosso, built to move soy and used by land grabbers and illegal loggers. BR-319, set to be repaved through the Amazon, threatens dozens of communities with invasion and displacement. These roads don’t bring protection or progress, they bring violence and destruction. One recent incident occurred in December 2024, when Guarani Kaiowá and Terena communities protesting for basic access to drinking water faced violent repression by police forces who could quickly mobilize thanks to these roads (source). Such infrastructure facilitates state violence against Indigenous resistance, widening the threats faced by these communities.

As a Lakota, seeing brutalization of Guarani Kaiowá and Terena at the hands of military police for protesting for water painfully echoed the fight at Standing Rock. Water is sacred. Water is life. Violence is no accident, it’s embedded into law.

Indigenous and Quilombola territories remain under threat and await proper demarcation. The Brazilian Senate passed bills that threaten land rights. In May, they approved PL 2159/21, the Devastation Bill, which dismantles Brazil’s environmental licensing system, making it easier for corporations to push through destructive projects. It accelerates deforestation, putting 32.6% of Indigenous lands and 80.1% of Quilombola territories at risk. On the final day permitted by law, President Lula vetoed 63 of the bill’s nearly 400 provisions, including clauses that would have allowed medium-impact projects to bypass full environmental review and provisions that would have excluded Indigenous and Quilombola communities from consultation. While these vetoes preserve some environmental protections, the law still allows the federal government to accelerate certain ‘strategic’ projects, leaving communities and ecosystems at continued risk (source).

Lula recently approved an offshore oil drilling project near the mouth of the Amazon River, signaling continued support for fossil fuel extraction even as COP30 approaches (source). This decision highlights the tension between Brazil’s role as host of a major climate summit and its ongoing promotion of environmentally destructive projects. Days after the Senate approved the Devastation Bill, PL 717/24 was approved (source). If it becomes law, it would suspend the demarcation of Indigenous and Quilombola lands, including Imbuh and Morro dos Cavalos.

In April, after decades of struggle, the Guarani Mbya finally had Morro dos Cavalos officially recognized, but that recognition is already under threat.

Helder Barbalho, Governor of Pará, is a driving force behind many issues linked to COP30. Under his administration, public funds are funneled into symbolic projects like fake metal trees in Belém, while forests are cleared for the Avenida Liberdade highway, which cuts through Indigenous and Quilombola territories. He inherited a political machine built to protect elites and reward exploitation from his father.

Barbalho is using the summit to push the lie of his self-proclaimed title of “Green Governor.” In September 2024, during New York Climate Week, he made a $180 million carbon credit deal with the LEAF Coalition, involving Amazon and the Walmart Foundation. Helder claimed Indigenous participation, but 38 organizations from Pará publicly denounced the lack of consultation. The deal, aiming to sell 12 million tons of credits, faces legal challenges for violating Brazilian law and pre-selling carbon without consulting them (source).

Barbalho drapes himself in the image of the Amazon while pushing its destruction through agribusiness, mining, logging, and infrastructure. His inherited corruption fuels land grabbing and deforestation. According to his 2022 disclosure, he owns over 6,000 head of cattle valued at about $2.87 million (combining $2.5 million for cattle and $370,000 share in Agropecuária Rio Branco), with total assets near $3.9 million (source).

The hypocrisy of politicians like Barbalho, who present themselves as champions of the environment, mirrors what happens on the global stage, just as what Txai Suruí, an Indigenous leader and activist from Brazil experienced during COP16, the United Nations Biodiversity Conference held in Cali, Colombia in 2024. While COP16 focused on biodiversity under the Convention on Biological Diversity process, COP30 continues that agenda under a different frame. Both are UN environmental summits addressing overlapping and inseparable issues.

At COP16, Txai Suruí was protesting against Marco Temporal, a dangerous, anti-Indigenous legal argument in Brazil that threatens Indigenous land rights by claiming only lands occupied before 1988 should be recognized. All of Brazil is, and always has been Indigenous land. During the protest, she described how a UN security guard grabbed her arm. “She grabbed me by the arm and my hands are painted red, which symbolizes our blood. And she said: you got me dirty. Then she twisted my arm. That’s when I started screaming for help. I was scared, I didn’t expect it.” According to Txai, she and other activists had their badges forcibly removed and they were detained in a COP security room (source). Txai and other protesters complied with demands, but they were still met with violence and detained, having their badges temporarily stripped. This violence and repression illustrate the ongoing struggles Indigenous peoples face, not only politically with attacks like Marco Temporal but also physically, even within international forums that claim to protect biodiversity and the climate.

As Indigenous leaders continue to resist the corporate and political forces shaping COP30, their frustration is expressed in clear and uncompromising words. Auricélia Arapiuns, president of COIAB (Coordenação das Organizações Indígenas da Amazônia Brasileira), stated:

“COP30 is as much a farce as the Governor of this state, who is a farce. And it’s a farce that attacks the rights of Indigenous peoples and nature every day.”

Her words capture the deep mistrust many Indigenous peoples hold toward a summit that claims to protect the Amazon while allowing continued exploitation.

Aílton Krenak, Indigenous leader and philosopher, has criticized the use of the Amazon as symbolic cover for climate inaction. In an interview with Cenarium in February 2025, he stated: “The Amazon cannot be the symbol of COP30. It is the territory where this global event will take place, but it will very likely come at a high social cost. I do not imagine that local communities will receive direct benefits from this event.” He warned that turning the Amazon into a symbol erases the lives, cultures, and resistance of its peoples, substituting deep structural justice with superficial branding. For Krenak, framing the Amazon as a symbol while extractive policies continue is not just cynical. It is a betrayal of the forest’s living communities and ancestral knowledge.

Alessandra Korap Munduruku has called COP30 what it is: a violation and a betrayal of land and people. At TEDxAmazônia in Belém, she denounced COP30 and the empty promises behind the summit:

“We realize that we, Indigenous peoples, are sick because of mining, because of mercury. Every time we sit with researchers, they say women’s breast milk is contaminated with mercury, women’s wombs are contaminated with mercury. This shouldn’t exist. But what solution will they bring? Will COP bring this solution?”

“We know it’s 30 years of COP, but what we see is a COP of business, agreements, parties, festivals, not solving the problems happening in the territory. They are trying to erase us, but we keep fighting, speaking, shouting, so they hear the needs of Indigenous peoples, Quilombola peoples, and traditional peoples. It is our duty to shout, and their obligation to act.” Korap is not just rejecting commodification. She is naming the lie: the Amazon is being used to sell the illusion of climate justice, while the people who have defended it for generations are silenced, sidelined, or sold out.

COP30, like its predecessors, must be scrutinized through this lens. Indigenous peoples continue to resist both political and physical violence while fighting to protect their territories and ways of life. You cannot talk about climate justice while threatening the rights of the people who have protected these ecosystems for centuries. You cannot continue to exploit and exclude the Global South while pushing false solutions, deepening debt, and criminalizing resistance.