16 Feb 2026 Brazil’s economy is doing well, but the people of the Amazon are paying a high price

Edilberto M. Sena 

Suddenly, the Amazon becomes the centre of the world by hosting COP30 in Belém, which is symbolically declared the country’s capital. Millions of reais were spent on decorating the venue, even though the outskirts of the capital, with 1.3 million inhabitants, remain in poverty without basic sanitation.

Amazonia is where the largest tropical rainforest on the planet is located, but in the previous 29 COPs little was accomplished, and today we are experiencing a climate crisis that is approaching catastrophe. Another fact that justifies this COP30 taking place in the Amazonia is that it is home to the largest tropical rainforest on the planet, and the forest is one of the main filters of the poisonous pollution that is destabilizing the coexistence between humans and nature. For many, like me, there is scepticism about the results of COP30 that can curb the destruction of the planet.

My expectation lies outside the so-called blue line of COP30, where only heads of state and their advisors are. Outside the blue line are the various social movements organized into three more resistant groups: the People’s Summit, the People’s COP, and the Association of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, APIB. It is with the union of various national and international civil society organizations that sufficient pressure can arise for solutions to the climate crisis to move from good intentions to strategic practices.

Why does it seem so difficult for the Brazilian State to make decisions that will at least save the Amazonia and help save the planet? Since Amazonia, in addition to having the largest tropical forest on the planet, also has an immense network of hydrographic basins, rooted in the largest river on the planet, the Amazonas river, and about 30 million inhabitants living here. There are some reasons for this scepticism about COP30.

First, Brazil, today the tenth most powerful economy on the planet, follows the development ideology of the global north. This path builds our wealth within the colonialist vision of seeking development. The ideology of developmentalism, which divides the world between north and south, where countries in the South are encouraged to follow a path of growth to one day become developed. Thus, Brazil is still an underdeveloped country compared to Canada, the United Kingdon, and others in the North.

To reach the dreamed-of stage of a developed country, our country invests in a predatory extractive economy. For example, government funding for the 2025/26 agricultural harvest is 625 billion reais (5.35 billion dollars) for agribusiness and only 78 billion reais (14.79 billion dollars) for family farming. This is because, to sustain the country’s economy, the export of primary products, soybeans, corn, meat, etc., to the international market justifies the disparity in support for the government, even knowing that family farming is what supplies the tables of Brazilians.

And then we return to the outcome of COP 30 in the Amazon. While our government attempts to do something positive in defence of the climate, such as proposing the large TFFF (Tropical Forest Forever Facility) project, it is contested because it is a project that depends heavily on the “generosity” of other countries, in addition to depending on investment funds that will make profitable business by investing in the conservation of other people’s forests in the global south. Others wonder what the difference is between TFFF and carbon credits? Especially since the resources of the Forest Forever Facility will be managed by the World Bank.

Another aspect that makes us sceptical of the success of yet another COP

Shortly before the COP in Belém, the federal government forced the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) to authorize oil exploration in the sea at the mouth of the Amazon River. This is another project that is essentially contradictory, as it expands the exploitation of the largest generator of CO2 in nature, oil. A few months before COP30, IBAMA was led to approve a test of oil exploration in the sea near the mouth of the Amazon River. President Lula’s statement that it would be necessary to explore for oil off the coast of the state of Amapá and use the oil revenue to care for the environment, reveals exactly the underdeveloped mentality of wanting to advance development by exploiting nature.

We the Tapajós Vivo MTV Movement are part of the resistance in search of another alternative world. As our Amazon News Network association RNA, we seek the path of Good Living, a legacy of our ancestors. At the same time, we are active with the Amazon News Network (RNA), using communication as an instrument for sharing social struggles and denouncing attacks on the environment. For 18 years, we have collectively built a way to generate information from the Amazon, for the Amazon, from social activists spread across seven of the nine states in the region.

First, the Tapajós Vivo Movement has been building a strategy to confront projects that seek income and profit at the expense of nature. This includes both the predatory exploitation of gold in mining operations in the Tapajós River region, and the exploitation of the Tapajós River as an object of capitalist income. While the federal government planned to build seven large hydroelectric dams along the Tapajós River, an absurd project that violated the great Tapajós River under the guise of generating clean energy, which was a lie. The resistance of the Munduruku people and our social movements managed to shelve this disastrous project.

We won that battle, but others followed. More recently, with the BR-163 highway connecting the centre of grain, soy, and corn plantations in the state of Mato Grosso to the Tapajós River here in the neighbouring city of Itaituba, another source of enrichment for agribusiness exporters has opened up. A huge grain port has already been built in front of the city of Santarém by the multinational CARGILL, and in the last 10 years, grain exporting companies have decided, complicit with the Brazilian State, to build seven large ports in front of the city of Itaituba, from where they send convoys of barges loaded with grain via the Tapajós River, heading to ocean ports for the international market.

Thus, it became more economical and more profitable for grain exporters, taking over the beautiful Tapajós River. Can you imagine seven companies, each with their convoys of barges pushed by a tugboat, each convoy about 200 meters long and 70 meters wide, dominating the river’s route, without respecting fishermen, passenger boats, and riverside residents? All in the name of progress and the national economy? How will COP30 confront the capital that uses and abuses the Amazonian territory?

Building awareness among activists

The MTV Popular Movement, along with indigenous movements and other resistance movements, has been active in resistance, utilizing a pedagogical approach focused on building awareness, following the methodology of the great master Paulo Freire, in an attempt to motivate social activists who suffer most from this colonialist invasion. We combine the practice of exerting pressure on public authorities with the critical consciousness-building program for other social activists in the region.

Simultaneously RNA is an association of 20 radio stations committed to decolonizing information. To this end, the directors of the radio stations have created a communication manual, which defines: the generation of content, the language respecting the distinct cultures in the various regions of the Amazon, seeking to generate news of the struggles and pressures suffered by the activists in the areas of the member stations, and denouncing attacks on the environment. Therefore, RNA does not broadcast news generated by the internet, nor by stations in the South or Northeast of the country.

In addition to a 30-minute news program from Monday to Friday, concluded with a specific editorial, RNA offers a 30-minute radio magazine once a week. Both programs are broadcast by all 20 stations. According to our provisional calculations, due to a lack of more comprehensive audience research, but taking into account the reach of each of the 20 partner stations spread across seven states in the region, we imagine that around 3 million residents of the Amazon listen to news or hear the RNA radio magazine once a week. For us activists of the Amazon News Network, this is a source of joy and motivation to continue this struggle.

Conclusion

Conducting communication in the Amazonia is a great challenge, especially generating information that respects the rights of social activists and Mother Nature, who is also a subject of rights. Even so, we are present, committed to combining the practice of resistance by popular movements, as we tried with the Tapajós Vivo Movement; and cultivating a communication model with an impact on the lives of social activists in the vast and challenging Amazon. Our ongoing revolution does not intend to change the capitalist system in isolation, but we join other civil society movements to influence the arena in the struggle for the right to live in a way other than the exploitative capitalist system.

Edilberto Francisco Moura Sena is a member of the Amazon News Network and of the People’s socio-environmental movement Tapajós Vivo.