16 Feb 2026 COP 30, Belém: Declaration of the Peoples’ Summit

Excerpt

We, the Peoples’ Summit, gathered in Belém do Pará, in the Brazilian Amazon, from 12 to 16 November 2025, declare to the peoples of the world what we have accumulated in struggles, debates, studies, exchanges of experiences, cultural activities and testimonies, over several months of preparation and during these days gathered here.

After more than two years of collective construction and holding the People’s Summit, we affirm:

1. The capitalist mode of production is the main cause of the growing climate crisis. The main environmental problems of our time are a consequence of the relations of production, circulation, and disposal of goods, under the logic and domination of financial capital and large capitalist corporations.

2. Peripheral communities are the most affected by extreme weather events and environmental racism. On the one hand, they face a lack of infrastructure and adaptation policies. On the other hand, they face a lack of justice and reparations, especially for women, young people, impoverished people, and people of colour.

3. Transnational corporations, in collusion with governments in the Global North, are at the centre of power in the capitalist, racist and patriarchal system, being the actors that most cause and benefit from the multiple crises we face. The mining, energy, arms, agribusiness and Big Tech industries are primarily responsible for the climate catastrophe we are experiencing.

4. We oppose any false solutions to the climate crisis, including in climate finance, that perpetuate harmful practices, create unpredictable risks, and divert attention from transformative solutions based on climate justice and the justice of peoples in all biomes and ecosystems. We warn that the TFFF, being a financialised programme, is not an adequate response. All financial projects must be subject to criteria of transparency, democratic access, participation and real benefit for affected populations.

5. The failure of the current model of multilateralism is evident. Environmental crimes and extreme weather events that cause death and destruction are becoming increasingly common. This demonstrates the failure of countless global conferences and meetings that promised to solve these problems but never addressed their structural causes.

6. The energy transition is being implemented under capitalist logic. Despite the expansion of renewable sources, there has been no reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The expansion of energy production sources has also become a new space for capital accumulation.

7. Finally, we affirm that the privatisation, commodification and financialization of commons and public services are directly contrary to the interests of the people. In this context, laws, state institutions and the vast majority of governments have been captured, shaped and subordinated to the pursuit of maximum profit by financial capital and transnational corporations. Public policies are needed to advance the recovery of states and tackle privatisation.

A WACC-supported team of 11 community media reporters was on the ground at the United Nations climate change conference COP30. Their mission? To unpack why communication justice must be at the heart of climate justice. Led by partners Latin American Network of Radio Education – ALER in Ecuador and Amazon Radio Network – RNA in Brazil, the reporters raised the voices of communities hardest hit by climate change. Photo: WACC.

In the face of these challenges, we propose:

1. Confronting false market solutions. Air, forests, water, land, minerals, and energy sources cannot remain private property or be appropriated, because they are common goods of the people.

2. We demand the participation and leadership of peoples in the construction of climate solutions, recognising ancestral knowledge. The multidiversity of cultures and worldviews carries ancestral wisdom and knowledge that states must recognise as references for solutions to the multiple crises afflicting humanity and Mother Nature.

3. We demand the demarcation and protection of the lands and territories of indigenous peoples and other local peoples and communities, as they are the ones who guarantee the survival of the forest. We demand that governments implement zero deforestation, end criminal burning, and adopt state policies for ecological restoration and recovery of areas degraded and affected by the climate crisis.

4. We demand the implementation of popular agrarian reform and the promotion of agroecology to guarantee food sovereignty and combat land concentration. Peoples produce healthy food to feed the people, in order to eliminate hunger in the world, based on cooperation and access to techniques and technologies under popular control.

5. We demand the fight against environmental racism and the construction of fair cities and living peripheries through the implementation of environmental policies and solutions. Housing, sanitation, water access and use, solid waste treatment, afforestation, and access to land and land regularisation programmes must consider integration with nature. We want investment in quality public and collective transport policies with zero fares. These are real alternatives for tackling the climate crisis in peripheral territories around the world, which must be implemented with adequate funding for climate adaptation.

6. We advocate direct consultation, participation, and popular management of climate policies in cities to confront real estate corporations that have advanced the commodification of urban life. The city of climate and energy transition should be a city without segregation that embraces diversity. Finally, climate financing should be conditional on protocols that aim at housing permanence and, ultimately, fair compensation for people and communities with guaranteed land and housing, both in the countryside and in cities.

7. We demand an end to wars, we demand demilitarisation. That all financial resources allocated to wars and the war industry be redirected to the transformation of this world. That military spending be directed towards the repair and recovery of regions affected by climate disasters. That all necessary measures be taken to hold Israel accountable for the genocide committed against the Palestinian people.

8. We demand fair and full compensation for the losses and damages imposed on peoples by destructive investment projects, dams, mining, fossil fuel extraction, and climate disasters. We also demand that those guilty of economic and socio-environmental crimes that affect millions of communities and families around the world be tried and punished.

9. The work of reproducing life must be made visible, valued, understood for what it is – work – and shared by society as a whole and with the state. This work is essential for the continuity of human and non-human life on the planet. It also guarantees the autonomy of women, who cannot be held individually responsible for care, but whose contributions must be taken into account: our work sustains the economy.

10. We demand a just, sovereign and popular transition that guarantees the rights of all workers, as well as the right to decent working conditions, freedom of association, collective bargaining and social protection. We consider energy to be a common good and advocate for the overcoming of poverty and energy dependence. Neither the energy model nor the transition itself can violate the sovereignty of any country in the world.

11. We demand an end to the exploitation of fossil fuels and call on governments to develop mechanisms to ensure the non-proliferation of fossil fuels, aiming for a just, popular and inclusive energy transition with sovereignty, protection and reparation for territories, particularly in the Amazon and other sensitive regions that are essential for life on the planet.

12. We fight for public financing and taxation of corporations and the wealthiest individuals. The costs of environmental degradation and losses imposed on populations must be paid by the sectors that benefit most from this model. This includes financial funds, banks, and corporations in agribusiness, hydrobusiness, aquaculture and industrial fishing, energy, and mining. These actors must also bear the necessary investments for a just transition focused on the needs of the people.

13. We demand that international climate financing not go through institutions that deepen inequality between North and South, such as the IMF and the World Bank. It must be structured in a fair, transparent, and democratic manner. It is not the peoples and countries of the global South that should continue to pay debts to the dominant powers. It is these countries and their corporations that need to begin to pay off the socio-environmental debt accumulated through centuries of imperialist, colonialist and racist practices, through the appropriation of common goods and through the violence imposed on millions of people who have been killed and enslaved.

14. We denounce the ongoing criminalisation of movements, the persecution, murder and disappearance of our leaders who fight in defence of their territories, as well as political prisoners and Palestinian prisoners who fight for national liberation. We demand the expansion of protection for human and socio-environmental rights defenders in the global climate agenda, within the framework of the Escazú Agreement and other regional regulations. When a defender protects the territory and nature, they protect not only an individual, but an entire people, benefiting the entire global community.

15. We call for the strengthening of international instruments that defend the rights of peoples, their customary rights and the integrity of ecosystems. We need a legally binding international instrument on human rights and transnational corporations, which is built on the concrete reality of the struggles of communities affected by violations, demanding rights for peoples and rules for corporations. We also affirm that the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) should be one of the pillars of climate governance. The full implementation of peasants’ rights returns people to their territories, directly contributing to their food security, soil care and the cooling of the planet.

Finally, we believe that it is time to unite our forces and face our common enemy.

Posted on 19 November 2025. Also available in Español and Français.