The COP30 climate summit, to be held this year in Belém, the ‘capital’ city of the Brazilian Amazon, comes at a critical moment, providing an opportunity to depart from the path of climate colonialism, end fossil fuel expansion, confront agribusiness and mining, and see the Amazon as a warning, a teacher and a mirror. But it risks becoming a spectacle of exclusion, greenwashing and government ‘performance’.
A shorter version of this article was published in El País on 4 August 2025.
I have just returned from Atalaia do Norte, in the Brazilian Amazon, where I stood on 5 June by the Javari River to honour the memories of my friends Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira, who were brutally murdered there for their unwavering defense of Indigenous rights and the Amazon.
What I witnessed there was not just remembrance; it was a stark reminder of what is at stake: the lives of humans and of nature, Indigenous territories, and the right to dream of an Amazon beyond the pillage of capitalist extraction. Their mission, to listen to Indigenous voices and defend the forest, continues to guide those of us who believe the Amazon is not a resource to be exploited, but a living, breathing archive of ancestral knowledge, dignity, and resistance.
COP30 is not my first confrontation with the dissonance between what climate summits promise and what they deliver. I denounced the spectacle of COP26 in Glasgow as ‘Cognitive Disconnections’ and later questioned the dangerous assumption that Indigenous peoples alone can shoulder the burden of planetary survival in ‘Indigenous Peoples Cannot Be Solely Responsible.’
Symbolic performance or structural change?
What I saw in those spaces, and what I now see in the lead-up to COP30, compels me to speak again, as COP30 risks becoming yet another stage for symbolic performance rather than meaningful structural change.
I have walked both the halls of global summits and the flooded trails of the forest, and I have listened. What I hear is not the corporate pledges, but the ancestral warnings: that we must ‘learn to unlearn’ and embrace collective, relational modes of existence if we are to survive this crisis.
‘People need to learn from Indigenous peoples that only collective, community thinking, not individual greed, can save the Amazon.’
Dom Phillips
Dom Phillips’ words (published posthumously in his book How to Save the Amazon, carry added urgency today. The Amazon does not need another showpiece summit centered around a spectacle of world leaders disengaged from the reality of the Amazon. It needs action rooted in care, justice, and respect for the forest’s original stewards.
The forest is our future. Without a future for our youth, the forest dies too.
As César Marubo, an Indigenous leader, told me during my recent visit: ‘The forest is our future. Without a future for our youth, the forest dies too.’ What I have witnessed in the Amazon is not just environmental degradation, but the erosion of meaning, of belonging. The crisis is not only ecological, but also civilizational.
The price of exclusion
As COP30 approaches, the world’s eyes turn to Belém, and to the staggering cost of hotel beds, reportedly up to three times higher than in Glasgow during COP26. It is a bitter irony that these extortionate charges mirror the very predatory capitalism that is destroying the Amazon in its inexorable pursuit of financial gain. This is not just a matter of inflated cost; it is about exclusion. Delegates from poorer nations and grassroots civil society organizations, many of whom represent the communities most affected by the climate crisis, are being priced out of participation.
If Belém becomes a playground for the privileged, the Amazon will once again be commodified as a spectacle.
What kind of climate justice is possible when the cost of attending the ‘People’s COP’ in Belém – the parallel forum for NGOs and popular organizations – will range from US $8,400 to $16,800 per person? When even the per diem allowance for United Nations staff covers only a fraction of the nightly rates? If Belém becomes a playground for the privileged, the Amazon will once again be commodified as a spectacle, its rivers, peoples, and ecosystems turned into decor for diplomatic posturing. Climate governance cannot be auctioned to the highest bidder. If COP30 excludes the very voices it claims to uplift, it will not be a summit of solutions, but a symbol of hypocrisy.
Amazônia Latitude’s video appeal to Lula, President Lula: How Many more times Does the Forest Need to Scream’ can be viewed here.
Beneath the official rhetoric of sustainability and innovation lies an uncomfortable truth: Brazil’s staging of this global climate summit risks reproducing the very extractivist legacy it claims to challenge. Unless radically reimagined, COP30 will be yet another polished spectacle, yet another climate trade show, yet another fruitless discussion filled with empty promises rather than the transformative gathering our planet, and particularly the Amazon and its people, so urgently need.
Negotiation or Performance?
As the recent ‘United Call for an Urgent Reform of the UN Climate Talks’ reminds us, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process has consistently failed to deliver meaningful outcomes. Emissions continue to rise. Indigenous and traditional communities remain sidelined. The Amazon ecosystem, a crucial planetary regulator, is on the brink.
Meanwhile, over the past 30 years, COP summits have grown into media spectacles, massive, performative, and often hollow. With lavish pavilions, glossy campaigns, and corporate branding, the Blue Zone has become a climate-themed marketplace, increasingly detached from the communities most affected by ecological collapse. This is not mere optics, it is a political failure.
A recent investigation by The New York Times revealed that the number of participants at climate summits has grown exponentially. COP28 in Dubai saw more than 70,000 attendees, with fossil fuel lobbyists, corporations, and government delegations dominating the event. Far from signaling progress, this bloated attendance reflects the widening gap between decision-makers and the frontline communities most affected by the climate crisis.
The Amazon Is Not a Backdrop
Belém is not just a city; it is a gateway to one of the most complex and threatened biomes on Earth. Holding COP30 in the Amazon is, in itself, a powerful statement and provides a remarkable opportunity to shift the narrative, to re-center Indigenous knowledge, reimagine governance, and elevate biocultural alternatives to extraction.
But how can this happen if fossil fuel companies sponsor the largest pavilions? If the Brazilian government auctions off offshore blocks to oil companies along the Amazon coast? If the same Indigenous communities that defend the forest are invited to perform on stage but are silenced at the negotiating table? If policy reform is discussed in air-conditioned tents while just a few miles away rivers flood and forests burn?
We must ask: Who benefits from COP30 as it is currently envisioned? Who is truly heard, and who is invited merely to perform? Could COP30 become the turning point that it should be, or will it be just another rehearsal in a theatre of contradictions?
Fix Governance, Not the Optics
The Brazilian government has touted ‘innovation in governance’ at this COP, through decentralized forums, task forces, and a multi-actor mutirão, or collective effort. While this signals openness, many within civil society fear dilution. There is little clarity about who is accountable, what decision-making structures exist, and how grassroots knowledge will be valued.
Indigenous groups and allies have long called for direct funding mechanisms, stronger participation in climate governance, and recognition of their own NDCs (nationally determined contributions). These are not symbolic demands. They provide a foundation for any fair transition.
If COP30 fails to meaningfully integrate these voices, if it continues to serve the diplomatic choreography of elite actors and corporations, it will not only fall short of its policy goals but will further erode trust in global climate processes.
A chance to place Climate Justice at the Centre
In Belém, we have the chance to depart from the path of climate colonialism. To reject the model in which the Global South becomes a showroom for the grammar book of ‘bioeconomies’ and ‘green growth’ while extraction continues under new guises.
Real climate action must dismantle the structures that created the crisis. That means ending fossil fuel expansion. It means confronting agribusiness and mining interests. It means seeing Indigenous knowledge not as complementary, but as central.
A warning, a teacher and a mirror
To achieve this we need a COP built on accountability, equity, and radical listening, a COP that enshrines Indigenous territorial rights, ends fossil fuel subsidies, and opens itself up to non-state actors in more than symbolic ways.
Let us not allow COP30 to become another climate carnival. Let it be a rupture. A moment where the Amazon speaks not from the sidelines, but from the center of the world stage. Where Indigenous peoples do not decorate pavilions but shape agendas. Where the legacy left behind is not just roads and repainted museums, but governance models rooted in care, relationality, and planetary repair.
The Amazon is not a destination. It is a warning, a teacher, and a mirror. And it will not wait.
If we allow COP30 to become a spectacle of exclusion, greenwashing, and government performance it will not be just a political failure, but a wholesale betrayal. A betrayal of those who have fought and died asking How to Save the Amazon.
Dom Phillips believed the answers were already there, in Indigenous stewardship, in collective responsibility, in learning to unlearn. If we ignore these lessons in Belém, we risk not just failing the forest and its Peoples, we risk losing our last chance to truly listen to it.
Marcos Colón is the Southwest Borderlands Initiative Professor of Media and Indigenous Communities at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He is also the author of LAB book The Amazon in Times of War (2024) and the organizer of Utopias Amazônicas (2025).
