Comment , | 12/03/2025 : The Long Road to Solving the Climate Crisis

Only nine kilometres separated the UN climate summit’s convention centre from the parallel summit, Cúpula dos Povos. The feared traffic chaos in the Amazonian metropolis of Belém never materialized. This meant that little more than 20 minutes by car separated the air-conditioned halls of COP30 from the hot, humid UFPA campus on the banks of the Guamá River, where civil society presented its vision for ambitious climate policy. In terms of content, however, it felt like two vastly distant worlds. The political demands and proposed solutions from the social movements were so different — and significantly more ambitious — that any connection to the official COP agenda was scarcely discernible, despite the shared theme of how to halt the severe climate crisis.

The Perspective of the Global South

Over 20,000 people took part in the parallel summit. During large plenary sessions in the morning and numerous working groups in the afternoon, all topics related to the environment, climate, exploitation, discrimination, and social injustice were discussed and summarized in a final declaration spanning several pages. It was evident that participants from Latin America, and especially those from the host country Brazil, made up a strong majority. Consequently, the protection of territories — the living conditions of traditional peoples such as Indigenous communities and Quilombolas (descendants of formerly enslaved people) — as well as protecting nature from commodification were central topics. The concept of environmental racism (racismo ambiental), which describes the link between social discrimination and heightened vulnerability to the impacts of the climate crisis, was a common theme.

Front and centre was the perspective of the Global South, which does not always align with the climate-policy ideas of activists in the North. Large-scale energy-transition projects — huge wind farms or green hydrogen production plants — are criticized as misguided, since they lead to displacement and environmental destruction and therefore cannot be regarded as a “just transition”. Even the simple shift from combustion engines to electric cars has beencriticized as wholly inadequate. Instead, mobility is to be fundamentally rethought — and, above all, must be conceived in ways that are not individual. Another concept that featured prominently was green colonialism, the notion that international climate protection tends to replicate the historical exploitation of the South’s resources, enabling the North to become climate-neutral according to its own, self-interested criteria without genuinely changing its lifestyle or modes of production. The RLS has also contributed to this debate with the publication Green at Home, Harm Abroad and through its own events. 

The social movements gathered in Belém have succeeded in challenging the previously uncontested dominance of the UN forum.

Thus, the climate-policy consensus between the two parallel conferences in Belém is increasingly confined to the basic starting point: CO₂ emissions must be drastically reduced, and living conditions must be adapted to the climatic changes already underway. But there is growing disagreement over how this should be achieved. On their home turf, NGOs and social movements at the Cúpula dos Povos — where they did not have to face any serious counter-arguments — increasingly reached the conclusion that the global climate crisis cannot be solved through the continued plundering of nature, the usual disregard for social justice or, more broadly, within the capitalist economic system itself.

Two Sides of the Same Coin?

Such a radical divide does not necessarily serve the climate-policy debate. Yet the host country, Brazil, has shown that bridges are needed and can indeed be built. High-ranking government officials received the recommendations of the parallel summit at its closing plenary and pledged to incorporate them into the discussions in the sealed-off Blue Zone of COP30. There, one sees far less consensus than at the civil-society summit. That is only to be expected, given that nearly 200 countries, acting on the basis of the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change founded in Rio de Janeiro, are constantly seeking to shape international climate policy according to their own national interests and the political priorities of their respective governments. By design, the Convention aims only at the lowest common denominator, since decisions can only be adopted by consensus, without a single dissenting vote. Once adopted, however, they are — at least in theory — legally binding for every participating country and therefore carry significant weight.

In this respect, the considerable gulf between the positions of the UN negotiators and the assembled climate activists is not surprising, but rather resembles two sides of the same coin. However, the social movements gathered in Belém have succeeded in challenging the previously uncontested dominance of the UN forum. This is due not only to the accelerating climate damage that demands urgent action, and to the fact that apparently only radical solutions and alternatives can meet the scientific community’s uncontested call for drastic CO₂-emission reductions. It is also because many governments in the North — which bear primary responsibility for climate policy, including Germany’s governing coalition — tend to prioritize economic growth and military armament far more than the reduction of greenhouse gases. This, in turn, is contributing to the growing delegitimization of the COP process relative to civil-society initiatives.

The Wrong Priority: REDD+ Projects

One example that illustrates the gap between the two approaches is CO₂ trading using credits from REDD+ projects — essentially treating trees as carbon sinks to be monetized. At the parallel summit, this was was denounced as a “false solution”, with numerous arguments cited in support. Many studies were cited showing that these carbon credits, in fact, account for less than ten percent of the reductions they claim. The calculation of these savings is based on fundamentally dubious assumptions and bears no relation to the duration of the actual emissions they are meant to offset. Moreover, REDD+ projects often lead to the uprooting or outright displacement of the very people living in these territories, who have historically protected the forest far better than market mechanisms or dubious intermediaries that, lacking expertise, pocket a large share of the funds invested — for example, the German development bank Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW). Another point of criticism is the division among Indigenous peoples: some hope for the promised (but often absent) financial windfall of REDD+, while others fight to ensure that their rights, especially the consultation rights enshrined in the ILO Convention 169, are respected. Not to mention that trading carbon credits from the Global South also inherently means that more greenhouse gases are pumped into the atmosphere in the North instead of maximizing emission reductions there.

Despite the critical state of the climate on a global scale, the parallel summit and the civil society mobilized in Belém can look back on a positive outcome.

REDD+ critics even offer a simple alternative that has been tried and tested for decades: instead of the questionable commodification of nature, it would be far more effective — and far more agreeable for everyone involved — to expand policies on legally protected Indigenous territories. That would provide unambiguous forest protection at a fraction of the cost of REDD+. Yet at the COP, this mechanism has long been established policy and is even being expanded. The EU is also relying on such questionable carbon credits for its already inadequate climate targets (NDCs), which ultimately amounts to no real reduction in emissions. The prevailing view at the Cúpula dos Povos regarding REDD+ is that, in the best-case scenario, there is no reduction in CO₂ emissions. In the worst case, these projects lead to the displacement of Indigenous inhabitants and, in the medium term, to deforestation in supposedly protected areas.

Positive Outcome for the Parallel Summit

Despite the critical state of the climate on a global scale, the parallel summit and the civil society mobilized in Belém can look back on a positive outcome. Those who attended gained renewed energy for the challenges ahead and returned home with new ideas. It was clear that this was the first COP to be held in the Amazon region: Indigenous peoples and their perspectives were constantly present, and not only in the media. Many in the Blue Zone felt empowered by the vocal activists who expressed their dissatisfaction at the slow-moving negotiations in a huge, colourful demonstration. The fact that the official COP statement, despite an initiative from the host, President Lula da Silva, does not even mention the term “fossil fuels” is a damning indictment that underlines the future importance of holding parallel events alongside UN climate conferences.

Some negotiators returning to Asia were confronted, upon arriving home, with just how far the concrete results of COP30 are removed from reality. Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and other countries were struck by a tornado and severe storms. Hundreds of people were killed and tens of thousands left homeless. The cause of these increasingly extreme weather events is human-made climate change, primarily the burning of fossil fuels.

Translated by Diego Otero and Alice Rodgers for Gegensatz Translation Collective