The United Nations-sponsored climate negotiations begin this week. Known as COP30, this year’s conference marks the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement and will be the first ever held in the Amazon. It is also being marketed as the most Indigenous of COPs. As the host country, Brazil is taking the lead to provide camping sites for up to 3,000 people, credentials for hundreds to enter the official venue, and direct channels for Indigenous contributions and demands to be presided over by Brazil’s Minister of Indigenous People, Sonia Guajajara.

Indigenous experts say that on paper, what Brazil is doing for Indigenous participation at COP is major progress. Whether those actions translate to influence will be the true test. 

This, as 2024 became the hottest year on record, with global temperatures breaching the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit set by the Paris Agreement, global greenhouse gas emissions continuing to rise, and international experts projecting that extreme climate events like droughts, floods, and storms will be more frequent and intense. In Brazil, 46 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation, primarily due to illegal practices like logging, farming, and ranching in the Amazon. 

But Indigenous peoples in Brazil, and globally for that matter, continue to offer solutions. Indigenous territories in the Amazon are among the best preserved and in 2024, less than 1.5 percent of deforestation occurred inside demarcated lands, which are responsible for almost 60 percent of the forest’s carbon storage. That trend is seen across the planet with hundreds of studies showing positive ecological outcomes when Indigenous peoples are involved in land stewardship. Those positive impacts stem from their sovereignty over lands, posing potential threats to state and corporate interests. 

Indigenous peoples have struggled to participate in previous COP summits. COPs are often viewed as some of the U.N.’s most democratic processes — signatory countries, regardless of size and power, get one vote each — but they are intergovernmental, so only national delegations get to negotiate, and wording of the final texts produced at the conference is their purview. That means Indigenous peoples are nonstate actors and have no formal role in the negotiations, despite the adoption of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples, which determines that states must consult and collaborate on issues that concern Indigenous peoples. 

Then there are the labyrinthine power structures and acronyms inside the U.N. system. Nonstate actors at COP must be members of organizations accredited by the UNFCCC, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The 2015 Paris Agreement established the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform to enable participation in U.N. climate processes, and while the platform can amplify Indigenous perspectives, “it does not and cannot speak for Indigenous peoples, in negotiations,” said Ghazali Ohorella of the Alifuru people from the Maluku Islands and co-chair of the International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change, or IIPFCC, a representative caucus of Indigenous peoples participating in the UNFCCC. “We coordinate. We decide our lines. We push,” said Ohorella.

The record for Indigenous participation at a COP was 316 people in 2023 when it was held in Dubai. Earlier this year, Minister Guajajara pledged to facilitate 1,000 UNFCCC credentials for Indigenous peoples, with half those reserved for Brazilians. But Ohorella said those credentials have failed to materialize. Guajajara’s Ministry of Indigenous People confirmed 360 Indigenous peoples had been given credentials but didn’t rule out the possibility of other organizations having arranged more by themselves. 

But accreditation isn’t guaranteed to translate to meaningful participation. Opportunities to engage with negotiators are scarce, and the competition is cutthroat. “There are tens of thousands of other participants, many of whom are more experienced and better connected than you,” said Hayley Walker, a professor of international negotiation at the Institute of Scientific Economics and Management and co-researcher on a paper published earlier this year about access and participation of nonstate actors at COPs. Newcomers often struggle to navigate COP politics and end up leaving the process quickly. Even those with experience and know-how must go toe-to-toe with well-resourced fossil fuel, mining, and agribusiness lobbyists who have flooded the previous two COPs. 

Every five years, signatory states to the Paris Agreement are required to file climate action plans. This year is one of those years. Known as Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs, they are the treaty’s backbone embodying efforts by each country to reduce national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change. NDCs essentially shape global progress on the Paris Agreement’s long-term goals.

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Brazil’s latest NDC is the country’s first to mention Indigenous peoples. “It was an important political signal of the role they hold in the current administration,” says Claudio Angelo, international policy coordinator at the Brazilian climate policy coalition Observatório do Clima. However, he added that Indigenous peoples were not involved in drafting the text. 

According to the international land and rights advocacy organization Rights and Resources Initiative, or RRI, that lack of participation tracks across all Latin American NDCs filed so far. A report by the organization published last week found that of the most recent round of NDCs, only Ecuador’s tags Indigenous territories as a climate strategy. The country is 1 of 6 that recognizes its sovereign land rights. 

“References to Indigenous people were generic and unsupported by the necessary assurances,” said Carla Cardenas, Latin America program director at RRI. “All around, there was an evident lack of substance.”

According to Alana Manchineri of the Manchineri peoples of Brazil and international adviser to the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon, or COIAB, Brazil’s NDC fell well short of acknowledging Indigenous climate contributions and of proposing safeguards to continuously threatened territorial rights. Of the numerous studies on Indigenous land demarcation as a leading climate solution, a report released last week by the Environmental Defense Fund projects deforestation and CO2 emissions in the Amazon would be up to 45 percent higher without Indigenous-managed and protected lands.

More than 370 million people around the world identify as Indigenous. They are the first line of defense, and targets, of climate change. Over centuries, Indigenous communities have survived and adapted to floods, heat waves, storms, and other climate events, developing strategies to cultivate drought-resilient crops, hurricane-enduring homes, and early warning systems for extreme weather. 

“It all points to us and our territories as the solution,” said Juan Carlos Jintiach of the Ecuadorian Shuar people and executive secretary of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities. “We have plenty of recommendations and proposals. In our lands lie our source of life, our stewardship, our future. Through time, we have learned to mitigate and adapt. We want to be part of the conversation.” 

This year, COIAB’s Manchineri has been part of a team crafting the first ever Indigenous NDC. The document calls for culturally appropriate climate plans, an end to fossil fuels, direct access to climate finance, and meaningful representation in international negotiations. Above all, it urges land demarcation and territorial protection to be recognized as climate policy. 

“We translated demands and proposals from the territories into the language of international conferences,” said Manchinei. She added that being at COP30 only makes sense if people back home, and on the ground, understand its importance. “Our authority as Indigenous leaders is anchored on the territories.” The Indigenous NDC will be hand-delivered to Brazilian national delegates to inform and influence negotiations.

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Inspired by that, RRI is crafting a template for an open-access civil NDC that will allow other communities to do the same. “It will be a flexible structure that communities can tailor with national data, linking local indicators and strengthening the recognition of their territorial rights,” said RRI’s Carla Cardenas. Since these are not official government documents, they bear no formal weight in the COP framework. What they do, Cardenas said, is act as a catalyst for discussions. 

“Inside the venue we do what works. Less podium. More hallways. Bilaterals with delegations. Coffee lines. Hallway chats. Ride the shuttle to the venue with the right person at the right time,” said Ghazali Ohorella of IIPFCC. “Do our demands get reflected? Sometimes yes, sometimes later, sometimes in pieces.”

But unfamiliarity with UNFCCC’s intergovernmental nature and the narrative around this being the most Indigenous of COPs may sow frustration and widen the gap between expectations and actual opportunities to have influence over future climate goals. 

According to Ghazalli Ohorella, if the goal of COP30 is more photo ops with Indigenous peoples, it will be a success. If it’s tangible impact, “the wiring is not finished.” The true measure, he said, is not who enters the venue, but what leaves in the final texts. 

“We are not here for theater.”