Massive march in Brazil marks first big UN climate protest in years

Image credit: Demonstrators hold a banner that reads “Without climate justice, there are no indigenous rights. Without the forest, there is no future” during a protest in Belem, Brazil, Saturday. (Reuters-Yonhap)

As the first week of climate negotiations limped to a close with nations deadlocked, Indigenous people and activists sang, chanted and rolled a giant beach ball of Earth through Belem under a searing sun.

Others held a mock funeral procession for fossil fuels, dressed in black and pretending to be grieving widows as they carried three coffins marked with the words “coal,” “oil” and “gas.” “We are here to try to apply pressure so that countries fulfill their promises and we don’t accept a regression,” Txai Surui, a prominent 28-year-old Indigenous leader, told Agence France-Presse.

It was the first major protest outside the annual climate talks since COP26 four years ago in Glasgow, as the last three gatherings were held in locations with little tolerance for demonstrations — Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan.

Called the “Great People’s March” by organizers, the Belem rally comes at the halfway point of difficult negotiations and follows two Indigenous-led protests that disrupted proceedings earlier in the week.

“Today we are witnessing a massacre as our forest is being destroyed,” Benedito Huni Kuin, a 50-year-old member of the Huni Kuin Indigenous group from western Brazil, told AFP.

“We want to make our voices heard from the Amazon and demand results,” he said. “We need more Indigenous representatives at COP to defend our rights.” Tyrone Scott, a 34-year-old Briton from the anti-poverty group War on Want, said it was an “Indigenous-led, movement-led, people-powered march.”

“It’s just really exciting and a little bit of a nice antidote to the staleness and sterileness of the inside of the COP,” Scott told AFP.