The People’s COP: Counter-Colonial Climate Resistance in the Brazilian Amazon

This paper analyzes the “People’s COP,” a movement led by Brazilian civil society during COP30 in Belém, November 2025. Through empirical material collected as an activist and journalist participating in the event, and in confluence with the worldviews of counter-colonial thinkers such as Nego Bispo and Ailton Krenak, I examine a diverse repertoire of collective action (Tilly, 1978) that challenges the exclusionary, neo-colonial structures of global climate governance. I argue that the movement successfully disputed the political narrative around COP30 through a strategic interplay between multi-scale actors, organizing nonviolent resistance at different levels and with varying tactics. Its efficacy relied, for instance, on the creation of over 60 autonomous physical spaces by NGOs and collectives that decentralized the debate throughout the city of Belém; grassroots movements organizing the largest street march in COP history with 70,000 demonstrators; the occupation of official UN spaces by Indigenous movements; and the People’s Summit, a movement-led counter-event. Furthermore, allied Observer Organizations bridged the gap between the streets and official negotiation tables. These resistance structures responded to the systemic exclusion inherent in UN forums, where access, language and Western epistemological dominance remain barriers to participation, often decoupling decision-making from the lived realities of the territories. Drawing on Latin American traditions of land-based struggle, the People’s COP provided a direct counterpoint to the marginalization of Amazonian peoples within their own territory during an event debating their future. This study explores how local and national movements navigated the tension between institutionalized UN spaces and autonomous organizing. I argue that the primary legacy of COP30 lies in the capacity of Brazilian civil society to promote the political debate outside the official site, including communities, expanding climate literacy and setting a potential model for future conferences. This political framework asserts that socio-environmental defense is a bottom-up movement beginning in the territory, where communities live the impacts of the climate emergency, perpetuate the traditional care to the land, and create solutions to mitigate and adapt. That way, its governance does nott rely on the limited ambitions of Heads of State, who are often compromised by oil and agribusiness lobbies—a reality underscored by recent COPs held in oil-reliant nations such as Azerbaijan, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates. Ultimately, this work documents counter-colonial practices that bridge territorial defense with international diplomacy, demonstrating that climate resistance in Brazil is fundamentally rooted in culture and territory. By presenting a model to globalize territorial struggles and territorialize global issues, this paper clarifies how grassroots resistance can effectively reclaim the narrative of international climate forums.