The People's Summit, Belém

The People’s Summit 2025 in Belém do Pará finished with a roar. Full of colourful flags, costumes, music and powerful political statements. It had been five days of this energy, with seemingly random and spontaneous bursts of noise and movement occurring at a steady pace. Yet, however spontaneous it seemed, it was a deliberate space, the planning for which began over two years ago. 

It was also an autonomous space, where the social movements of Brazil and the world came together to share and to build. MST (Landless Workers Movement of Brazil) had a large presence, along with La Via Campesina (the world’s largest Peasant organisation), MAM (the Brazilian movement ‘against the plundering of our minerals’), the World March of Women, and the Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAR), to name just a few. MAR used the moment to officially declare itself as a global movement, as it had previously been organised on a national or regional basis. This underlined the importance of Belém being an opportunity for movements to meet themselves, as well as others.

This was also the case for ourselves, the Yes to Life No to Mining global solidarity network, and the Thematic Social Forum on Mining and the Extractive Economy, of which we form an integral part, and we are normally globally dispersed.

Over the days of the Summit over 70,000 people converged. 

It might sound impossible to refine a narrative with so many different movements rooted in so many different contexts but this was achieved both in advance and at the conclusion of the People’s Summit.

We went into the summit aligned to a particular axis – of which there were six:

Axis I – Living territories and ‘maritories’, Popular and Food Sovereignty

Axis II – Historical Reparations, Combatting Environmental Racism, False Solutions and Corporate Power

Axis III – Just, Popular, and Inclusive Transition

Axis IV – Against Oppressions, for Democracy, and People’s Internationalism

Axis V – Just Cities and Living Urban Peripheries

Axis VI – Popular Feminism and Women’s Resistance in Territories

Each event and conversation fed into an axis and at the end a final common Declaration was presented to the world, the Brazilian government and the COP presidency. Accompanying the statement was another from the Children’s Peoples’ Summit, which encouraged decision makers to think of their futures and their forests. 

Photo by YLNM: The children giving the declaration from the children’s summit to the ministers 

On behalf of the Brazilian government the Minister for the Environment and Climate Change, Marina Silva, received the statements along with the Minister for Indigenous Peoples, Sônia Guajajara. President Lula did not attend, instead sending a letter via his Ministers. The COP President – André Corrêa do Lago, committed to bringing the statements into the negotiations, however it was not clear what weight it would have or how it would be incorporated into the discussions. 

Despite the People’s Summit being supported by the Brazilian government, there were divergences. A striking one was that of TFFF (the Tropical Forests Forever Facility). The TFFF was President Lula’s big pitch to protect the Amazon, but the protests led by Indigenous Peoples and the People’s Summit called it out as another market-benefitting attempt to commodify nature. The Declaration concludes:

“We oppose any false solutions to the climate crisis, including in climate finance, that perpetuate harmful practices, create unpredictable risks, and divert attention from transformative solutions based on climate justice and the justice of peoples in all biomes and ecosystems. We warn that the TFFF, being a financialised programme, is not an adequate response. All financial projects must be subject to criteria of transparency, democratic access, participation and real benefit for affected populations.”

Instead, the repeated message throughout the Summit was: “we are the answer.”  This was meant at a local and global level. International solidarity was a key component, along with defending human rights and the rights of nature, and building the collective power needed to transform the systems driving the mulit-crisis that we are facing. In sum, creating a world rooted in care, justice, and shared wellbeing. 

The grand finale, the grand march for climate justice, saw 50,000 people, most of them not invited into the negotiating rooms, demonstrating their truth on the streets of Belém. We marched the morning away in the blazing heat in a demonstration of promise; that we will continue to choose cooperation over competition, wellbeing over profit, democracy over corruption. The marched vibrantly answered the call of the Declaration:

“Peoples of the world: Unite”