Photo: People’s Summit in Bonn. 📸@david_adelmann
Maureen Santos
Maureen is a professor and serves as the coordinator of the Environmental Platform research program at the BRICS Policy Center in Brazil.
She is the facilitator of the international Working Group and a member of the Political Committee for the People’s Summit Towards COP30, where she represents the National Advisory Group of the Federation of Organizations for Social and Educational Assistance (FASE), a Brazilian NGO.
By Maureen Santos
FASE and BRICS Policy Centre, Brazil
Adapted from a press conference held in Bonn in June 2025
Our planet is crying out for deep and urgent change.
Over the past two years, movements been building this collective process, which has resulted in six consensus-based convergence axes that unite the main demands of the organizations involved in the People’s Summit.
The People’s Summit Towards COP30 is a process of convergence between organizations and movements of women, trade unions, indigenous people, family farmers and peasants, quilombolas, traditional peoples and communities, traditional peoples of African origin, black people, youth, inter-religious groups, environmentalists, workers, media freedom activists, cultural groups, students, people from favelas and peripheries, LGBTQI+, people with disabilities, human rights, the defense of children, adolescents and intergenerational communities, cities, the countryside, forests and water, towards the realization of the People’s Summit as an autonomous space to COP30.
The space has been organized since August 2023 and includes social and grassroots movements, coalitions, collectives, networks, and civil society organizations from Brazil. The goal is to strengthen grassroots development and converge the unified agendas of socio-environmental, anti-patriarchal, anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist, anti-racist, and rights-based groups, respecting their diversity and specificities, united by a future of well-being.
With a broad and diverse global scope, these axes shape our shared political agenda and structure the four days of activities at the Summit. They also guide the message we aim to bring to the Global Day of Action.
At the end of this process, we will present the People’s Treaty — our common political declaration.
Photo: Planning meeting in Rio, held in 2025. Credit: Cúpula dos Povos, via FASE.
The six political axes of the Summit are:
- Historical reparations, combating environmental racism, corporate power and false solutions;
- Just, popular and inclusive transition;
- Resistance to oppression, defense of democracy and people’s internationalism;
- Just cities and vibrant urban peripheries;
- Popular feminism and women’s resistance in the territories;
- Rights of nature and intergenerational justice.
Each axis includes a wide range of subtopics, which can be found on our website.
The aim is to bring these agendas together under a shared purpose and common voice.
Find our call below, and follow and join our work up until Belém in November here:
Social and popular movements, coalitions, collectives, networks, and civil society organizations from Brazil have been, since August 2023, building a process of convergence towards the realization of the People’s Summit as an autonomous space regarding the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) COP 30 to be held in the Amazon.
Our goal is to strengthen popular mobilization and converge on unified agendas: socio-environmental, anti-patriarchal, anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist, anti-racist, and rights-based, while respecting their diversities and specificities, united by a future of well-being. In the current context, more than ever, we need to advance in collective spaces that defend democracy and international solidarity, confront the far right, fascism, fundamentalisms, wars, the financialization of nature, and the climate crisis.
Extreme weather, droughts, floods, landslides, and false climate solutions serve as instruments for deepening inequality and environmental and climate injustices, particularly in territories, and cruelly impact those who have contributed the least to the climate, ecological, and civilizational crisis.
The inadequacy of measures to address these crises is alarming. Countries and decision-makers have been negligent or have presented ineffective solutions, putting the 1.5º target of the Paris Agreement at risk. Investments that fuel climate change have increased in recent years, and policies protecting indigenous peoples and traditional populations have been dismantled, with their leaders threatened and murdered.
Real solutions are urgent, and civil society worldwide must be at the forefront in all spaces of debate on this agenda. COP 30 needs to represent a turning point in this scenario and address the necessary actions to tackle the climate crisis.
It is necessary to review the current economic model and eliminate the production and burning of fossil fuels, responsible for over ⅔ of emissions causing global warming, as well as implement policies for zero deforestation. International agreements for a just energy transition are urgent, starting with the wealthiest, in addition to holding accountable the impacts caused by transnational corporations of agribusiness, mining, the energy sector, real estate, and infrastructure, which currently threaten local populations.
It is urgent to intensify the fight against organized crime, paramilitary groups, and carbon traders, which are increasingly establishing themselves in various territories, to combat threats and provide protection and rights guarantees to environmental and human rights defenders, with attention to the ratification of the Escazú Agreement and other crucial agreements, is essential.
A just, popular, and inclusive transition is fundamental; the right to land and territory through urban, agrarian, and land reform; the demarcation, titling, and regularization of indigenous, quilombola, fishing, and traditional territories; the establishment of food systems with a focus on food sovereignty, promoting agroecology, valuing family, peasant, and artisanal fishing production, as well as indigenous, solidarity, and feminist economies; the recognition of nature as a subject of rights; the protection of oceanic areas, rare land, and coastal zones; the protection of biodiversity; the generation of decent work, employment, and income, and care policies; the consolidation of the right to the city with urban policies as environmental policies; the implementation of specific policies for climate-affected people; access to potable water and basic sanitation; climate prevention and adaptation, especially in urban peripheries and indigenous and traditional territories; the eradication of environmental and structural racism, and violence against women and girls, different cultures and worldviews; promotion of free communication and cultural diversity; policies for Black youth alive; and measures for reparations and democratization of fair climate financing, outside of the carbon market and debt, with the structuring of funds and governance by communities.
We demand that the Brazilian government take a leadership role in the socio-environmental agenda by adopting these policies, which are essential for advancing climate justice from the Global South.
However, none of this will happen without broad pressure and effective participation of civil society. We call upon organizations, networks, collectives, and social movements from various sectors to build the People’s Summit towards COP 30, capable of mobilizing public opinion, strengthening participatory and popular democracy, denouncing and blocking setbacks, as well as pressuring decision-makers in Brazil and around the world.