The following text is being distrubuted as a leaflet at the COP30 counter-summit in Belem, Brazil, that is currently taking place
COMMON DECLARATION: INTERNATIONALIST STANDPOINT, COLETIVO RECOMEÇO – BELEM AND NOVOS RUMOS
System change, not climate change!
FROM EVERY CORNER OF THE EARTH TO BELÉM
The climate crisis is accelerating. Current national pledges lead us to a +2.6 – 2.8 °C world. If this is allowed to happen it will mean absolute catastrophe. Forests are burning, oceans heating, species vanishing. Inequality deepens as floods, droughts, and storms devastate those least responsible. But the powerful elites of the planet continue as if nothing is happening!
COP30 takes place in Belém — at the heart of the Amazon, a symbol of both destruction and resistance. We come here from every continent to demand real action: not carbon markets, not greenwashing, but system change.
THE REAL ROOTS OF THE CRISIS
- Fossil capitalism keeps expanding oil, gas, and coal extraction, even as the planet burns.
- Deforestation and land grabbing destroy Indigenous lands for profit, agribusiness, and mining.
- The energy “transition” is being hijacked: nuclear, mega-dams, gigantic wind farms which often replace forests and critical-mineral extraction are now presented as solutions to the climate crisis.
- Plastic and waste choke the planet, while recycling remains a myth of corporate convenience.
- Agribusiness monopolies impose toxic monocultures and factory farming, exploiting water, soil, and labour.
This is not a natural disaster — it is a social and economic order built on profit, competition, and exploitation. This is the nature of capitalism.
WHY COPs ARE COMPLETE FAILURES
For three decades, the annual UN Climate Conferences (COPs) have failed to stop global warming. They have become a joke.
Each summit repeats the same pattern: “big” promises, vague language, no binding action, and new loopholes for corporations.
From COP26 in Glasgow to COP27 in Egypt, COP28 in Dubai and COP29 in Baku, each summit has followed the same pattern: Glasgow replaced real emission cuts with carbon offsets, Egypt announced a hollow “Loss and Damage Fund” with no financing, and Dubai —hosted by an oil executive— refused to phase out fossil fuels, merely calling for a “transition away,” while earlier meetings in Qatar and Saudi-backed coalitions let fossil fuel regimes dominate and silence dissent.
These conferences serve as diplomatic theatre, protecting corporate interests and the energy elite while silencing the voices of communities facing droughts, floods, and displacement.
The problem is not the absence of agreements — it is that the system producing them is built on profit.
In the host country and state of the event, we can see these contradictions very explicitly. President Lula, who at COP echoes words against the use of fossil fuels, in practical terms moves in the opposite direction, and has just approved oil exploration in the Amazon coast, putting the entire ecosystem of the region at risk. The state government of Pará is directly linked to agribusiness, the economic sector that most depredates the Amazon and prevents any policy proposed to protect the forest and the environment. We must make this very clear because, as the environmental activist Chico Mendes used to say, “ecology without class struggle is gardening.” In that framework, the Brazilian government must address the historical demand of the indigenous people in guaranteeing their land demarcation, to avoid environmental degradation and guaranteeing their sovereignty.
We cannot negotiate with those who profit from burning the planet.
OUR ALTERNATIVE: CLIMATE JUSTICE AND DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST PLANNING
To truly confront the climate crisis, we need a complete transformation of how we produce, distribute, and live.
- Public, community-controlled renewable energy — no privatized green capitalism.
- End fossil fuels and nuclear power; invest in small-scale, locally owned wind, solar, geothermal and tidal energy, according to the energy needs, natural resources and ecological restrictions of every different place.
- Protect forests, rivers, oceans; restore damaged ecosystems through public employment and ecological care work.
- Ban single-use plastics and corporate control over waste. Have a concrete policy of completely eliminating plastics based on hydrocarbons.
- Replace agribusiness with agroecology and food sovereignty — seeds, water, and land must be in people’s hands, under democratic control.
- Build sustainable transport and long-lasting goods — end built-in obsolescence.
- Link environmental struggles with workers’ rights, feminism, anti-racism and struggles against colonial exploitation.
GLOBAL SOLIDARITY, NOT NATIONALISM
From Amazonia to Africa, from the Mediterranean to South Asia, our struggles are one.
The planet’s future cannot be negotiated by the rich elites behind closed doors.
It must be decided by the movements — the working class, the militant trade unions, the youth, the peasant and landless movements, Indigenous peoples, feminist and socialist organizations, scientists and artists — united across borders.
OUR DEMANDS
- Immediate, binding plan to phase out fossil fuels.
- Ban single-use plastics and corporate greenwashing.
- Ban nuclear power and critical-mineral extractivism that destroys local communities.
- Cancellation of ecological debt owed by the “global South” to the North.
- Public investment in community renewables and green jobs.
- Protect the Amazon and all rainforests; defend Indigenous sovereignty.
- Democratic control by society and local communities over food, energy, and water.
- No wars for oil, gas or critical minerals.
- Tax the rich. Fight for the abolition of the billionaires.
- Nationalize key energy industries under workers’ and peoples’ democratic control and management.
- International solidarity and struggle for a socialist, feminist, ecological, democratic world.
ANOTHER WORLD IS IN THE MAKING
From every strike, every occupation, every reforested valley, every climate camp, the future is growing.
From every corner of the Earth to Belém — we bring the voice of life, justice, and collective power.
System change, not climate change!
INTERNATIONALIST STANDPOINT
An initiative by revolutionary socialists worldwide
COLETIVO RECOMEÇO – BELEM
NOVOS RUMOS
