As hordes of participants queued for their badges at registration, the first group of young activists began protesting at 9 A.M. sharp in front of the Blue Zone – the area of the COP30 venue in Belém where the negotiations take place.

“No to false solutions,” shouted a group from Debt for Climate, a global movement born in the Global South that calls for the cancellation of debts owed by Global South countries.

The group staged murdered activists, alluding to Indigenous Peoples and traditional communities who are often criminalized and even killed for defending their territories.

They also criticized the Tropical Forests Forever Fund (TFFF), a fund launched by Brazil last Thursday that aims to preserve forests while generating returns for investors. Norway, for instance, has already announced a contribution of USD 3 billion to be disbursed over the next decade.

“Financializing life is not a solution,” they said. “It is just another form of exploitation under a different name. True climate justice is not negotiated in carbon markets.”

A caravan from Mexico to Belém

Dianx Cantarey, Debt for Climate’s global coordinator, says they expect nothing from this COP – which is precisely why they’re protesting.

“That’s why we came here: to denounce and to form alliances with the true defenders of territory. It is outrageous that the peoples who defend life are criminalized, while fossil fuel lobbyists keep enriching themselves here,” she told us.

The Mesoamerican Caravan for Climate and Life is a convoy of about 50 activists that started in Mexico on 12 October, passing through Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama and Colombia on their way to Belém.

The caravan was co-organized by Debt for Climate along with four other civil society groups: Asamblea de los Pueblos Indígenas del Istmo en Defensa de la Tierra y el Territorio (APIIDTT), Legado Gaia (LEGAIA), the Center for Research in Community Communication and Acción Colombiana por la Soberanía Ambiental.

In each country they crossed, the activists visited communities and traditional peoples to listen deeply to them and forge alliances.

“We planned this route to unite struggles across different territories that are defending life – voices that are never heard in spaces like this,” Cantarey said.

She drew a parallel between the group’s protest and a massacre that took place in Rio de Janeiro in October, when more than 100 people were killed in a favela raid that turned into the deadliest police operation in the country’s history.

“The same massacres that happened in Rio de Janeiro are carried out by the same State and the same corporations that destroy ecosystems and territories,” said Cantarey.