On the rainy afternoon of 9 April, thousands of Indigenous people marched along the Eixo Monumental in Brasília, the long avenue where Brazil’s primary institutions are headquartered. For around four kilometres, many walked barefoot on the wet concrete through the Brazilian capital, reaffirming an historic demand for the demarcation of their lands.
Editor’s note
This article is the first of a three-part series examining Brazil’s climate leadership through Indigenous stewardship: from grassroots influence, to representation in congress, and the outcomes of the country’s first Ministry of Indigenous Peoples.
They carried a manifesto containing the rest of their demands: the creation of “oil-free zones” and the phasing out of fossil fuel production in Brazil.
Indigenous peoples continue to press for greater influence over the direction of climate policy, seeking ever more effective ways to advance their agenda. COP30, which took place in the Brazilian Amazon in November 2025, was hailed by the government as the “most Indigenous UN climate conference in history”. However, many of those Indigenous attendees say they were still shut out of the decision-making process.
The manifesto being carried through Brasília is an outcome of a working group created at the end of COP30. In contrast to the top-down approach of those conferences, input from parties outside the negotiation rooms was essential to the manifesto’s completion. It was finalised at the 22nd annual Free Land Camp (ATL), in Brasília. This gathering of the Indigenous movement brings a temporary city of stages, markets and accommodation to Brazil’s political heart. It marked the starting point of the marchers’ route on 9 April.
The manifesto touches on a contradiction in Brazilian policy: whilst presenting itself to the world as a climate leader, Brazil is pressing ahead with oil exploration in an environmentally sensitive region of the Amazon. Indigenous peoples still live there, and have been demanding the right to prior consultation for years. These communities claim they have so far been ignored.
Presence on paper only
Indigenous peoples are among those who contribute least to climate change yet suffer most from its effects. They also play a central role in tackling the crisis.
This understanding has recently begun to creep into the climate plans – known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) – of countries signed up to the Paris Agreement. The International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), an NGO, conducted an NDCs survey in November. It found that almost half of the NDCs currently in force recognise the role of Indigenous peoples in climate action, an increase from the previous decade.
However, the IWGIA’s study highlights an “implementation gap”. Indigenous peoples may be increasingly mentioned in NDCs but they have little influence over their drafting. And they are far from being able to apply their knowledge, governance and leadership to climate solutions at a government level.
Rosario Carmona, a climate consultant at IWGIA, tells Dialogue Earth that most of South America’s NDCs recognise the rights of Indigenous peoples to be consulted on projects that impact their territories. Even so, Brazil’s NDCs score above average on this metric: they incorporate the role Indigenous peoples have in combating climate change, recognise their territorial rights and highlight the causes of their historical exclusion.
“Brazil goes further than other countries that recognise the vulnerability of Indigenous peoples, by acknowledging this vulnerability as a result of colonialism and structural inequality,” she says. “However, it does not commit to measures to address these issues.”
As long as we don’t have the power to make decisions, they will always decide for usAlessandra Korap, Indigenous Munduruku leader
Dissatisfied with Brazil’s climate plan, a group of organisations drew up breakaway Indigenous NDCs, in a bid to bring their demands to the forefront of the debate.
The proposals were presented to the Brazilian government’s Ministry of Indigenous Peoples in July 2025 and were influential at COP30: Brazil launched a programme to protect Indigenous lands at the summit, as well as a global initiative to formalise the ownership of 160 million hectares of lands under the stewardship of traditional communities globally, by 2030.
Being listened to on the international stage is still a challenge for Brazilian Indigenous communities. In April, an Indigenous delegation from Brazil travelled to Santa Marta in Colombia for the inaugural Transition Away conference, which was dedicated to phasing out fossil fuels. The delegation included Luene Karipuna, a leader from the Uaçá Indigenous territory in Oiapoque, northern Brazil. The territory is close to the coast that the government is focusing its oil exploration efforts on.
Despite finding herself shut out of many official discussions, Karipuna tells Dialogue Earth that Indigenous talking points were circulating in the corridors of Transition Away. Several made it into the final report of the conference. “We have shown that we, as Indigenous peoples, are not merely demanding a just energy transition; we are showing the way,” she says.
Brazil’s Indigenous movements are now preparing for COP31, taking place in Turkey this November. And before that, the equivalent UN conferences dedicated to desertification, later this month, and to biodiversity, in October. The movements aim to arrive better prepared and with stronger international alliances.
“For us, COP30 did not end in 2025,” says Alana Manchineri, international adviser to the Coordination of Indigenous Organisations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB). “It is part of an ongoing mobilisation.”
Putting Indigenous people at the heart of climate action
Commitments made at UN conferences only become a reality when governments translate them into public policy. It is at this stage, Manchineri warns, that the Indigenous agenda can either advance or stall: “Progress depends on implementation.”
In Brazil, implementation is channelled through the Climate Plan, which sets targets across two pillars: mitigation, to reduce emissions; and adaptation, to tackle the impacts already underway.
The first pillar was drawn up “behind closed doors”, according to Martha Fellows, a PhD student at Sãu Paulo’s State University of Campinas (Unicamp) and consultant to the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples. However, following pressure from the movement, the government went further, setting a new target of demarcating 4.5 million hectares by 2027.
The adaptation pillar included an entire chapter dedicated to Indigenous peoples, defining them as “climate experts” capable of “teaching solutions that are appropriate and tailored to their territories”. It also highlights the cultural diversity of Indigenous peoples, spread as they are across all of Brazil’s biomes, and the heterogeneity of their circumstances.
On this basis, it sets out objectives to preserve their traditional ways of life in the face of climate change. However, it also acknowledges that Indigenous peoples still have little say in decision-making, limiting communities’ ability to respond to the crisis.
Harnessing the power of the people
The Avá-Guarani people, from western Paraná state, live on this fine line between erasure and the power to decide. That is according to Ilson Soares, chief and coordinator of the region’s Guarani Yvyrupa Commission.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the construction of the Itaipu hydroelectric dam on the border between Brazil and Paraguay drove Avá-Guarani families from their lands. In Soares’s words, it “erased the history” of the people. Over the past three years, however, he says he has noticed “greater political strength” in the Indigenous movement.
The government brought the Avá-Guarani in to negotiate with the power station. In an agreement reached in March 2025, the dam’s parent company, Itaipu Binacional, undertook to purchase 3,000 hectares of farmland to be demarcated as Indigenous territories. The Avá-Guarani had been asking for 55,000.
“We see it as a small victory, one that was achieved through bloodshed, struggle and sweat. It is very little, but it is all we have for now,” says Soares.
In August 2025, a decree from the same government opened a tendering process for a private company to run the Madeira, Tapajós and Tocantins rivers in the Amazon. The Indigenous peoples and traditional communities living along these banks were not consulted.
During COP30, the government promised no project would go ahead on the river without consultation. But just two months later in January, dredging began on the Tapajós, leading to protests. Indigenous people from communities living on the river’s banks occupied the access road to the cargo terminal of the multinational Cargill, in Santarém, Pará state.
Within two weeks, the camp had grown from 150 to 700 people. It gained fresh momentum with the arrival of a delegation of the Munduruku Indigenous group, led by Alessandra Korap. By the end of the month, there were more than 1,200 people. On 23 February, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva bowed to pressure and revoked the decree.
“As long as we don’t have the power to make decisions, they will always decide for us without consulting us,” Korap tells Dialogue Earth.
But the actions of those 1,200 Indigenous protestors stand as an indication of the power that their communities still hold. Clearly, they can challenge and influence decisions made by the state.
On 9 April, in Brasília, Korap was among those walking barefoot in the rain from the Free Land Camp. She headed up a procession of thousands alongside countless other leaders – another expression of the unspoken power of her people.
Kevin Damasio contributed to this report.
