2025: We are going to change the history of the climate and the planet!

Sept. 2023

We live in times of ever growing danger but at the same time, renewed hope. Climate change is worsening every day with the continued extraction of fossil fuels and deforestation. Rising temperatures, droughts, forest fires and floods are aggravating hunger, conflicts and inequalities that lead to the deaths of all species from humans to non-human beings, undermining rights and tearing at the very fabric of life. Hundreds of millions of people are affected in cities, fields, forests and coasts by the impacts of the crises that are hastening the boiling point of the planet.

In the midst of darkness, there are lights that show us a path. It is the triumph of the resounding «Yes» by the vote of the people in Ecuador to leave the oil underground in Yasuní, an Amazonian territory in Ecuador, choosing clearly a path away from destruction. It is the coordinated action of social organizations across the spectrum, that fought to raise the visibility and urgency of the need to save the Amazon. There is also the victory in the Andean Chocó, in the province of Pichincha, where Quito is located, that mining was clearly rejected. There are the indigenous and popular struggles against the “marco temporal” of the lands of the indigenous peoples of Brazil. There is the “Margarida March” of women from the countryside, the jungles and the rivers that occupies Brasilia and defends «new social relations based on the values of ethics, solidarity, reciprocity, justice and respect for nature.»

Last August we mobilized thirty thousand people in Belém to pressure and influence the Presidential Summit of of the Amazon and to hold the Assembly of the Peoples of the Earth for the Amazon, which approved a letter with the most deeply heartfelt demands of the Amazonian peoples. The Charter of the Amazonian peoples was delivered to the presidents through a vibrant march with more than five thousand indigenous peoples, quilombolas, women’s and environmental movements, residents of urban peripheries and traditional communities.

There can no longer be any doubts. The time is now! And for three simple reasons:

• climate change is becoming clearly evident to everyone;
• the awareness grows that tomorrow will be too late;
• the latest protests show that stopping climate change is a possible goal.

The peoples of the Amazon will organize the XI Pan-Amazon Social Forum in Bolivia, in June 2024, which will share internationally the discussions of the indigenous communities of the Bolivian Amazon, and will build a mobilizing process of popular participation towards COP 30, which will be held in December of 2025. On this path, communities and peoples that enforce human and nature rights will multiply, building territories free of deforestation, territories free of oil and mining…

To achieve this goal we will use all instruments: marches, demonstrations, civil disobedience, judicial processes, struggles for public policies and for new ways of life, disputes over financing, resistance to predatory extractive invasion, defense of labor and social rights, affirmation of laws that defend common goods and recognize the rights of nature.

We cannot continue running from COP to COP. These conferences must echo the desire for change. If we manage to ensure large mobilizations, actions and territorial victories, 2025 will be the year in which living forces will connect to change the course of history of climate and life on the planet. The paths of the socio-environmental struggles will meet in Belém. We need to make the first COP to be held in the Amazon coincide with a momentous change in history.

We have the potential to change the course of climate history if we act in a coordinated, united and urgent manner. This movement of great diversity cannot be only in the Amazon or on a single continent. It has to be global and cover America, Asia, Africa, Europe and Oceania. That is why we call on our colleagues from the four corners of the globe to mobilize in different ways but all leading in the same direction. It is in our hands to articulate our resistances, strategies, learnings, and victories.

We do not have much time. The point of no return for the Amazon awaits around the corner. Climate change is getting worse with each passing day. We have to build a common horizon of decentralized and interconnected struggles for life and nature, to change the history of the climate and the planet.

2025: We are going to change the history of the Amazon, the climate and the Planet
The time is now!

To be part of and promote this process, we invite you to fill out the following form: https://forms.gle/aRCpyx4xhxDWSiGH7