3,000 kilometers by boat from the Andes to the Amazon: More than 60 indigenous activists were there World Climate Conference traveling to Belem, Brazil. “We started in Ecuador and then traveled to Peru, Colombia and Brazil to get to know and understand the different regional realities of this fragile ecosystem, the Amazon,” said activist Leo Cerda on the arrival of the “Amazon Flotilla” in the port of Belem, accompanied by colorful flags and war cries.
Together with representatives of other indigenous communities, Cerda wants to voice his opinion at the World Climate Conference. His fellow campaigners come from various places EcuadorPeru, Guatemala, Brazil and Mexico. They wear bright colors, big flower earrings, feathers in their hair or traditional paintings on their faces.
Many people – one mission
Despite their different backgrounds, they share a common mission, as activists emphasize: climate justice can only happen if the expansion of oil production is stopped and indigenous communities protecting the rainforest receive direct and effective financial support.
“Current climate finance is a maze designed to set us up for failure,” criticized Ecuador’s Katty Gualinga. Despite continued fossil fuel subsidies in advanced industrial countries, “we are being asked to save the planet without resources.”
The Amazon is not just basic land for indigenous peoples
Cerda also explained: “You cannot expand the fossil industry in this fragile ecosystem, because the resources come from that ecosystem Amazon and Amazon can no longer survive.” These ecosystems are “critically important to the world – not only to indigenous peoples, but also to the global climate itself.”
© dpa-infocom, dpa:251111-930-275748/1
