Tapping Into COP30 To Cover Indigenous Issues

Participants at a 2020 gathering of Indigenous leaders from across Brazil. Columnist Yessenia Funes says the Brazilian National Congress has also been moving to diminish Indigenous rights and reduce their territories, putting their way of life on the line. Photo: Mídia NINJA via Flickr Creative Commons (CC BY-NC 2.0).

Voices of Environmental Justice: Tapping Into COP30 To Cover Indigenous Issues

By Yessenia Funes

The first (and only) story to land me a slot on a national television network was about the Amazon’s Indigenous peoples. It was 2019, the year wildfires in the Amazon drew international attention. For a moment, my social feeds and inboxes exploded with images of a rainforest ablaze and cries for Indigenous rights.

My story shed light on the unique threats these fires — often set by illegal loggers and exacerbated by climate change — pose to nearby Indigenous villages.

 

These communities hold many

of the solutions necessary

to protect the forest.

 

I also reminded readers that these communities hold many of the solutions necessary to protect the forest.

Six years later, I continue to cover Amazonian Indigenous peoples as closely as I can. (It’s hard to do from New York.)

The situation remains tenuous. Criminals are still lighting forest fires. The planet has already warmed 1.1 C over the century and a half since the lightbulb was invented. The Paris Agreement outlines 1.5 C as the limit. We’re on track to reach 3 C by 2100.

The public sector must preserve every carbon sink available and immediately transition away from dirty fossil fuels if they’re serious about their commitments.

 

Indigenous peoples on the front lines

In the Amazon, Indigenous peoples are on the front lines of our governments’ reckless abandonment of these goals.

Now, they’ll have front-row access to reach world leaders directly at this year’s international climate negotiations, which are taking place in Belém, Brazil, the northeastern Pará state capital at the mouth of the Amazon River. COP30 is coming to the Amazon from Nov. 10-21.

 

It’s also a moment to recognize

that we shouldn’t need a global

conference to amplify these voices.

 

This is the perfect opportunity for environmental journalists around the globe to cover the region’s Indigenous peoples. It’s also a moment to recognize that we shouldn’t need a global conference to amplify these voices.

They have so many stories to share and issues that require exposure. The communities are many and vary from region to region, so I’ll focus on a few of the Indigenous groups living in Brazil. However, there are many others equally deserving of attention, such as the Bora in the Peruvian Amazon and the Kichwa in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

 

Pará communities face many threats

Indigenous leader Jonas Mura at a gas exploration pipeline in Silves, Amazonas, Brazil in 2024. Photo: Amazônia Real/Bruno Kelly via Flickr Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

In Pará, the Protected Forest Association represents 3,000 Indigenous people across 31 villages who are trying to invest in their cultures and lands for economic development. For some, that may look like selling handmade crafts or local crops. For others, it’s welcoming sports fishers into their communities for tourism.

I first heard about the association during Climate Week NYC in September, where I met association President Patkore Kayapó. He’s a member of the Mebêngôkre Indigenous people whose territory spans over 38,000 square miles, larger than their former colonizing nation of Portugal.

Currently, his people face a range of threats — from illegal mining to droughts and fires. The Brazilian National Congress has also been moving to diminish Indigenous rights and reduce their territories. Their way of life is on the line. Kayapó hopes COP30 marks a turning point.

“That’s why it is fundamental that our voices are heard at this year’s COP,” he told me in Portuguese through a translator. “We don’t want decisions made for us without respect for our culture. Each Indigenous village is distinct with its own language, history and relationship to nature.”

He wants to see more than speeches or words. He wants real, actionable support from world leaders. Indigenous peoples need outside investment to launch their own sustainability initiatives and projects. We all benefit from their success.

“When you support Indigenous people, you’re not just protecting a village,” Kayapó said. “You’re protecting the equilibrium of the entire planet.”

 

Ask who profits from Amazon’s collapse

To the west lies the state of Amazonas, which the Mura people call home. Chief Jonas Mura has been fighting to defend his people from pollution, especially from fossil fuel extraction.

A new report from environmental advocacy group Stand.earth underlines the billions of dollars banks — including J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank of America — are investing in new oil and gas development in the rainforest.

“Fossil fuel companies and the banks that finance this destruction are the real engines of the crisis,” Mura wrote in a statement translated into English. “They talk about transition, but they keep draining life out of the Earth.”

 

‘Every barrel of oil extracted,

every carbon credit sold, is

an open wound on our bodies

and on the body of the forest.’

               — Chief Jonas Mura

 

Mura added that, “Journalists who want to understand what’s happening in the Amazon need to look at who profits from the collapse, not only at those who suffer from it. Every barrel of oil extracted, every carbon credit sold, is an open wound on our bodies and on the body of the forest.”

He understands that the hype around COP30 will come and go. He hopes to see journalists cover his communities beyond the international conference.

“It’s not just about producing beautiful stories during the event,” he wrote. “It’s about telling the stories of those who keep fighting when the cameras are gone. Come to the village, sit by the riverbank, listen to the women’s songs, the children’s cries, the elders’ counsel. That’s how one understands what a just transition means for us.”

 

A responsibility to tell their stories

So, how does one actually plan a reporting trip to meet communities? I like to start by reaching out to organizations that have already established relationships.

For instance, Luciana Téllez Chávez, senior researcher of environment and human rights at Human Rights Watch, has visited the Cachoeira Seca Indigenous territory, the ancestral land of the Arara Indigenous people in Pará, to investigate illegal cattle ranching as part of a new report out in October.

She said her organization is happy to help organize press trips to the areas where Human Rights Watch works.

As the new Human Rights Watch report exposes, deforestation in the Amazon is tied to outside consumption.

Ranchers cut down trees to feed our beef and leather demands. Governments are failing to intervene, and private companies are not trying hard enough to accurately map out their supply chains.

 

We all suffer when the

Amazon shrinks, but local people

are hit hardest. Journalists have a

responsibility to tell these stories.

 

We all suffer when the Amazon shrinks, but local people like the Arara are hit hardest. Indigenous peoples often put their lives on the line to conduct citizen’s arrests of criminals because the government won’t.

Journalists have a responsibility to tell these stories. In Brazil, coverage of Indigenous peoples touches several beats — business, wildlife, human rights, food, climate change.

“We keep writing about it because it keeps happening,” Chávez said. “It takes a second to destroy a person’s livelihood, and it takes a lifetime to rebuild it.”

 

‘Center Indigenous voices and priorities’

While some of us may be new to this topic, Brazilian journalists are experts.

Marcel Gomes, executive secretary of news organization Repórter Brasil, urges foreign journalists “to do the homework.”

He suggests they start by familiarizing themselves with Brazilian Indigenous institutions such as the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, the Indigenous Missionary Council and the National Indian Foundation.

And he would know: In 2024, he received the Goldman Environmental Prize for his high-impact journalism on deforestation in the Amazon. The award is known as the Nobel Prize for environmentalism.

When I ask Gomes how his peers can better cover Indigenous peoples, he’s clear: “Center Indigenous voices and priorities, giving them time in the story to explain what they want. Use Indigenous spokespeople as sources for policy and science angles. It’s special how many combine traditional knowledge with scientific work. Avoid exoticizing or reducing people to stereotypes.”

 

Resources for your reporting

As COP30 rapidly approaches, Gomes hopes newsrooms treat Indigenous peoples as the story’s spine, not an add-on. Below, you can find a list of resources to help guide you as you begin your own coverage of Brazil’s Indigenous communities. This work can’t end at COP30.

• “Tribal Nations Media Guide” by the Indigenous Journalists Association: If you’re new to covering this population, this guide is a great place to start. It’s not specific to Amazonian communities (and is written with North American tribal communities in mind), but the questions are still relevant. Non-Indigenous journalists (like myself) need to be sensitive, respectful and intentional when working with these communities.
• “7 tips for non-Native journalists covering Indigenous communities” by the International Journalists’ Network (2019): This is another great resource on how to do this work with care.
• “Documents link Amazon and Google to companies investigated for illegal gold mining” by Repórter Brasil (2024): Gomes described this investigation as a must-read. The news site is a great general resource, too. Gomes also recommends journalists follow Mongabay and nonprofits like Global Witness (where I’ve done some paid panel moderating) and the Environmental Investigation Agency.
• “Tainted: JBS and the EU’s Exposure to Human Rights Violations and Illegal Deforestation in Pará, Brazil” by Human Rights Watch (2025): Here is the complete report from Chávez, which contains lots of maps and data. Chávez said the methodology section might be of interest to newsrooms interested in replicating their process.

[Editor’s Note: For more on COP30, see our recent Issue Backgrounder, “COP30 — Why It Won’t Save the Planet” and COP30-related headlines. Also find insight into covering climate change on our Topic on the Beat climate page, which includes a library of related SEJournal stories, plus climate change headlines from EJToday. Also see our Climate Change Resource Guide and special reports on Covering Climate Solutions, Covering Your Climate: The South and Covering Your Climate: The Emerald Corridor.]

Yessenia Funes is an environmental journalist who has covered the justice beat for a decade. She publishes a creative climate newsletter called Possibilities. Funes has written for publications like Atmos, Vogue, Vox, New York magazine, The Guardian and more. Her approach to storytelling amplifies the voices of those on the front line of our present-day ecological crises. Her reporting has taken her to the West Bank, remote Indigenous communities in Nicaragua, the hostile desert of the American Southwest and post-Hurricane Maria Puerto Rico.

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* From the weekly news magazine SEJournal Online, Vol. 10, No. 39. Content from each new issue of SEJournal Online is available to the public via the SEJournal Online main page. Subscribe to the e-newsletter here. And see past issues of the SEJournal archived here.