Belém Diaries: When the Forest Entered the Negotiation Room

When the UN decided to hold COP30 in Belém, it quietly changed the geometry of climate diplomacy. For the first time, negotiators gathered not in a distant capital but at the mouth of the Amazon itself, arguing over finance and emission targets while surrounded by the rainforest they were promising to protect (Reuters, 2025a). In the official narrative, it quickly became a “forest COP”: a summit defined by the launch of a vast new fund for tropical forests, fresh pledges for Indigenous land rights, and billions promised for the Congo Basin and other vital ecosystems (Reuters, 2025a; World Resources Institute [WRI], 2025). 

But the real story of Belém, at least for me, began far from the Amazon, under a different sky entirely. 

Flying into the Forest 

We left Dhaka as part of the Bangladesh government delegation representing Change Initiative, carrying not just suitcases but a set of uncomfortable questions about climate debt, finance and justice. The route to the Amazon read like a map of uneven responsibility: Dhaka to Addis Ababa, Addis to São Paulo, São Paulo to Belém. Each airport felt like a waypoint in the global economy that created this crisis; export zones, oil corridors, financial hubs until finally, after midnight on 14 November, we stepped out into Belém’s thick, sweet air. 

The city felt like an edge. On one side, a historic port and dense, chaotic streets; on the other, a freshly polished COP venue with its security gates, pavilions and carefully choreographed panels. Somewhere beyond both lay the forest itself, dark and breathing. 

There was barely time to catch our breath. On 15 November, we walked into the press room to present the Climate Debt Risk Index 2025 (CDRI’25), our attempt to put numbers on a reality many in the global South already live: countries most exposed to climate shocks are being pushed deeper into debt to finance their own survival. The index showed how current global finance rules systematically trap vulnerable countries in a climate–debt spiral borrowing for floods, borrowing for droughts, borrowing again to rebuild (Change Initiative, 2025). 

Saying “debt-free resilience” in front of cameras is one thing. Saying it in Belém, with the Amazon nearby and storms already reshaping the region, felt very different. The forest was no longer a graph or a satellite image; it was a neighbour to the conference hall. 

A Forest COP on the Surface, a Finance COP Underneath 

Officially, COP30 will be remembered for forests. Brazil and its partners used the summit to launch the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), a Brazil-led fund that aims to raise around US$125 billion by using public money as a cushion to draw private capital into tropical forest conservation (Global Witness, 2025; Reuters, 2025b). 

In simple terms, TFFF promises to pay eligible rainforest countries about US$4 per hectare of intact forest each year, with penalties if deforestation or forest degradation rises. Twenty per cent of all disbursements are earmarked for Indigenous Peoples and local communities, recognising that they are often the most effective guardians of forests (Tropical Forests Forever Facility, 2025; WRI, 2025). By the end of the summit, wealthy countries and philanthropies had pledged almost US$7 billion in initial capital which is enough to declare the facility formally launched, but still far below its ambition (Reuters, 2025a). Alongside this, governments and donors renewed and expanded pledges worth about US$1.8 billion to secure Indigenous and community land rights, and roughly US$2.5 billion to protect the Congo Basin forests (Forest & Climate Leaders’ Partnership [FCLP], 2025; Reuters, 2025a). 

From inside a negotiation hall, this looks like progress. The forest is finally moving from the margins of climate talks to the centre, with mechanisms that, at least in principle, reward countries and communities for keeping trees standing. From a climate-finance perspective, though, a deeper pattern appears. On one ledger, TFFF and its companions: billions in new money for forests, land rights and conservation. On another ledger, rarely named in the decision text, the world continues to channel far larger sums into the fossil and petrochemical industries that produce plastics, drive deforestation and destabilise the climate (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2022). 

Brazil alone dumps an estimated 1.3 million tonnes of plastic into the ocean every year, ranking eighth globally and first in Latin America for this pollution (Agência Brasil, 2024). Globally, plastics are almost entirely fossil-based and emit greenhouse gases at every stage of their life cycle (OECD, 2022). If current investments in petrochemicals continue, plastic production alone could consume a significant share of the remaining carbon budget compatible with 1.5°C (OECD, 2022). 

Seen through this double ledger, TFFF looks less like a grand solution and more like a partial correction. We are, in effect, paying the forest to keep absorbing carbon in cents, while financing its enemies—the fossil and plastic economy—in dollars. That tension would become even more visible once we stepped outside the COP perimeter. 

A Sunday with the River 

On Sunday, the COP venue was closed. Instead of racing between pavilions, we followed the river. A ferry carried us across the wide, brown water to Ilha Cotejuba, a small island that feels like it belongs more to the tides than to any nation-state. 

As Belém receded a cluster of cranes, towers and haze, the river broadened and quietened. Mangroves and palms edged the horizon. On the island’s main beach, families relaxed on wooden chairs sipping drinks, children darted in and out of the shallows, while food stalls grilled fresh fish over open fires. 

We took a local transport to the inland, then continued on foot. The path wound past wooden houses perched on stilts, through pockets of shade and sudden blasts of light, until the forest thinned again and another, quieter strip of beach appeared. Here, a simple restaurant made of wood and tin overlooked the water. We ate local food, listened to the wind, and tried to hold the feeling of being at the edge of a living system that still, for now, mostly existed for its own sake. 

We had brought more than ourselves to that beach. We had brought an idea: Natural Rights Led Governance (NRLG). In a small and informal moment, people from different countries and communities stood together in solidarity with the concept that nature has its own rights: that rivers, forests and oceans are not objects or “resources,” but legal and moral subjects whose integrity must shape how we design finance, law and development. On the sand, far from the plenary microphones, NRLG felt less like theory and more like common sense. 

When Nature Is the Sovereign 

Two days later, on 17 November, we carried that same idea into the COP venue for a Transformative Dialogue on Natural Rights Led Governance. The NRLG framework, developed in Sovereignty for Nature, Survival for All, rests on three interlocking pillars: legal rights of nature, distributive justice of resources, and ecological justice (Khan, 2025). 

It starts from a simple but radical proposition: if nature is sovereign, we are only its trustees. Forests, rivers and other ecosystems should be recognised in law as juridical persons with enforceable rights to exist, regenerate and flourish. Natural resources must be treated as common assets subject to fair and sustainable use, rather than private spoils for those who can extract fastest. And justice must extend beyond human societies to include the ecological systems that make life possible (Khan, 2025). 

In the dialogue room in Belém, full of Indigenous leaders, youth organisers, community defenders and policy thinkers from across continents, the NRLG question landed with force: What if the Amazon is not a “resource” we are managing, but a sovereign whose rights we are obligated to respect? 

Placed next to COP30’s forest outcomes, NRLG acts like a sharper lens rather than an add-on. It shows that TFFF and related pledges are meaningful steps but still framed inside a worldview where nature earns its protection by proving its carbon value, rather than being protected as a rights-bearing entity in its own right (WRI, 2025; FCLP, 2025). It exposes how forest finance remains overwhelmingly carbon-centric, how plastic pollution and petrochemicals are treated as environmental side notes rather than climate-finance problems, and how debt still sits like a shadow behind every commitment. Under a Natural Rights Led Governance model, the Amazon, the Congo Basin and other critical biomes would not just be “beneficiaries” of funds like TFFF. They would be constitutional subjects whose rights limit what kinds of waste, extraction and infrastructure can be permitted in their boundaries and whose defence justifies debt relief, reparations and structural shifts in global finance (Khan, 2025). 

Plastic Ghosts in a Green Summit 

There was another lens that kept intruding on the story, and it was far less abstract: plastic. 

From the moment we arrived in Brazil, plastic was everywhere. Outside the formal COP zone, everyone relied on thin polyethene bags, disposable plates, cups and cutlery. On Ilha Cotejuba, the widespread use of plastic packaging was evident, raising concerns about its environmental impact on the island’s fragile ecosystem. 

These were not just occasional pieces of litter. They were small, bright clues about the deeper economy underlying COP30. Plastics are, quite literally, fossil fuels in another shape: over 99 per cent of plastics are made from oil, gas or coal feedstocks, and they emit greenhouse gases at every stage of their life cycle (OECD, 2022). 

Brazil plays a central role in this story. It is Latin America’s largest producer of plastic resins and one of the top global producers of plastic waste (Alencar, 2023; de Andrade, 2025). Estimates suggest Brazil generates around 11–14 million tonnes of plastic waste or debris a year, and a significant share of it is mismanaged; ending up in rivers, soils and oceans rather than in properly managed facilities (Alencar, 2023; Sodré et al., 2023, as cited in Alencar, 2023). Despite efforts by municipalities and waste-picker cooperatives, official data indicate that only around 1 per cent of Brazil’s annual plastic production is recycled, while total solid-waste recycling hovers near 4 per cent (Fraga Filho, 2023; Santos, 2025). In other words, the vast majority of plastic is used briefly and then left to accumulate in landfills, informal dumps and natural ecosystems. 

The Amazon has become what scientists now call a “new frontier for plastic pollution.” A recent scoping review found plastic contamination in Amazonian rivers, sediments, fish, plants and even birds and mammals, with serious implications for Indigenous and riverine communities whose food and water come directly from these ecosystems (de Melo, 2025; dos Santos Silva et al., 2024; Morais et al., 2024). Walking on an Amazonian beach and kicking aside a piece of Styrofoam or a discarded fork, it is impossible not to see the contradiction: we were meeting in the forest to save the forest, while the fossil-plastic economy that helps destroy it was fully present around us in everyday objects. 

Around Belém, the dissonance is even sharper. The quilombola community of Menino Jesus, just outside the city, is resisting plans for a massive landfill that would destroy around 200 hectares of forest and threaten their livelihoods, even as quilombola territories are recognised for maintaining lower deforestation and safeguarding biodiversity (The Guardian, 2025). In other words, the same country that hosted a “forest COP” is still contemplating burying forest and community land under other people’s waste. 

Leaving Belém with the Forest Still Speaking 

As our time in Belém ended and the flights back to Dhaka loomed; Belém to São Paulo, São Paulo to Addis, Addis to home, the images that stayed with me were not of the plenary halls. I remembered instead the quiet beach on Ilha Cotejuba, the sound of waves against mangrove roots, the warmth of local food shared at a wooden table. I also remembered the plastic bottle half-buried in the sand, and the Styrofoam box caught in the roots of a tree. 

COP30 did move the needle on forests. It launched TFFF, boosted funding for Indigenous land rights, and brought the Amazon into the centre of climate diplomacy (Reuters, 2025a; WRI, 2025). But the plastic under our feet and the debt burdens on climate-vulnerable countries reminded us how far we still are from a world where nature is truly treated as sovereign. 

For me, the real meaning of Belém is this: the forest has finally entered the negotiation room, but the logic of extraction and waste has not yet been asked to leave. The work ahead, if we are serious, is to bring climate finance, debt justice, plastic phase-out and natural rights into the same conversation. Only then will the Amazon and the communities who call it home feel that a COP held on their doorstep was not just a performance, but a turning point.