Guardians of Earth: COP30's Shift Toward Indigenous Wisdom and Ecological Rights

COP30 signals a new era for landscapes, Indigenous knowledge, and rights-based climate action precisely because the trajectory of earlier COPs left critical gaps that now demand correction. COP21 in Paris established the temperature goals but treated ecosystems largely as carbon reservoirs rather than living climate systems. COP26 in Glasgow brought forests into global headlines through the Forest Declaration, yet the pledge remained voluntary, and deforestation continued apace. COP27 and COP28 shifted attention toward loss and damage and energy transitions but offered little structural protection for biomes or Indigenous territories.

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Even when Indigenous peoples were acknowledged, through the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform (LCIPP) platform or scattered references in decision texts, their knowledge was not embedded into national climate policies or finance mechanisms. This accumulated imbalance shaped the momentum toward Belém. COP30 responds to these omissions by centering landscapes not as scenery but as climate infrastructure, elevating Indigenous governance from symbolic recognition to essential strategy, and advancing rights-based climate action that treats ecosystems as rights-bearing systems rather than resources to be managed. In this way, COP30 represents less a continuation of previous negotiations and more a correction, an overdue alignment of global climate governance with ecological reality and the stewardship knowledge that has sustained landscapes long before the climate crisis entered diplomacy. 

The road to COP30 in Belém, deep in the Brazilian Amazon, is carrying with it an unusual kind of momentum. For decades, global climate negotiations have revolved around carbon curves, renewable energy targets, and finance numbers. These are necessary tools, but they were always incomplete. What was missing was recognition of something more ancient and foundational: the landscapes that stabilize climate systems and the Indigenous peoples whose knowledge has protected those landscapes for millennia.  As the world moves toward Belém 2025, COP30 emerges as the first global climate summit to place ecological rights, Indigenous knowledge, and the protection of critical biomes at the very center of climate governance. This shift is neither symbolic nor abstract; it reflects the growing scientific understanding that planetary stability depends on living systems, forests, wetlands, peatlands, rivers, and coastlines, and on the communities that have safeguarded them for generations. 

One of the most anticipated shifts at COP30 is the recognition that landscapes themselves function as climate infrastructure (IPCC, 2022; IPBES, 2019). Forests generate rainfall and regulate atmospheric moisture; wetlands store carbon for thousands of years; rivers redistribute heat across continents; and mangroves absorb storm surges that no seawall could ever withstand. These ecosystems are not passive scenery but active regulators of atmospheric chemistry and hydrological cycles. Negotiators in Belém are preparing languages that will, for the first time, require countries to embed landscape protection and restoration within their 2035 climate targets. This includes protecting remaining old-growth forests, restoring degraded ecosystems as part of national mitigation strategies, and recognizing biomes like the Amazon, Congo Basin, and Southeast Asian forests as global climate assets. Such a decision would directly link ecosystem protection to the Paris Agreement’s temperature goals, a long-overdue acknowledgment that without functioning landscapes, even the most ambitious energy transitions will not keep the planet stable. 

Another major outcome anticipated from COP30 is the Global Tropical Forest Plan, championed by Brazil, Indonesia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and other forest nations. The plan aims to establish a shared monitoring system for tropical forests using open-access satellite data, create a roadmap to end deforestation before 2030, shift from voluntary pledges to enforceable accountability systems, secure forest finance commitments from wealthy nations, and strengthen Indigenous territorial governance. This initiative agreement is in response to the failures of earlier forest agreements; the Glasgow Declaration on Forests at COP26 was historic but voluntary, and deforestation in many signatory countries continued at alarming rates. COP30 seeks to correct this by building a structure in which protecting forests becomes a requirement rather than an aspiration, ensuring that financial flows support those who conserve forests rather than those who clear them. The Amazon’s selection as the host region reinforces this message: the future of the climate will be decided wherever the great forests continue to breathe. 

Indigenous knowledge has long been an underappreciated dimension of climate governance, yet it embodies sophisticated ecological logic developed over thousands of years. Indigenous peoples have managed landscapes through controlled burns, rotational farming, seasonal harvesting, spiritual stewardship, and keen observation of animal behavior. COP30 is expected to formally recognize traditional and Indigenous knowledge as essential to climate governance. This would require countries to integrate Indigenous knowledge into national climate policies such as NDCs and NAPs, expand climate finance to support Indigenous stewardship programs, strengthen the mandate and resources of the UNFCCC’s Indigenous Peoples Platform (LCIPP), and reinforce the application of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) across climate projects.  Rather than treating Indigenous knowledge as an afterthought, COP30 highlights the importance of preserving this knowledge as a critical source of ecological insight for climate action. 

This emerging approach converges with a broader movement toward rights-based climate action, which places the rights of nature and people at the heart of climate policy. This perspective extends climate governance beyond engineering solutions and emphasizes the rights of forest communities to govern their ancestral lands, the rights of ecosystems to exist and regenerate, and the rights of future generations to inherit a livable planet. Brazil is expected to introduce the Belém Declaration on the Rights of Nature, a political milestone that, while not legally binding, would establish a powerful normative precedent. Recognizing ecosystems as rights-bearing entities challenges the long-standing notion that environmental destruction can be justified as a necessary trade-off for economic growth. This shift mirrors global trends, from New Zealand granting personhood to the Whanganui River to Ecuador embedding the Rights of Nature in its constitution. Bangladesh offers a strong example of river recognition through the 2019 Turag River case, where the High Court declared the river a living entity with legal rights. This ruling empowered authorities to act as the river’s guardians, protecting it from pollution and encroachment. The decision signaled a shift toward viewing rivers as living systems that must be preserved, not exploited. COP30 could be the moment when these ideas enter mainstream climate governance. 

The importance of Indigenous ecological knowledge becomes even clearer through small but powerful ecological examples. Consider two common snakes in South Asia: the banded krait and Russell’s viper. Indigenous communities long understood that the banded krait preys on the Russell’s viper, keeping its population in check.

Russell's viper

Russell’s viper, highly venomous, causes a significant number of snakebite fatalities. The banded krait, though venomous, is shy, nocturnal, and rarely bites humans. When modern settlements expanded and people unfamiliar with ecological roles began killing kraits out of fear, the balance collapsed. Fewer kraits meant population booms of Russell’s vipers, resulting in more snakebites, more medical emergencies, and a greater burden on rural health systems. Here, the absence of Indigenous knowledge didn’t only harm biodiversity; it harmed people. 

Banded Krait

This small example reflects what happens on a planetary scale when Indigenous knowledge is ignored. Predator-prey dynamics unravel, forest-rainfall cycles weaken, soil fertility collapses, and landscapes lose their resilience. Communities downstream from these ecological disruptions face floods, droughts, food insecurity, and economic instability. COP30’s emphasis on Indigenous knowledge is therefore not cultural nostalgia; it is a rational climate strategy grounded in ecological reality. 

If COP30 succeeds in delivering these outcomes, it will redefine climate governance in three profound ways. It will make clear that landscapes are climate systems rather than scenic resources. It will elevate Indigenous guardianship from symbolic recognition to structural necessity. And it will embed rights-based climate action within global policy frameworks, moving conversations beyond emissions management toward the stewardship of living systems that sustain life. Belém may come to be known as the COP where humanity finally recognized that protecting landscapes is not merely an environmental choice but a planetary obligation, and that Indigenous knowledge, long marginalized, is not a relic of the past but a guide for the future. The forests, rivers, and mountains have always carried their own logic and their own rights. COP30 may be the moment the world begins to listen.