COP30 Must Prioritise Indigenous Climate Leadership

COP30 Must Prioritise Indigenous Climate Leadership

Indigenous Peoples and local communities have long played a critical role in protecting forests and ecosystems worldwide. A new report by the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities (GATC) and Earth Insight highlights the immense industrial pressures now threatening the 36 million Indigenous Peoples and local communities who safeguard more than 958 million hectares of tropical forests.

The report calls for urgent action from governments, financial institutions and multilateral bodies attending COP30, urging them to support solutions led by communities who have protected these ecosystems for generations.

Escalating Threats Across the Tropics

The findings are stark. In the Amazon, 31 million hectares of Indigenous territories overlap with oil and gas blocks, while another 9.8 million hectares face mining pressures. In the Congo Basin, 38% of community forests are under oil and gas threat, and carbon-rich peatlands storing roughly 30 billion tonnes of carbon are at risk from new extraction licenses.

In Indonesia, large areas of Indigenous land overlap with timber and mining concessions. In Mesoamerica, communities face widespread mining pressures across their ancestral territories.

These forests regulate the global climate, sustain biodiversity, and hold deep cultural and spiritual significance. They store carbon, regulate rainfall across continents and support countless species. Their destruction accelerates climate instability, species extinction and pushes the planet closer to irreversible tipping points.

The report also documents the lived experiences of communities such as the Waorani in Ecuador, whose lands face a 64% overlap with oil concessions, and the O’Hongana Manyawa in Indonesia, one of the last Indigenous groups living in voluntary isolation, now surrounded by nickel mining expansion for the so-called “green transition.”

Deforestation is often accompanied by violence. Indigenous Peoples and local defenders protecting ancestral territories are being killed for opposing extractive industries and development projects that ignore human rights and ecological limits.

Community-Led Solutions Already Work

Despite these threats, there are successful models of stewardship. In Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve, community-managed forests lost only 1.5% of tree cover over ten years — far lower than the national average. In Colombia, 25 Indigenous territorial entities maintain over 99% forest cover. In Indonesia’s Wallacea region, communities reclaimed nearly 900 hectares of customary land through participatory mapping and legal reform.

The conclusion is consistent: when Indigenous Peoples' and local communities’ rights are secured and they are allowed to lead, forests thrive.

Although Indigenous Peoples represent less than 5% of the world’s population, they protect 54% of the planet’s remaining intact forests and 43% of Key Biodiversity Areas.

Yet these same territories are undermined by mining expansion, agribusiness, oil extraction, illegal logging and land grabbing — frequently enabled by policies that weaken land rights rather than protect them.

The Path Forward at COP30

Indigenous Peoples and local communities are not barriers to development; they are central to achieving global climate and biodiversity goals.

The Brazzaville Declaration outlines the needed commitments:

Secure land and territorial rights

Ensure free, prior and informed consent

Provide direct funding to communities

Protect the lives of environmental defenders

Recognise and integrate traditional knowledge in policy

Without these steps, global climate and biodiversity targets will remain out of reach. With them, the world has a viable pathway toward ecological regeneration.

As COP30 opens in Brazil, the question is whether global leaders will act. The future of tropical forests — and the climate systems they sustain — depends on whether Indigenous Peoples and local communities are supported to lead the way forward.