There was a certain hopeful fervour around the 30th United Nations Conference of Parties (COP30), now concluded in Belém. This port city in northern Brazil is more than a meeting place, it is a gateway to the Amazon, a river so immense it carries nearly a sixth of the planet’s freshwater into the waiting ocean. For 6,600 kilometres, its  tributaries pulse through the heart of the world’s largest tropical rainforest, a living sanctuary of nearly 10% of Earth’s known biodiversity.

The Amazon is not just an ecosystem; it is a sacred presence. Within its embrace live 1.5 million indigenous people whose relationships with these lands span generations, guardians who protect these territories from the extractive forces that have long threatened them.

To hold the most consequential climate negotiations of our time in such a place felt profoundly symbolic. In a territory that reminds humanity of its ancient kinship with land, water, and life itself, one might have expected a renewed clarity, a collective awakening to act with urgency, humility, and care for people and the planet. But instead of the transformative action urgently needed, what we witnessed at COP30 was yet another round of drawn-out, vociferous debates on phasing out fossil fuels culminating not in decisive commitment, but in a voluntary agreement to begin discussions on a future roadmap for an eventual phaseout. Even this minimal step faced resistance from oil-producing countries, while the roadmap to end deforestation was quietly dropped. 

COP30 witnessed one of the largest mobilisations of indigenous peoples from across the Amazon, and many observers hastily framed this as a moment of “centring” indigenous voices. Yet this felt like a profound distortion of reality. Their presence was not a sign of inclusion but of resistance to a collective declaration that their demands are still unheard inside negotiation rooms. While headlines highlighted the music, colour, and chants filling the streets of Belém, they rarely captured the deeper stories and lived experiences of the peoples whose territories anchor the world’s largest rainforest.

For generations, capitalist expansion has dug into their homes, drained rivers, and felled trees, eroding ecosystems intertwined with ancestral memory, identity, and cultural knowledge. Within these landscapes lie sophisticated systems of reciprocity and stewardship that challenge the extractive logic underpinning today’s climate crisis. These are communities who honour the Curupira, the spirit of the forest, and who maintain relationships with their territories that far exceed what a neoliberal worldview can perceive.

Also read: So Who Exactly Protests at COP?

Rooted in care, women on frontlines

Across these protests, women stood unmistakably at the frontlines unsurprising given the deep, place-based knowledge women in indigenous communities and across the Global South hold about water, soil, seeds, and the medicinal forests that have sustained civilizations for generations. Yet their contributions remain consistently erased by capitalist systems fixated on extraction, growth, and profit for the few. Women and gender-diverse communities continue to assert a different moral compass: one rooted in reciprocity, care, and interdependence. Their leadership reminds us that our cultures and futures are inseparable from the non-human world and that care must guide our collective response to crises. 

Across India’s most climate-vulnerable geographies, women continue to stand at the heart of resilience and regeneration. Informal workers, indigenous women, Dalit women, fisherwomen, and women farmers are rising to the moment crafting climate solutions grounded in generations of embodied knowledge and ecological intuition. They work without recognition, without media attention, and with little access to climate finance, yet their labour is central to ensuring that future generations can still depend on forests, fertile lands, clean rivers, and the sea.

In the tribal districts of Odisha, for instance, women have been painstakingly mapping their natural and cultural commons documenting sacred groves, water sources, medicinal landscapes, and seasonal food systems. They transform this data into “dream maps” for their villages: living blueprints that articulate what a thriving future looks like on their terms. These maps are now being tabled at Palli Sabhas and Gram Sabhas, asserting women’s visions in political spaces historically closed to them. As a result, local budgets and political will are slowly beginning to align toward protecting forests, securing access to non-timber forest produce, and restoring barren land with medicinal plants and native species central to community survival. This was done by the support from Panchayat leaders, the implementation of community forest rights and funding under Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act (CAMPA). 

India must engage with indigenous communities with deep urgency

This quiet but powerful work echoes the resistance of indigenous peoples at COP30 communities who carried with them the grief, wisdom, and demands of those deeply intertwined with their territories. Yet women and gender-diverse people rarely receive the recognition they deserve for defending, nurturing, and rebuilding ecosystems in the face of accelerating climate and ecological collapse.

In this global moment marked by backlash against gender equality, the adoption of the Belém Gender Action Plan (GAP) at COP30 offers a rare glimmer of progress. It lays out a nine-year roadmap to centre gender justice in climate policy, a necessary step toward honouring and resourcing the frontline leadership that has always been essential to climate solutions. The discourse shaped by indigenous peoples in Belém and echoed back home through both quiet acts of climate stewardship and bold protests against extractivism offers India a profound opportunity. 

To be a credible voice of the Global South, India must engage in deep listening, not only on international platforms but within its own borders. With more than 80 percent of our population living in districts highly vulnerable to climate-induced disasters, the path ahead demands far more urgency. Building resilience, reducing vulnerability, and pursuing net-zero ambitions cannot be parallel tracks; they must be integrated and people-centred.

This begins with honouring the knowledge of communities who have read seasonal shifts for generations and whose survival depends on ecological balance. It requires translating the Belém Gender Action Plan into meaningful national and state level action, backed by resources and accountability. And it calls for strengthening the governance in implementing foundational laws such as the Forest Rights Act, MGNREGA, and Jal Jeevan Mission and other government schemes that are essential for coping and renewing in the face of the climate crisis. 

Most importantly, India must reimagine how decisions are made. Establishing diverse, representative committees where women, indigenous leaders, informal workers, and other frontline communities have a decisive voice is essential to shaping mitigation, adaptation, and resilience strategies that are not only effective, but just. This is the pathway to climate leadership rooted in equity, integrity, and the lived realities of its people.

Neha Saigal is an advocate for intersectional feminism and post-growth solutions to the climate crisis. She is a writer, facilitator, and strategist committed to equity and justice.

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