Declaration of the Global Summit of Indigenous Women and Youth: our collective voice at COP30
We, Indigenous Women, Indigenous Women with disabilities, and Indigenous Youth from the seven sociocultural regions of the world, gathered on 12–13 November 2025 in Belém do Pará, Brazil, to celebrate the Global Summit of Indigenous Women and Youth Protectors of the Territory, in the context of COP30.
We arrived from mountains, islands, forests, savannas, and ancestral territories, carrying with us the strength of our ancestors, our histories of resistance, and our shared commitment to defend life.
This gathering was a deeply spiritual, political, and collective space where we brought together our voices, concerns, visions, hopes, and proposals. We came together because we know that there will be no climate justice without us, without our leadership and without our worldviews.
We face the climate crisis deep within our territories
From our territories, we feel every day the impacts of climate change: accelerated glacial melt, floods, loss of biodiversity, water contamination, erosion, fires, forced displacement, and widening inequalities. We experience this crisis through multiple forms of violence against our bodies, cultures, and communities.
We know that it is not only an environmental crisis; it is also spiritual, cultural, social, economic, and political, rooted in colonial and extractivist structures that continue to harm our Peoples and Mother Earth. That is why we affirm that no solution will be effective unless it transforms these structures and centers our rights, our voices, and our proposals.
We are an indispensable part of the solution
During the Summit, we shared experiences, knowledge, and strategies, recognizing that:
- We are guardians of global biodiversity and of the ecosystems that regulate the climate.
- We are defenders of life, facing criminalization, violence, and displacement for protecting our territories.
- We are heirs and transmitters of ancestral knowledge, essential for restoring balance with nature.
- We are political actors and rights-holders, in all our diversity as Indigenous Women, Indigenous Women with disabilities, and Indigenous Youth.
We reaffirm that our territories, bodies, and languages are living, sacred systems essential for the continuity of life.
Our demands to the world
As Indigenous Women, Indigenous Women with disabilities, and Indigenous Youth, we call on States and international institutions to:
- Fully protect our lands, territories, and waters, pillars essential for climate mitigation and adaptation.
- Guarantee direct, accessible, and culturally appropriate climate finance, governed by us.
- Recognize our leadership and knowledge in the Global Goal on Adaptation and in all climate decision-making processes.
- Implement a Just Transition with a rights-based approach, free from extractivist practices that threaten our territories.
- Ensure our full and effective participation in COP30 and in all negotiation spaces.
- Uphold international standards such as CEDAW GR39, UNDRIP, and ILO Convention 169.
- Protect Indigenous women environmental defenders from criminalization and violence.
- Recognize non-economic losses and damages, including the loss of languages, knowledge, and sacred sites.
With us, not for us
Humanity is at a turning point. At this Summit, we reaffirmed that confronting the climate crisis requires honoring the solutions our Peoples have practiced for millennia.
Every decision about the future of the planet must be made with us, not for us.
From Belém, we join together to continue weaving a shared path toward climate justice.
We invite you to read, share, and circulate our Declaration.Because our voices continue to resonate.
Because the defense of life continues.
Because we are here, united for Mother Earth.
