SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
The 2025 United Nations Climate Conference, known as COP30, opens tomorrow in Belem, Brazil. Ahead of the official meetings, community members from Rio's favelas, its lowest-income neighborhoods, have been mobilizing. They want to make sure that as climate solutions are being discussed, their voices and the needs of more than the billion people worldwide who live in similar informal settlements are being recognized. Julia Carneiro reports from Rio.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BREATHING")
NEGRA RE: (Rapping in non-English language).
JULIA CARNEIRO, BYLINE: Brazilian funk music was born in Rio's favelas.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BREATHING")
NEGRA RE: (Rapping in non-English language).
CARNEIRO: Today, at the Sustainable Favela Festival in Central Rio, the rhythm is teaching people about climate change.
NEGRA RE: (Non-English language spoken).
CARNEIRO: "My song is called 'Breathing.' It talks about carbon emissions, deforestation and pollutions," says musician Negra Re. "Garbage must go in the trash or else nature will crash," she sings.
(CROSSTALK)
CARNEIRO: There are dozens of stalls here where projects from favelas all over Rio are showing and selling their work, like goods made from recycling, sustainable soap and fresh produce from communal vegetable gardens.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
CARNEIRO: Onstage, community leaders launched the COP30 letter from the world's informal settlements, addressed to negotiators nearly 2,000 miles away in Belem in the Amazon.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
CARNEIRO: "Nothing that impacts us should be decided without us," the letter declares. Theresa Williamson, an urban planner and head of Catalytic Communities, says many favela leaders want to attend COP but can't.
THERESA WILLIAMSON: The community organizers that we work with - they wanted to be at COP, but realistically, they can't get there. It's very far. It's very expensive.
CARNEIRO: Roughly 1 in every 5 people lives in informal settlements in Rio, as does a quarter of the world's urban population, facing issues like poor housing and lack of basic services. But they get little attention at COPs.
WILLIAMSON: They're barely touched on, even though this is where such a large percentage of those that are going to be most impacted by climate change live in the world.
CARNEIRO: The letter, written by over a hundred community organizers and signed in over 25 countries, will be carried to Belem to the People's Summit alongside the official talks.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: (Non-English language spoken).
CARNEIRO: Up north in Belem, known as the gateway to the Amazon, favela activists are already organizing. At this event, children learn how to protect the environment. The city's favelas and baixadas, low-lying riverbank settlements, make up more than half the population, and pollution and flooding are part of daily life.
SAMARA CHEETARA: (Non-English language spoken).
CARNEIRO: "Our main objective is to put marginalized communities at the center of climate debate," says Samara Cheetara of Na Cuia, one of the many collectives that form the COP of the baixadas. Jurema Werneck heads Amnesty International in Brazil and is COP30's envoy for marginalized communities. She's been traveling nationwide, hearing from residents on the frontlines.
JUREMA WERNECK: (Non-English language spoken).
CARNEIRO: "What I saw in the peripheries was a lack of state presence and people creating their own solutions to emergencies such as floods, water shortages and heat waves," she says. Werneck will take her findings to the COP30 presidency in Belem.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: The spirit of Rio must lead us to think constantly of the future, our children future.
CARNEIRO: COP30 may be Brazil's first, but global climate diplomacy has roots here. The U.N. Climate Convention was launched at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, when leaders from Cuban President Fidel Castro to President George H. W. Bush gathered to chart a path on the environment. This year, the U.S. won't be at the talks in Brazil, a contrast to that moment in 1992, when Bush struck this tone.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GEORGE H W BUSH: There are those who say that economic growth and environmental protection cannot be compatible. Well, let them come to the United States.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Non-English language spoken).
CARNEIRO: Back then, civil society held a massive parallel forum across town, a grassroots climate gathering that Werneck says influenced the conference's outcome.
WERNECK: (Non-English language spoken).
CARNEIRO: "Our movement was so strong," Werneck says, "it helped to shape global environmental governance." And now she hopes voices outside COP30 will be heard loud and clear by the decision-makers in Belem. For NPR News, I'm Julia Carneiro in Rio. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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