Fifth letter to the international community, the Brazilian incoming Presidency of COP30

WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom, 

 AND FOR THESE ENDS to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples, [...] 

 Charter of the United Nations, 29 June 1945 

12 August 2025 - republished from here. 

Dear Friends,

In this fifth letter to the international community, the Brazilian incoming Presidency of COP30

recalls the founding spirit of the United Nations: that we are a community of peoples before

we are a community of nations. In this letter, we invite the international community to

remember that climate action is not merely a scientific or technical challenge - it is a profoundly

human one. 

This is a letter to People - to lived experiences, agency, and leadership of those on the frontlines

of climate change, especially those in vulnerable situations. They are not passive victims of

climate change, but living leaders of care, resilience, and regeneration. Their stewardship of

land, culture, knowledge, and solidarity is not a legacy of the past, but an example of more

harmonious ways of relating to Nature as a model for a common future. 

To all those historically marginalised, displaced, or unheard, COP30 should be the turning

point in which you are recognized as both essential actors and rights-holders in the global

climate response. 

 

A New Invitation: Let us Ensure Climate Action Begins and Ends with People

The incoming COP30 Presidency calls the international community to honor memory. We are

peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of

emerging risks. We know in our souls and through our institutions that we belong together. We

take meaning from honoring ancestry and safeguarding our children’s future. We have purpose

in uniting our strength and combining our efforts for shared protection, fairness and prosperity. 

We are people in families, cities, and countries. We are people in businesses, markets, and

finance. We are people of nature, ecosystems, and planet. In a changing climate, people’s

experiences of both loss and community are not abstract. They are geographic, they are

embodied, they are sacred. They become memories, grief and courage. Let us honor them at

COP30.

 

For far too long, climate action has been framed as a question of technologies and timelines.

But at its core, this is a story of who we are, what we remember, how we care, and what we

want to preserve and create. We must reclaim climate action as a human act, as an act of

profound responsibility.

 

As climate change emerges as a global crisis, human bonds at the local level also emerge as

our most powerful resource. Now is the time we face global warming by putting human faces

to our response. Now is the time we show up with humanity - individually and collectively.

Now is the time we frame our climate response as the pursuit of fairness and prosperity. 

Ultimately, the climate crisis is about giving urgency to people’s needs and hopes. Mitigation,

adaptation, finance, technology, and capacity-building are first and foremost about addressing

structural inequalities, ending hunger and combatting poverty whilst promoting sustainable

development, human rights and equality, including on gender and race. The climate fight is

about quality of life, personal integrity, health, private property, housing, freedom, water, food,

work, social safety, culture and education. It is about family, parenthood, and neighborhood. 

It is time we remember that climate justice begins with people. That territory is not just land,

but identity, governance, and future. That ancestry is not the past, but a guiding intelligence.

That ancestral knowledge is vital to humanity’s survival and flourishing. That memory is

infrastructure, and storytelling is a form of climate action - able to connect generations, build

belonging, and restore trust. That care is a form of power to be integrated into how we design,

finance, govern, and adapt.

 

As adverse effects of climate change are increasingly affecting individuals and communities

worldwide, we know impacts are felt most acutely by those segments of the population that are

already in vulnerable situations owing to factors such as geography, poverty, gender, age, race,

ethnicity, Indigenous or minority status, national or social origin, birth and disability. 

And while the climate crisis has disproportionately impacted those least responsible, they are

showing exceptional leadership:

 

Women and girls are persevering in social cohesion, holding together the fabric of community

resilience and taking socioeconomics to a new paradigm of sustainability. 

Youth and children remind us that time is not abstract - it is embodied, urgent, and theirs.

Indigenous Peoples protect a huge portion of the world’s biodiversity - their guardianship of

territory goes way beyond conservation, it is cosmology, memory, knowledge, governance,

and survival.

 

Traditional, rural and coastal communities carry ancestral knowledge of the land, waters

and seas, passed down through calloused hands and whispered songs.

 

Distinct groups, such as Afro-descendants, have transformed territories into beacons of

collective creation, cultural affirmation and resistance.

 

Communities in peripheries of cities combine orality and mobilization with digital

technologies, redefining urban life, leveraging cultural wealth and innovating in planning,

preparedness and territorial regeneration.

 

The elderly, ethnic minorities, migrants, people with disabilities and those living in

poverty have built models of mutual care and radical inclusion that climate policy has yet to

fully understand.

People - and women, in particular - who resist, confront, and overcome overlapping

inequalities teach us how to turn injustice into powerful energy for resilience and

transformation. They embody inspiring examples of climate response - of bold action in place

of reaction. Similar leadership is exercised daily by workers among the most exposed to the

health impacts of climate change, across fields like agriculture, construction, manufacturing,

transportation, and public safety - particularly those laboring outdoors, in overheated indoor

environments, or on the frontlines of emergency response.

 

More than limited and defined by their vulnerable situation, these people are also teachers in

their vitality, wisdom and creativity. They are not merely peripheral because of their

geography, they are protagonists in the forefront of climate mitigation, adaptation and resource

sharing. They are agents of change, who bring unique perspectives and solutions.

 

The incoming COP30 Presidency humbly bows to all those who lead by example. We

recognize you not because you need recognition, but because we need your courage - to

overcome our fear of loss, of change, of lack of control. We need your courage to teach us that

genuine leadership comes not with authority but with care and affection. 

 

The incoming Presidency issues a new invitation: let us ensure that climate action begins

and ends with People. 

 

Bringing COP30 to the heart of the Amazon is about giving way to the vulnerable and to the

peripheral as genuine leaders who take brave decisions every day, and must now come to the

center of global decision-making. 

 

Putting People at the Center of COP30

 

As we center our climate response on people, we invite the international community to join

forces with the Brazilian presidency to bring people to the center of COP30 through concrete

action and measurable positive impact across all four fronts of action of COP30 – Global

Mobilization; Action Agenda; formal UNFCCC Negotiations; and the Leaders’ Summit.

Global mobilization: the incoming Presidency has been learning so much from our Special

Envoys, Presidency Youth Climate Champion and the Circle of Peoples, which have been

invaluable allies in connecting COP30 to peoples’ realities on the ground. Putting people at the

center of climate action and recovering our sense of agency are the very spirit of the Global

Mutirão around which we invited the international community to rally in our first and second

letters. 

 

Formal UNFCCC negotiations: people are at the core of formal negotiations we referred to

in our third letter, including on the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) indicators under the

UAE–Belém Work Programme, the UAE Dialogue on implementing the global stocktake

(GST) outcomes, and the UAE Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP) - in addition to our

joint work on topics such as the new Gender Action Plan, the Local Communities and

Indigenous Peoples Platform (LCIPP) and loss and damage. 

 

Action Agenda: from fostering human and social development to building resilience in cities

and unlocking enablers like finance and technology, each of the six axes of the Action Agenda

we unveiled in our fourth letter offers pathways to implement the care, dignity, and leadership

we honour in this fifth letter. By aligning people-centered realities with the implementation of

the GST in the Action Agenda, we reinforce the legitimacy and accountability of our climate

efforts - turning memory into metrics, and solidarity into systems change. Contemporary to the

2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development, the Action Agenda further provides a unique

opportunity for COP30 to support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with climate

solutions that promote climate justice, combat hunger and poverty, and address structural

inequalities, including on gender, race and socioeconomic conditions. 

 

Leaders’ Summit: at the COP30 Leaders’ Summit, which we will refer to in a future letter,

we will invite leaders to unite around genuine parliamentary debate towards concrete solutions

to connect the climate regime to people’s real lives. 

 

The critical moment we live in calls us to respond with courage. As we strengthen

multilateralism and accelerate the implementation of the Paris Agreement, people must be the

purpose behind each nationally determined contribution (NDC), national adaptation plan

(NAP) and biennial transparency report (BTR). People must be the purpose behind climate

finance and trade. People must be the purpose behind the nature and global energy transition

agendas. 

 

To protect people against a background in which climate urgency interacts with compounding

geopolitical and socioeconomic challenges, the incoming Presidency hopes we remain guided

by three interconnected priorities it endeavors for COP30:

(1) To reinforce multilateralism and the climate change regime under the UNFCCC,

(2) To connect the climate regime to people’s  real lives, and

(3) To accelerate the implementation of the Paris Agreement by stimulating

action and structural adjustments across all institutions that can contribute to it. The incoming

Presidency is determined to do everything in its capacity to leverage unity and cooperation

towards our COP30 priorities around multilateralism, people, and accelerated

implementation.

 

A Renewed Invitation: Changing by Choice – Together

 

The incoming COP30 Presidency issues a renewed invitation to the international community:

let us change by choice, together. Let us not allow the fear or the impacts of climate change

define peoples’ choices. 

 

Beyond pain and suffering, the climate challenge offers us an opportunity to evolve.

Overcoming climate change can be the process we transition away from a fragmenting model

of extraction, domination and territorialism towards an integrating model of symbiosis, mutual

belonging and stronger human bonds. 

 

Like any transition, the climate transition entails change and loss towards a greater gain. As

symbolic beings, we, humans, rely on rituals to process grief for what we must leave behind,

at the same time we welcome the new. 

 

The incoming Presidency invites the international community to make of COP30 a ritual

of passage to mark and soberly celebrate our transition towards a more promising and

prosperous future. Firstly, a ritual in which we allow ourselves to mourn the loss of those

who were taken from us due to extreme weather events - from floods in Brazil and India, to

heat waves in Spain and Japan. Alongside loss and damage, we can use COP30 to collectively

process grief for a model of development that promised prosperity in the past but no

longer carries hope to the future. 

 

Secondly, as a ritual of passage to honor memory, COP30 can be a moment to safeguard our

human essence - the essential that must be kept as we metamorphose towards the new. Our

essence lies in the non-negotiable shared human values of empathy, compassion and solidarity. 

Thirdly, as we remember who we essentially are and what we value, COP30 can offer the

platform for us to build right away the future we want. The global mobilization, Leaders’

Summit, Action Agenda and formal negotiation tracks of COP30 are all canvas for co-creation,

clipboards for co-design, and arenas for collaboration.

 

In memory, resistance, and imagination, let COP30 be the gathering where formal authority

walkes alongside genuine leadership. Where we, the peoples of the Earth, can meet to

remember what it means to belong to the planet and to each other. Where climate action is

not about institutions alone but begins and ends with people. Where we decisively move

towards changing by choice, together. 

André Aranha Correa do Lago