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As Democracy Now! broadcasts from the COP30 U.N. climate summit, we speak with Kumi Naidoo, the longtime South African human rights and environmental justice activist who is president of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative. He discusses U.S. absence from climate talks, Gaza, and wealthy countries refusing to take accountability for the climate crisis. "We're not asking the rich nations for a charity here. We are asking them to pay their climate debt."
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Democracy Now! is broadcasting from the U.N. climate summit in the Brazilian rainforest city of Belém, near the mouth of the Amazon River, where the COP30 summit has entered its second week of negotiations. The gathering comes 33 years after the Rio Earth Summit, which created the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Countries are trying to find a way forward on addressing the climate crisis, even as global temperatures continue to rise and as the Trump administration boycotts the conference. COP30 is also the first since 2021 with a significant civil society presence, after three successive U.N. summits held in repressive countries that outlawed public protest.
"The beauty of the forest COP, the beauty of the people's COP in Brazil, is that civil society is very active, both inside and outside," says Leila Salazar-López, executive director of Amazon Watch.
We also speak with Viviana Santiago, executive director of Oxfam Brazil, who advises the Brazilian government on sustainable development. She stresses the importance of centering Indigenous peoples and the health of the Amazon in these talks. "People that are most affected for the climate crisis are the people that did nothing to [cause] this crisis," says Santiago.
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Over 5000 fossil fuel lobbyists were given access to U.N. climate summits over the past four years, a period marked by a rise in catastrophic extreme weather, adequate climate action and record oil and gas expansion. "This is climate obstruction at work," says Nina Lakhani, senior climate justice reporter for The Guardian US. She notes that lobbyists attend climate conferences to "promote false solutions like carbon based carbon markets, carbon capture and storage — these market based solutions which are not going to save the planet."
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