International Meeting: Peoples, Territories, and Nature in the face of global chaos

São Paulo, May 26-28, 2025

[Português / Español]

Social, environmental, and anti-imperialist movements around the world are faced with the challenge of organizing to defeat the attacks on people, the plundering of their territories, and the destruction of the Earth’s climate and biosphere. 2024 was the hottest year in 120,000 years, with temperatures 1.5°C higher than those of the pre-industrial period. We are on track to exceed an average global warming of 2°C by mid-century. We began the year with the Trump administration promoting the dismantling of global governance structures built after World War II and a systematic offensive against hard-won rights, triggering a widespread trade war that is disrupting the global economy and punishing the most vulnerable countries. We are facing the advance of fascism, racism, xenophobia, intolerance, and science denial, as well as growing fossil fuel extraction and military spending. Bloody wars are increasingly breaking out, turning into massacres and genocides.

The voracious pressures of the capitalist global economy are increasing, and neo-extractivist and neo-colonial demands are expanding the “zones of sacrifice” for peoples and territories. Catastrophes affect Indigenous peoples and local communities with deep ties to their territories, but also the urban peripheries, impoverished communities, women, children, the elderly, and racialized populations. They want to privatize everything and prioritize global finance everywhere, even in environmental policies. The “carbon markets” are now joined by the market-based false solution called the “Tropical Forest Forever Facility” (TFFF). Previously agreed-upon “energy transition” policies are being eroded by greed for oil and other fossil fuels.

South America is home to the Amazon rainforest, a strategic biome for the global climate that is now approaching the point of no return, a point of collapse due to the advance of agribusiness, extractivism, and global warming. Here, capitalist destruction is confronted by people who, from their homelands, seek to establish territories free of oil, deforestation, mining, racism, femicide, and ecocide. Two prominent events will soon take place on our continent: the Fifth Summit of Presidents of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) in Colombia in August; and the annual meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 30) to the UN Climate Convention in Belém do Pará, Brazil, in November. These are convergence points for activists in the region and around the world seeking to build an alternative to the deadly path taken by capitalism and its governments.

To reflect on the new global situation and connect our struggles, the People’s Mobilization for the Earth and the Climate and the undersigned organizations will organize the international meeting «Peoples, Territories, and Nature in the Face of Global Chaos» from May 26 to 28 in São Paulo, Brazil, to discuss the current agenda that is being built:

• May 26 AM/PM: Analysis of the global situation and new strategies. Confronting global chaos, the new world order, the trade war, the rise of fascism and militarism, wars and genocides, the worsening of extractivism, and the climate crisis.
• May 27 AM: Tropical Forest Internationalism. Analysis of the TFFF and local strategies for the defense of forests.
• May 27 PM: For an Amazon and a world free of oil. The path of people and nature to leave fossil fuels under the ground, rivers, and oceans.
• May 28 AM:​​ Convergence of socio-environmental struggles for free territories in rural and urban areas. Building sustainable and agroecological territories that promote the rights of Nature, free from extractivism, femicide, racism, and violence.
• May 28 PM:​​Strategies for the 5th Summit of Amazonian Presidents and COP30. Charting the path to advance our proposals and strategies for action.

To participate in the meeting in São Paulo (exact location TBD), please fill out the attached registration form.

Convened by:

People’s Mobilization for the Earth and the Climate
Global Forest Coalition
World Assembly for the Amazon
WALHI, Indonesia
Centre for Environmental Justice, Togo
Fundación Solón, Bolivia
Attac, Argentina
Asamblea Argentina Mejor sin TLC
Coletivo 660
Ação Educativa
RBE-Rede Brasileira Ecossocialista
Associação Alternativa Terrazul
FBOMS – Forum Brasileiro de ONGs e Movimentos Sociais
Pororoka, Brasil
Women Engage for a Common Future
Rede de Trabalho Amazônico GTA
Rede Emancipa de Educação Popular de Brasil
COP do Povo
Casa Amazônia
Instituto Universidade Popular (Unipop)