BELEM, Brazil (AP) — Indigenous people filled the streets, paddled the waterways and protested at the heart of the venue to make their voices heard during the United Nations climate talks that were supposed to give them a voice like never before at the annual conference.

As the talks, called COP30, concluded Saturday in Belem, Brazil, Indigenous people reflected on what the conference meant to them and whether they were heard.

Brazilian leaders had high hopes that the summit, taking place in the Amazon, would empower the people who inhabit the land and protect the biodiversity of the world’s largest rainforest, which helps stave off climate change as its trees absorb carbon pollution that heats the planet.

Many Indigenous people who attended the talks felt strengthened by the solidarity with tribes from other countries and some appreciated small wins in the final outcome. But for many, the talks fell short on representation, ambition and true action on climate issues affecting Indigenous people.

“This was a COP where we were visible but not empowered,” said Thalia Yarina Cachimuel, a Kichwa-Otavalo member of A Wisdom Keepers Delegation, a group of Indigenous people from around the world.

The first paragraph of the main political text acknowledges “the rights of Indigenous Peoples, as well as their land rights and traditional knowledge.”

Taily Terena, an Indigenous woman from the Terena nation in Brazil, said she was happy because the text for the first time mentioned those rights explicitly.

But Mindahi Bastida, an Otomí-Toltec member of A Wisdom Keepers Delegation, said countries should have pushed harder for agreements on how to phase out fuels like oil, gas and coal “and not to see nature as merchandise, but to see it as sacred.”

Several nations pushed for a road map to curtail use of fossil fuels, which when burned release greenhouse gases that warm the planet. Saturday’s final decision left out any mention of fossil fuels, leaving many countries disappointed.

Brazil also launched a financial mechanism that countries could donate to, which was supposed to help incentivize nations with lots of forest to keep those ecosystems intact.

Although the initiative received monetary pledges from a few countries, the project and the idea of creating a market for carbon are false solutions that “don’t stop pollution, they just move it around,” said Jacob Johns, a Wisdom Keeper of the Akimel O’Otham and Hopi nations.

“They hand corporations a license to keep drilling, keep burning, keep destroying, so long as they can point to an offset written on paper. It’s the same colonial logic dressed up as climate policy,” Johns said.

From the beginning of the conference, some Indigenous attendees were concerned visibility isn’t the same as true power. At the end, that sentiment lingered.

“What we have seen at this COP is a focus on symbolic presence rather than enabling the full and effective participation of Indigenous Peoples,” Sara Olsvig, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, wrote in a message after the conference concluded.

Edson Krenak, Brazil manager for Indigenous rights group Cultural Survival and member of the Krenak people, didn’t think negotiators did enough to visit forests or understand the communities living there. He also didn’t believe the 900 Indigenous people given access to the main venue was enough.

Sônia Guajajara, Brazil’s minister of Indigenous peoples, who is Indigenous herself, framed the convention differently.

“It is undeniable that this is the largest and best COP in terms of Indigenous participation and protagonism,” she said.

While the decisions by delegates left some Indigenous attendees feeling dismissed, many said they felt empowered by participating in demonstrations outside the venue.

When the summit began on Nov. 10, Paulo André Paz de Lima, an Amazonian Indigenous leader, thought his tribe and others didn’t have access to COP30. During the first week, he and a group of demonstrators broke through the barrier to get inside the venue. Authorities quickly intervened and stopped their advancement.

De Lima said that act helped Indigenous people amplify their voices.

“After breaking the barrier, we were able to enter COP, get into the Blue Zone and express our needs,” he said, referring to the official negotiation area. “We got closer (to the negotiations), got more visibility.”

The meaning of protest at this COP wasn’t just to get the attention of non-Indigenous people, it also was intended as a way for Indigenous people to commune with each other.

On the final night before an agreement was reached, a small group with banners walked inside the venue, protesting instances of violence and environmental destruction from the recent killing of a Guarani youth on his own territory to the proposed Prince Rupert Gas Transmission Project in Canada.

“We have to come together to show up, you know? Because they need to hear us,” Leandro Karaí of the Guarani people of South America said of the solidarity among Indigenous groups. “When we’re together with others, we’re stronger.“

They sang to the steady beat of a drum, locked arms in a line and marched down the long hall of the COP venue to the exit, breaking the silence in the corridors as negotiators remained deadlocked inside.

Then they emerged, voices raised, under a yellow sky.

BELEM, Brazil, Nov 10 (Reuters) – The COP30 climate summit opened on Monday with the U.N. climate chief urging countries to cooperate rather than battle over priorities, as efforts to limit global warming are threatened by a fracturing international consensus.

Host country Brazil brokered a deal on the agenda for the two-week summit in the Amazon city of Belem, deflecting attempts by developing-country negotiating blocs to shoehorn contentious issues like climate finance and carbon taxes into the talks.

It was unclear whether countries would aim to negotiate a final agreement for the end of the event – a hard sell in a year of fractious global politics and U.S. efforts to obstruct a transition away from fossil fuels.

Some including Brazil have suggested that countries focus on smaller efforts that do not need consensus, such as deforestation, after years of COP summits making lofty promises only to leave many unfulfilled.

“In this arena of COP30, your job here is not to fight one another – your job here is to fight this climate crisis, together,” U.N. Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell told delegates from more than 190 countries attending.

He said three decades of U.N. climate talks had helped to bend the curve in projected warming downward, “because of what was agreed in halls like this, with governments legislating, and markets responding. But I am not sugar-coating it. We have so much more work to do.”

A new U.N. analysis of countries’ emissions-cutting plans estimated that global greenhouse gases would decrease 12% by 2035 from 2019 levels, improving on an earlier estimate of 10% published last month.

The new figure takes into account the most recent pledges, including from China and the EU, but was still short of the 60% emissions drop needed by 2035 to limit global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures – the threshold beyond which scientists say climate change would unleash far more severe impacts.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva warned against interests trying to obscure the dangers of climate change.

“They attack the institutions, the science, the universities,” he said. “It’s time to impose another defeat to denialists.”

The world’s biggest historical emitter of greenhouse gases – the United States – opted to skip the summit; U.S. President Donald Trump falsely asserts that climate change is a hoax.

California Governor Gavin Newsom and New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham were expected in Belem on Tuesday.

“What the hell is going on here?” Newsom said of the U.S. government’s absence from the talks, addressing a global investors summit held on Monday in Sao Paulo.

“We’re in Brazil, one of our great trading partners, one of the world’s great democracies. I mean, hell, home to all the rare earth metals we need. This is the country we should be engaging with instead of giving the middle finger with 50% tariffs,” Newsom said, referring to duties imposed by the Trump administration.

COP30 President Andre Correa do Lago told a news conference: “I think that the absence of the U.S. … has opened some space for the world to see what developing countries are doing.”

Germany said European countries would push for commitments to rein in fossil fuel use – a goal promoted by Lula.

“We will advocate for something strong,” German Vice Minister Jochen Flasbarth told Reuters. “We don’t want to go the same way of President Trump and accuse others of being wrong. We want to listen.”

Countries were joined by Indigenous leaders, who arrived on Sunday by boat after traveling some 3,000 km (1,864 miles) from the Andes. They are demanding more say in how their territories are managed as climate change escalates and industries such as mining, logging and oil drilling push deeper into forests.

“We want to make sure that they don’t keep promising, that they will start protecting, because we as Indigenous people are the ones who suffer from these impacts of climate change,” said Pablo Inuma Flores, an Indigenous leader from Peru.

Scientists at dozens of universities and international science institutions sounded an alarm over the world’s thawing glaciers, ice sheets, and other frozen spaces.

“The cryosphere is destabilizing at an alarming pace,” the groups said in a letter to COP30 published on Monday. “Geopolitical tensions or short-term national interests must not overshadow COP30. Climate change is the defining security and stability challenge of our time.”

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 28 (Reuters) – At least 64 people died on Tuesday in Rio de Janeiro’s most deadly police operation ever, which targeted a major gang days before the city hosts global events related to the United Nations climate summit known as COP30.

Police have often conducted large-scale operations against criminal groups ahead of major events in Rio, which hosted the 2016 Olympics, the 2024 G20 summit and the BRICS summit in July.

Next week, Rio hosts the C40 global summit of mayors tackling climate change and Prince William’s Earthshot Prize, which will feature celebrities including pop star Kylie Minogue and four-time Formula One world champion Sebastian Vettel.

The programming is part of the run-up to COP30, the United Nations climate summit held in the Amazon city of Belem from Nov. 10 to Nov. 21.

The death toll confirmed by Rio Governor Claudio Castro on Tuesday, which included four police officers, was more than twice Rio’s most deadly previous police operation.

“We stand firm confronting narcoterrorism,” Castro wrote on social media about the operation, which he said involved 2,500 security personnel across the Alemao and Penha favela complexes, near the city’s international airport.

Rio’s favelas are poor, densely populated settlements woven through the city’s hilly oceanside terrain. Smoke rose early on Tuesday over the iconic skyline as gangs burnt cars to slow the advance of armored vehicles while bursts of gunfire rang out.

After the most intense fighting subsided, a Reuters journalist saw police from a special operations unit rounding up dozens of shirtless men. Sobbing family members gathered outside of a public hospital attending to those injured.

Tuesday’s operation was described by the state government as the largest ever targeting the Comando Vermelho gang. Castro confirmed 81 arrests as authorities sought to serve 250 arrest and search warrants.

The clashes disrupted the routines of dozens of schools and medical facilities, redirected bus routes and snarled traffic across several neighborhoods in the state capital.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Viga Gaier; Additional reporting by Aline Massuca in Rio de Janeiro and Andre Romani in Sao Paulo; Writing by Gabriel Araujo; Editing by Brad Haynes, Rod Nickel, Nia Williams and Nick Zieminski)