As about 55,000 delegates gathered November 10-21 in the Amazonian city of Belem do Para, Brazil, for this year’s meeting of the United Nations Summit on Climate Change (COP30), Anglicans were in the middle. They offered theological reflection and grounded prayers for a solid outcome of the meeting. Multifaith members said they were seeking the transformation of the root causes of the climate crisis. This is a call for a civilizational transformation, they said in their varied documents.
The Most Rev. Marinez Bassotto, Primate of the Anglican-Episcopal Church of Brazil and Bishop of the Diocese of Amazonia, led the Anglican contingent in the main meeting and at a parallel ecumenical and interfaith gathering, the Tapiri. Tapiri is a word from the Tupi language that means “temporary meeting place.” Tupi peoples were one of the many Indigenous groups of the Amazon attending COP30. The Tapiri served as a gathering site for multiple Christian denominations, and for practitioners of a wide variety of other faiths.
Members of the Anglican Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand, and Polynesia, including Archbishop Don Tamihere, were invited guests in the Tapiri. The Rev. Susan Wallace led the Tapiri community in morning prayers, offering theological reflections based on her earth-honoring Maori tradition.
Also present at the high-level meetings was Martha Jarvis, the Anglican Communion’s permanent representative to the United Nations.
“Our job is to connect the Anglican Communion around the world to this complex process,” Jarvis said. “We pinpoint, in these discussions, ways in which our local congregations can engage in this world-sized meeting. We translate themes of global debate and bring them back to our parishes. It goes both ways: What do our congregations have to say to this greater process? and then What ways can we communicate the content of these meetings back to our communities?”
She added: “For example, in Kenya there have been devastating droughts in recent years. This is not an isolated problem. We bring to COP30 the news about what we have been doing in Kenya: the plan, already underway, to plant 15 million trees in the coming years. We are exploring a deeper understanding of the problem and then offering concrete solutions. That is how we build hope.”
The gathering in Belem included a rich expression of worldwide Anglicanism. Other delegates included: The Rev. Ray Minniecon, from the Kabi Baki and Gurang-Gurang tribes in Queensland, Australia, and Ayanna Evelyn, from Barbados, who was this year’s Anglican youth delegate. Also present were Anglicans from Africa, including Charles Bakoli, from Malawi, the Rev. Aurelio Uquio, church leader working in Mozambique and Angola. Agnes Lam, an Anglican youth leader active on issues of climate justice also made her voice heard.
There was a wide representation of Brazilian Anglicans. The Very Rev. Ives Vergara, dean of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Belem, hosted the Tapiri. “This year’s COP is taking place in a prophetic location,” said the Rt. Rev. Mauricio Andrade, Bishop of Brasilia. “What we see is the integration of the church and parallel communities, with renewed hope and a unified commitment.”
“We created a space where Indigenous peoples have high visibility,” said the Rt. Rev. Humberto Maiztegui Gonçalves, Bishop of Porto Alegre in southern Brazil. “They are the leaders for our time. We stand with and by them, and their historic care for their community, their land, their river. This is a call for the whole world to join the struggle for the planet.”
“Climate justice will only be achieved when the territorial and cultural rights of Indigenous communities are fully recognized and respected,” Archbishop Bassotto said. “They are the ones who hold the ancestral and practical knowledge necessary for preservation. At COP30 we want their voices to influence the negotiations, ensuring that the commitments made at the summit are translated into concrete, effective and fair action.”
There were significant challenges at the gathering to include the voices even of the closest Indigenous communities. Critics denounced that while space was given to representatives of the fossil fuel lobby (one report revealed that one in 25 COP30 participants was a registered lobbyist), not all Indigenous communities from the Amazon region (which is vast and includes eight countries) were given a voice at the negotiating table.
This led to disruptions, in which one group would break into the secure blue zone and another would blockade the entrance to the gathering, preventing the entrance of certified participants.
The Rev. Shaneequa Brokenleg of the Diocese of South Dakota, the Episcopal Church’s interim indigenous missioner and staff officer for racial reconciliation, was a COP30 participant.
Brokenleg wrote about the Indigenous-led actions: “I know some will say that protesting isn’t the way to do things. But I wonder what would any of us do if our homelands were disappearing, our sacred sites desecrated, our food and medicine threatened, and our children’s future was being destroyed? When your voice is ignored and your people are not heard in the very spaces where decisions about your survival are being made, sometimes lament becomes action. Sometimes prayer looks like protest.”
At the Tapiri, other multifaith voices clarified their plans for action in the coming years. “COP30 is a critical moment for us to affirm our commitment,” said the Rev. Dr. Angelique Walker-Smith, president of the World Council of Churches’ North American-Turtle Island region. “We at WCC would like to announce our Decade of Environmental Justice. We will be acting firmly for the next ten years on these things: just payments to the poorest countries—those who have done the least to cause and yet who suffer the most from climate change. We demand that these payments—which will help defer the greatest suffering—not be loans. Also, we will be actively advocating for the just transition from fossil fuels. We are coming together to build a great movement for our climate. This decade will see us move on a spiritual journey, from prophetic witness to prophetic action.”
“Rainstorms with thunder and lightning sometimes drowned out the negotiations,” Jarvis said on the gathering’s last day. “We were reminded of our humanity in the face of climate threat. Sometimes the noise, energy, and the chaos of COP30 cannot compete with our natural world or drown out our God. We pray for COP to play its part in aligning our human actions with what is best for our sisters and brothers and our planet as we reconcile ourselves to that God. It needs to happen now—with the urgency of the thunderstorms in Belem.”
The gathering concluded on November 21, with imperfect agreements, but with a clearer understanding of the fight ahead. COP31 will meet next year in Turkey.
“As Indigenous people, we know that the Earth is not a resource,” Brokenleg said. “She is a relative. Her waters are our veins. Her forests, our lungs. Her soil, our memory. When creation suffers, we all suffer. When she thrives, we can all thrive.”
The Rev. Emilie Smith is Guest Writer on Covenant. She is parish priest of St. Barnabas Anglican Church, New Westminster, Canada, and TLC’s Latin America correspondent.
