Image: Project Syndicate

By Sonia Guajajara

As co-hosts for this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Belém, the Indigenous peoples and local communities of Brazil’s Amazon region understand what is at stake and will be given a greater voice than ever before. That is good news not only for these communities, but for everyone.

This year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belém, Brazil, has been eagerly awaited worldwide. A COP in the Amazon raises expectations for all those who recognize the urgency of climate change and its impact on our lives and environment. That is why Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is calling this the “COP of Truth.”

Image: Wikimedia Commons

By Elizabeth Courtney 

For InterAction

This piece was originally published on InterAction.org.

“I’m doing this for my children.” 

That’s what Martha from Colón, Honduras, said to a reporter in November 2018. If you turned on any U.S. news channel in the Fall of 2018, you likely saw a lot of people like Martha—people who left their homes in the Northern Triangle countries of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador in search of a better life in the United States. 

When large numbers of people arrive en masse to seek asylum at the U.S. border, it’s a newsworthy story. But what kind of story is it? Who decides how to tell it?