Road being built for COP30 violates community's rights, church activists in Brazil warn

SÃO PAULO (OSV News) -- The development of an 8-mile-long avenue in a protected rainforest area in Belém, an Amazonian city in Brazil set to host the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in November, has sparked controversy among environmentalists, local community members, and church activists.

Avenida Liberdade, or Liberty Avenue, has been in the state government's plans since at least 2012, but ended up being shelved due to its potential impacts and the risks posed by its construction. With the COP30, however, the project was resumed.

Pará state's secretary of infrastructure, Adler Silveira, told the BBC the road is included in the list of 30 ongoing projects to "prepare and modernize" the city for the event.

He said it is a "sustainable highway" and an "important mobility intervention." He said it will include wildlife crossings -- so animals will be able to safely go from one side to the other -- in addition to bike lanes and solar lighting.

Catholics, who are part of church movements dealing with integral ecology and land protection, have been watching the project closely since the beginning and accuse the government of disrespecting the environment and an Indigenous Quilombo community, formed by descendents of enslaved Africans who fled captivity when slavery was legal in Brazil for 350 years until 1888.

"Quilombo do Abacatal is a community with 300 years of history in Ananindeua," Father Paulo Joanil da Silva said of a city that is part of the metropolitan area of Belém. "Its people have been suffering with other endeavors over the past few years and now are dealing with that road," said Father da Silva, a local coordinator of the bishops' conference's Land Pastoral Commission, known by the Portuguese acronym CPT, and of the Indigenous Missionary Council, or CIMI.

According to Father da Silva, the government failed to comply with the International Labour Organization's Convention 169, which establishes that any initiative that may impact Indigenous peoples (and other traditional populations) must be preceded by a consultation.

Vanuza Cardoso, a community leader in Abacatal, said that the company in charge of consulting the Quilombo only organized meetings with its members when the project was already going on.

"The ILO convention establishes that the consultation (and the potential consent) must be free, prior, and informed. That has never happened concerning Avenida Liberdade," she told OSV News.

Cardoso explained that licensing was already occurring when the community was finally heard in 2023, something that is a violation of the ILO convention. She described the process as "exhausting" and said the community was aware that the project would be implemented anyway.

"So, in our assembly the majority chose to only seek for measures of mitigation and compensation -- and not to take the case to Justice," she lamented. In other words, the Quilombo had its rights violated, but decided not to pursue legal action.

Cardoso explained that the road does not cross the community's land -- it's about a mile away. But the impact will be deeply felt by the Quilombolas.

"Along with a new road, come the real estate speculators, people who invade the rainforest, devastate it and use the lands the way they want," she described.

The whole area will be "fatally occupied" by new residents and businesses, with the road functioning as an axis of urban growth, she argued. That process will soon reach the Quilombo, Cardoso told OSV News.

She said land "invasions have already begun. They're destroying the forest and demarcating the areas they're stealing."

The road will be walled, given that it's private. The Quilombo people will not even be able to access it.

Father da Silva defined the government's actions as "violent" and said that district attorneys tried to file a lawsuit against it in 2024, but nothing could be done anymore given that the construction was already advancing.

"A significant area of rainforest was destroyed and the walls will obviously disturb the circulation of animals," he said.

Church movements will at least keep denouncing initiatives like that, said Eduardo Soares, the secretary of the Mobilization of Peoples for Land and Climate, a Catholic group that gathers environmental and social activists and members of traditional populations to discuss and publicize the ongoing attacks to the Amazon rainforest and its peoples.

"During the year, we'll promote several events in order to debate themes of the COP30 and issues that are not part of its agenda. We'll talk about integral ecology, and Indigenous and Quilombo groups will be able to denounce the attacks they've been suffering," Soares told OSV News.

On March 25-26, the first "pre-COP30" event was held in Belém, bringing together delegates of social movements and organizations of the northern part of Brazil.

Another initiative involving traditional populations, environmentalists and church activists is the Peoples' Summit, which has been occurring as a parallel event during COP encounters since 1992.

"Those initiatives are ways of not only promoting discussions about climate change and socio-environmental justice, but also of building places of autonomy for the groups who are suffering the effects of the destruction of biomes," Soares concluded.

A biome is a distinct geographical region with specific climate, vegetation and animal life.