The COP30 Climate Conference is due to start on 10 November 2025 in Belém, Brazil – a city regarded as the Capital of the Amazon, a region which is not just forest, but also river, sea, city, urban area, quilombo, villages. Not all the peoples of the Amazon will be represented at the COP, especially the women for whom climate change is no longer a threat, but a daily reality, and from which they are the first to suffer. Indigenous, Quilombola, and Black women from the city periphery all confront obstacles to participate, with no guarantees that they will be heard. Agência Pública’s Cecilia Amorim has spoken to women from each of the three groups. LAB partner Agência Pública has published this account, translated from the Portuguese by Mike Gatehouse. Read at lab.org.uk. #Brazil #Belém #COP30 #LatinAmerica (fb)

In Oaxaca, southern Mexico, communities are organizing to resist the large-scale private extraction of sand and gravel from the Río Grande, which is wiping out local species and changing the course and current of the river which Indigenous and Afro-Mexican locals have lived beside for centuries. Juana García reports from Cuicatlán, Oaxaca. This piece, translated for LAB by Lizzy Sanders, is co-published with our partner Global Voices as part of the Environmental Defenders series. Read in full at lab.org.uk. 📷Juana García + San Pedro de Chicozapotes municipal page #Mexico #Oaxaca #LatinAmerica #EnvironmentalDefenders (fb)