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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/18/indigenous-xipaya-journalist-attending-cop30-belem-brazil>
"I feel as if I’ve been swallowed. And in the creature’s stomach, I walk with
the sensation of being drowned. My nose hurts, with the same pain we feel when
we are struggling to breathe. That’s my perception of the blue zone of Cop30,
the official area for the negotiations. The architecture makes me think of the
stomach of an animal.
My eyes hurt, seeing so many people coming and going through the main corridor.
This is the scene of a makeshift forest. On the walls are large paintings of a
jaguar, a monkey, an anteater and a lizard. In the middle of the corridor are
plants that resemble açaí palm trees, and below them, small shrubs. The place
of nature within the blue zone is ornamental.
People are always running, never walking, always in a hurry. This accelerated
rhythm, for a moment, courses through my body. For a moment I walk faster,
think faster, breathe faster. The haste feels contagious. Then I realise: I
can’t let myself be accelerated. My investigations aren’t rushed, my writing
isn’t fast-paced, my listening isn’t either. The monster of haste from
non-Indigenous society hasn’t entirely consumed me. I fear it nonetheless.
Before arriving in Belém, where Cop30 is taking place, I took a bus from
Altamira to Alter do Chão. From there I took a boat along with scientists and
leaders of Indigenous groups and riverside communities. It was a journey of
many days, leaving the Tapajós River and then entering the enormous Amazon.
When I disembarked, it was as if I had left a world where time opens up for
another where time narrows.
Here at Cop30, everything seems urgent. The voices speak of the future, of
goals, of funding, coming and going with the haste of those who have a clock in
their soul. In the forest, nothing is rushed: the trees have a specific time to
bear fruit, there is a certain moment to plant our crops. The seeds sprout when
the earth is ready. Each bird sings in its own time – there is a tinamou that
sings only at dawn, at noon and at dusk, and it never comes early or late. The
forest understands time as a pact between beings.
I realise the crisis facing Cop30 is as much temporal as climatic. Here, time
does not flourish, it is consumed. People run so much that they don’t realise
what is being lost between one step and another. And I think: how is it
possible to save the planet without relearning the rhythm of the earth? Without
heeding the rhythm of the rains, the seeds, the rivers? The rush within those
corridors slows our efforts to halt climate collapse."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
