On the fringes of Cop30, an Irish-assisted project is helping people who have had to come to the host city of Belém for other reasons.
Brazil is home to 700,000 Venezuelans who have fled political turmoil, government oppression, violence and land clearances in the last 10 years.
They mostly arrive from the border with northern Brazil and many make their way the region’s cities, Boa Vista, Manaus, Macapa and Belém.
Operation Shelter is the Brazilian government’s response, created in 2018 to provide help for new arrivals, plan for their longer-term needs and support their integration into the host country.
RM Block
It is backed by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to which Ireland is a contributor.
Of the €25.5 million donated this year, €2 million was specifically to help Venezuelan refugees.
In his last hours in Belém, where he was attending the global climate summit, Taoiseach Micheál Martin met UNHCR staff and some of the people they have helped build new lives in the city.
He emerged from the meeting wearing a traditional hand-sewn amulet presented to him to give him the protection of the forests.
He received it from Gardenia Cooper, a member of the Warao indigenous people who live along the rivers of Venezuela’s rainforests.
She and other members of her community took the difficult decision to leave their home after commercial deforestation made their lives impossible.
“When people cut down the trees, our children got sick [industrial deforestation often pollutes the surrounding waters],” she said.
“From the Warao’s belief, they thought that nature was getting angry at us.”
Arriving in Belém, they faced language barriers, worries about education for their children and even more basic concerns.
“We didn’t know how we would get food – would we be able to fish? We were struggling to understand how to live in this new setting.”
Gardenia is now representative for the Warao indigenous community in Belém, working to help her people become part of the city while also preserving their culture and heritage.
Her story touches on several themes under discussion at Cop30 where protection of the forests is high on the Brazilian government’s agenda.
The forests, the “lungs of the planet”, are also one of the world’s most efficient natural carbon sinks, absorbing and locking away the greenhouse gases fuelling the heating of the planet.
It also illustrates the link between environmental degradation, climate change and involuntary migration, a connection the Taoiseach was keen to make.
“Given the wider discussion on migration, the common theme is that climate change is creating migration, war and conflict is creating migration,” he said.
“So the most fundamental thing we can do first of all is stop the wars, stop conflict, acknowledge the impact of climate change on communities and try to support those communities at home to prevent the necessity to leave in the first place.”
He saw some similarities between the response to migration in Ireland and in Brazil, in particular the support networks that build within migrant communities and provide a point of connection with Irish agencies.
“What came through the whole engagement was the dignity of every human being and we should always affirm that no matter what the circumstances.”
Gardenia also had a message for those attending Cop30.
She describes herself as a daughter of the forest, held in the forest’s embrace.
“To be without the forest is like a flower without water,” she said.
“Without the forests, there is no life. Without forest there is no oxygen, so all of us here on this planet need to find a way to protect the forest.”
