Press Room: COP30 | Delivering Finance and Land Rights to Forest Peoples

Abubakr Uqdah (ET, Washington, DC) [email protected] +1 202 553-0314

Andrea Rodriguez (BST, Belém) [email protected] +591 762 733 393

Susan Tonassi (ET, Washington, DC) [email protected] +1 202 716-9665

Forest Finance Pledges

Additional resources:

Fact sheet [Link]
Reports and studies
- The Importance of Protected Areas in Reducing Jurisdictional Deforestation in the Legal Amazon (Environmental Defense Fund, October 2025)
- Forest Declaration Assessment 2025 (Climate Focus, October 2025)
- Indigenous Territories can safeguard human health depending on the landscape structure and legal status (Nature, September 2025)
Spokespeople available for interviews
- Kleber Karipuna (Portuguese) is an Indigenous leader of the Karipuna people from Amapá. Kleber is one of the Executive Coordinators of the Articulation of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), representing the Brazilian Amazon through the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB). Kleber is also Co-Chair to the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities.
- Juan Carlos Jintach (English and Spanish) is the current Executive Secretary of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities -GATC, and belongs to the Shuar people of the Ecuadorian Amazon. He is a member of the Interprovincial Federation of Shuar Centers of Ecuador (FICSH).
- Steve Schwartzman (English and Portuguese) is Associate Vice President for Tropical Forests at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), leading work on economic incentives for large-scale forest protection. For more than 30 years, he has worked in the Brazilian Amazon with Indigenous communities, governments, and the private sector to reduce deforestation.

Fact-sheet [Link]
Reports and studies
- Afro-descendant lands in South America contribute to biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation (Nature, July 2025)
Spokespeople available for interviews
- Jose Luis Rengifo (PCN - TBD)
- Denildo “Bico” Rodrigues de Moraes is an environmental manager, social activist, and executive coordinator of the National Coordination of Black Rural Quilombola Communities (CONAQ), one of Brazil's leading organizations defending the rights of quilombola communities. Working with family farming, Biko has been a fundamental voice in the struggle for territorial, social, and cultural rights of quilombola populations, advocating for land regularization, preservation of Afro-Brazilian traditions and promotion of sustainable family farming in Black rural communities.
- Martha Rosero-Peña, Ph.D.