Extreme heat, fires and flooding – all hallmark consequences of climate change – directly influenced this year’s UN climate change conference Cop30 in Belém, Brazil.

For the first time, this annual climate summit was held in Amazonia, a place at the frontline of climate change. The pivot from the two previous conferences in petrostates Azerbaijan and UAE to a base in the world’s largest tropical forest (albeit in one the world’s largest oil producing countries) was jarring.

As Amazonian researchers, and past and present residents of the city, we saw the potential for Cop30 to move discussions further forward than its predecessors in two key ways.

First, and in contrast to many previous gatherings that have sidelined them – or suppressed them altogether – Indigenous and marginalised voices were impossible to ignore at Cop30. They have helped shape media narratives and discourse in the blue zone, the venue that hosted events in hundreds of dedicated spaces for national and organisational bodies.

The Belém gathering saw the largest Indigenous participation in Cop history, with around 900 registered representatives. The Cúpula dos Povos, a parallel event hosted at the Universidade Federal do Pará, gave many more Indigenous peoples and local communities a platform to argue against the status quo of relative inaction.

Read more: Behind the scenes in Belém: The Conversation's report from Brazil's UN climate summit

Hosting Cop30 in Belém broke down the physical travel barriers for many potential attendees from Indigenous peoples and local communities. The summit organisers went beyond the normal attempts at tokenism in engaging them in discussions.

The region’s extensive river networks allowed many........

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