Brazilian leaders use ‘Voices of the Biomes’ initiative to spotlight women on the climate front line as talks on a new Gender Action Plan gather pace in Belem

Women’s leadership and lived experience in the climate crisis moved to the foreground at COP30 on Wednesday as a high-level session in Belém linked gender justice with effective climate action and ongoing negotiations on a new Gender Action Plan.

At the event, titled Women: Voices that Guide the Future and held under the COP30 Action Agenda, participants watched a video on the Voices of the Biomes project, led by Brazil’s special envoys for women, human rights and a just transition, and racial equality. Over the past year, Janja Lula da Silva, Denise Dora and Jurema Werneck travelled across Brazil’s five biomes to document solutions created by women facing climate impacts.

“In each place, I met dozens of women who are on the front lines of climate change,” said Janja Lula da Silva, describing family farmers, quilombola women, Indigenous women, riverside dwellers, researchers and community leaders who, despite loss and inequality, “continue creating solutions to protect life, secure rights, and keep alive the conditions that sustain their communities”.

Werneck, a physician and executive director of Amnesty International Brazil, said women in affected territories were clear that “the crisis must be understood as an emergency”, calling for responses that “save all lives, save all biomes, save the very existence and the cultures that thrive there”.

Dora, Brazil’s special envoy for human rights and a just transition, drew on recent floods in Rio Grande do Sul to stress why local experience must shape COP30 talks, citing displacement, loss of homes and memories, and the heightened risks of sexual violence and discrimination in shelters.

Environment and climate change minister Marina Silva underlined what she called an ancestral culture of women sharing knowledge, implementation and recognition, arguing that a more “prosperous, diverse, and sustainable world” depends on a broader willingness to share power.

Negotiators also reviewed progress on the Gender Action Plan, which updates the Enhanced Lima Work Programme on Gender. Ambassador Vanessa Dolce, Brazil’s high representative for gender, said Sweden and Chile had been asked to lead consultations, with a clear intention that gender “not remain isolated in a single negotiating room”.

Mexico’s ambassador Patricia Espinosa pointed to instruments such as the Adaptation Fund’s support for small community-based projects, often led by women, as evidence of gradual but real progress.

Closing the session, Janja Lula said gender could “no longer be an annex” in COP decisions, arguing that every step in climate action is also “a step toward women living with greater dignity”.