Amid the rock formations and the entire portion of Atlantic Forest of Serra do Volcão, in the Municipal Natural Park of Nova Iguaçu, Rio de Janeiro, A task force shows that everyone can contribute to the action agenda in the face of the emergency resulting from climate change. Civil Society, Private Sector, Indigenous and Youth Peoples joined to promote the regeneration of the Gericino-Mendanha Park.
This Saturday (16), Dozens of seedlings of native species were planted, and also installed signs of environmental trails as part of the Mutirão COP30 projectpromoted with the support of the Young Climate Champion Program (Presidency Youth Climate Champion – PYCC).
“We are talking about recognizing the territorial practices that protect nature and actually promote regeneration, whether from the soil, vegetation and even people’s minds. Since it is a climate education initiative that puts into practice what is decided in climate negotiations,” says Marcele Oliveira, Youth Champion for the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP30).
The region, in addition to housing a wide biodiversity, is also a territory that suffers pressure from urbanization and faces recurrent forest fires. “This is a clear example of when you identify a problem like burning, people come together to show that the solution is to reforest, to educate and join around the territory,” says COP30 Presidency Programs Director Alice Amorim.
Immersion experience is a demonstration of what communities in the peripheries of the region have been promoting since 2018, through the social movement #theyarmnósplanted. Over the years, the group has sown more than 7,000 native seedlings in Gericino-Mendanha Park.
“We want the Serra do Volcano to be a living example taken to COP30 corridors, proving that climate action begins in the territory, regeneratively and participatively,” says Lennon Medeiros, executive director of Vision Coop, who performs the action in partnership with the EAE Institute and the volcano cabin.
Local action Mutirão COP30 is part of the Global Mutirão Movement, which will bring together all the methodologies, results and indicators promoted in the territories to share with decision makers around the world, concrete cases of climate action starred by Brazilian urban peripheries.
“Global task force relates to transformation, and transformation has to happen in the territory, to be global after. So here we are regenerating the territory. Everything to do with the turn of implementation we are proposing in COP30,” he says.
