Anti-imperialist groups marched from Kalaw Avenue to the US Embassy in Manila on November 15 in solidarity with the Global Day of Action for Climate Justice. The action is part of the international campaign against the 30th Conference of the Parties or COP30, held in Belem, Brazil. COP30 is a gathering of countries that pledged to act to combat climate change.

The Youth Advocates for Climate Action Philippines (YACAP) and Peoples Rising for Climate Justice Youth (PRCJY) led the action in the Philippines.

“It’s necessary for us, the youth, to organize militant actions like this because it’s been made apparent that the Conference of Parties and our own corrupt officials will not deliver the climate justice that we want,” YACAP’s Lukas Arzaga said. Each year, he said, the climate change conference is dominated by giant oil and weapons companies that dictate climate policies while the poor suffer from the worst effects of climate change, such as stronger storms and floods that result in death, loss of livelihood, and other hardships.

Indigenous Filipinos under Katribu also joined the action. They stand against imperialist corporations’ plunder of their ancestral lands, which worsens the climate crisis.

The Philippines-Palestine Friendship Association (PPFA) also joined the protest, standing with “all oppressed peoples against injustice, imperialist plunder, and ecocide.”

“The world is ablaze not only from rising heat but from bombs that poison the soil, floods that drown the poor while elites enrich themselves,” the PPFA said.

The PPFA is set to participate in the international People’s Tribunal on the right of the Palestinian people to resist against Zionist occupation and the US government. The Tribunal will be held in Barcelona, Spain, on November 22–23.

Bagong Alyansang Makabayan’s Mong Palatino said the climate crisis and corruption are clearly “intertwined, a manifestation of the rotting system of bureaucrat capitalism fueled and maintained by imperialism.”

Some of the participants staged a performance portraying disaster victims covered in mud. They symbolically hurled mud at their fellow protesters who acted as US president Donald Trump and Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

International solidarity against plunder

The protest in the Philippines was one of more than 100 actions that participated in the Global Day of Action for Climate Justice.

In Asia, around 10,000 people joined protests in more than 40 cities across India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nepal, aside from the Philippines.

In Africa, actions were held in Kenya, Zambia, Benin, Nigeria, and Congo. In Europe, protests took place in 16 cities in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Many actions were also held in the US and Canada, primarily calling for an end to the use of fossil fuels such as oil and coal. Protesters also demanded reparations from imperialist countries like the US for the destruction and plunder of backward economies in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

In Brazil itself, about 70,000 people from various international movements marched in Belem to condemn large corporate greed that plunder the Amazon rainforest’s natural resources.

A few days earlier, 200 indigenous activists from the Amazon stormed and successfully entered the Hangar Convention Center, where COP30 was being held. They condemned the exclusion of indigenous voices from the conference and their government’s push for mining on their ancestral lands.