The Conference of the Parties (COP) on climate change, held in Belém, Brazil, represents a crucial opportunity to address the planet’s serious environmental threats. In this context, attention must be paid not only to global problems of emissions and adaptation, but also to profound local crises, such as the one Venezuela is experiencing under the illegitimate rule of Nicolás Maduro.
The COP is the mechanism for countries that have ratified the United Nations Convention on Climate Change to review, coordinate, and agree on collective actions aimed at climate change mitigation, adaptation, and other complementary instruments. Its main task is to review compliance with existing international instruments—such as the Convention and the agreements derived from it—and to evaluate national reports on emissions and progress.
Thus, the COP is a forum where signatory countries must consider the profound environmental crisis plaguing Venezuela, with particular impact on the Orinoco Mining Arc (AMO in spanish), a vast territory (approximately 12% of the country) where deforestation, illegal mining, river pollution, displacement of indigenous communities, human trafficking, territorial control by irregular armed groups, and serious human rights violations converge.
Indeed, Nicolás Maduro has permitted, and in many cases encouraged, the destruction of national parks as important as Canaima National Park, which is now in grave danger. According to the Amazonian Network of Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information, “…in just five years, the country has lost 2,801,136 hectares of its precious forest, a figure that increases exponentially with the proliferation of illegal mining, especially south of the Orinoco River, where 80% of the forests are concentrated…” Thus, the extraction of gold, bauxite, coltan, and other minerals in protected areas has led to the contamination of rivers with mercury, sediments, and tailings, affecting not only ecosystems but also Indigenous communities that depend on fishing and these waters.
It is difficult to overstate the impacts on Indigenous peoples and human rights: Indigenous communities suffer displacement, labor exploitation, and violence from armed groups involved in illegal mining. Non-governmental organizations have warned that in the states of Bolívar, Amazonas, and Delta Amacuro, illegal mining is generating an environmental and human rights crisis.
Thus, the Venezuelan environmental crisis is not merely an ecological issue. It is the intersection of an institutional collapse that entails human rights violations, the destruction of key ecosystems for the planet, such as the Venezuelan Amazon, and an extractive system that operates with little oversight and numerous complaints.
Venezuela’s international participation in a COP faces political tension: although the Maduro government is not fully recognized by many international actors, the environmental impacts of its administration reverberate far beyond its borders. In this context, the governments attending the summit in Brazil must clearly state that the Venezuelan environmental crisis demands concrete remedies: generic declarations are insufficient. Concrete plans for remediation, forest restoration, river cleanup, effective control of illegal mining, and mitigation measures to prevent further damage must be demanded.
In other words, the COP must become a forum where the discussion extends beyond climate change to include how countries with governance deficits, such as Venezuela, are unable to assume real responsibility for protecting ecosystems crucial to the planet. While the legitimacy of the Maduro government is questioned by many, this does not exempt the Venezuelan state—and the international community—from addressing the environmental crisis unfolding under its rule.
It is time for participating governments to state clearly: if global climate action is to be effective, it must include all those who cause impact, without exception, and must include mechanisms for verification, remediation, and citizen participation.
But Maduro’s involvement in the international arena doesn’t end with the COP. The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) recently held its meeting with the European Union in Santa Marta, Colombia. It’s worth remembering that this organization was heavily promoted by Hugo Chávez in its early stages, and one of its main objectives was to establish a regional forum independent of the United States. The argument was that the U.S. should be sidelined so that the sovereign decisions of member countries could be expressed freely, free from any extra-regional interference.
However, the meeting, which concluded on Sunday, November 9, was surprisingly marked by Maduro’s diplomacy, which, contrary to the agreement reached by all participating delegations, rejected the legitimate concern regarding the situation in Ukraine and the “immense human suffering” it has caused. In a highly erratic move, ignoring the diplomatic option of recording partial disagreements in footnotes, Maduro’s illegitimate Foreign Ministry decided, just minutes before the meeting’s conclusion, to backtrack and yield to pressure from Russian imperialism by completely excluding itself from the final document.
Thus, Maduro concludes a week in which he reaffirms his disregard for the environmental rights of Venezuelans, as well as their most basic human rights such as life and physical integrity, prioritizes the predatory extraction of natural resources, and puts Russia’s interests before the debacle of a war condemned by all of Latin America. All of this unfolds before the eyes of the international community.