I’m a campaigner with Greenpeace Nordic, working right now from the Brazilian city of Belem, at the mouth of the Amazon river. If, like me, you were waiting outside the COP30 climate talks this week, you might have seen someone holding a sign exposing what is really happening inside. The reality? Industrial agriculture is out in full force.
Greenpeace Sweden activists go to local stores to put “Warning – linked to Amazon destruction” information stickers on JBS meat products, sold as “Nature meat”.
COP30 should be a defining moment for the climate. With political leaders gathered in the Amazon, there is a real opportunity to close the 1.5°C ambition gap, have robust decisions towards ending deforestation, hold big polluters accountable and avert the worst impacts of climate change.
But from glitzy receptions to side events, press conferences and sponsored pavilions, Big Ag is everywhere you look at COP30, with a very different agenda. Over 300 corporate lobbyists are throwing around buzzwords like ‘climate-smart agriculture’ and ‘no additional warming’ to divert attention away from the rampant deforestation, spiralling emissions and unchecked pollution upon which the industry is based.
JBS’s COP30 showcase: Greenwash and the false promise of “climate leadership” from Big Ag
Few companies epitomise Big Ag’s efforts to gloss over its abysmal environmental record than Brazilian beef behemoth JBS.
JBS has been repeatedly linked to deforestation, corruption scandals and indigenous land rights violations, including as recently as this year. According to a recent report by Greenpeace Nordic, IATP, Foodrise and Friends of the Earth, JBS is estimated to be by far the largest greenhouse gas emitter amongst 45 major meat and dairy companies examined. And emissions from this sector contribute the bulk of the whole agricultural sector’s total emissions.
April 2025: Greenpeace Brazil’s activists take action against JBS, the world’s biggest meat company, disrupting their annual shareholder meeting at the company’s headquarters in Sao Paulo. They are protesting the company’s role in environmental destruction and climate breakdown, including deforestation in the Amazon.
Despite this, JBS has long sought to cast itself as a climate leader, with admittedly limited success. In fact, just days before COP30 began it settled a lawsuit with the New York Office of the Attorney General for USD1.1 million over alleged greenwashing. Now it is facing a fresh legal challenge from NGO Mighty Earth over its net-zero claims.
This track record might make JBS an unlikely candidate to spearhead the meat industry’s greenwashing efforts, but JBS is steaming ahead. In corporate presentations and events at COP30, it has tried to convince the world that livestock farming can be a solution to, instead a driver of the climate crisis.
However, as is so often the case with Big Ag, all is not what it seems. Both Brazil’s research institute Embrapa and Kansas State University were contracted to validate Roncador’s ‘carbon-negative’ claims. To the best of our knowledge, neither has published comprehensive details on their results or the methodology used. A lack of transparency like that should raise red flags for policymakers and investors alike.
September 2025: Greenpeace Brazil documents how the Farm Nova Orleans, a massive property marked by embargoes and illegal deforestation, and the small rural property Chácara Rancho Alegre form a cattle laundering scheme that supplies JBS and threatens the Amazon.
Whatismore, major actors in the sector, including Roncador, aim to profit from selling carbon credits based on these uncertain figures, while, at best, farms like Roncador just repay the soil carbon debt caused by years of mis-management leaving pastures degraded. And, when rainforest is chopped down to make way for pasture (as 90% of deforested areas in the Brazilian Amazon reportedly are), it leaves a colossal carbon and biodiversity debt that no amount of soil sequestration can even begin to repay.
Better agriculture practices in some farms alone is not enough – it must be supported to become the norm across all of Brazil and, crucially, combined with the full elimination of deforestation from supply chains, alongside binding targets to reduce agricultural emissions, and a transition to agroecology.
Five Greenpeace New Zealand climbers scale the Te Rapa Fonterra milk processing factory to unfurl a 160 square metre banner reading “Fonterra methane cooks the climate”.
But scratch the surface and you will quickly find the ugly reality concealed beneath: our current food system is not designed to ‘feed the world’ but is instead supercharging climate change and destroying ecosystems like the Amazon.
That’s why at COP30, it’s so urgent that governments see through Big Ag’s greenwash. We urgently need effective action that not just halts, but reverses deforestation. Only then can we really start repairing the damage that Big Ag has wrought on the world’s greatest rainforest and avoid irreversible tipping points.
Add your name to the Respect the Amazon petition and demand that leaders at COP30 deliver a strong Forest Action Plan to implement the goal of halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation and work to keep the 1.5°C goal within reach.
Jehki Härkönen is a campaigner at Greenpeace Nordic.
Belém, Brazil – Climate impacted community members from Peru, the Philippines, and Belgium urged governments at COP30 to commit to a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels and make polluters pay at a new interactive climate damages exhibition at the UN climate talks. The exhibition, on unaccounted for climate impacts of the oil and gas industry, also featured the display of a giant Climate Polluters Bill linked to the fossil fuel industry.
Photos and videos of the exhibition “Unaccounted” are available in the Greenpeace Media Library.
Saúl Luciano Lliuya, Peruvian farmer and Plaintiff in a landmark climate lawsuit against German energy firm RWE said: “This climate bill comes from communities that have been severely affected by climate change, but are the least responsible for it. Where I live, in the Andes, the landscape in the highlands is changing very quickly and the mountains are crying as the glaciers melt. My community and others like mine, along with the mountains, will see justice.”
To inaugurate the exhibition, Lliuya was joined by Filipino youth activist Charles Zander Deluna and Belgian climate activist Benjamin Van Bunderen Robberechts as part of the calls for governments to accelerate work on phasing out fossil fuels and to hold the industry accountable. Deluna’s community has recently announced the first climate-related personal injury and property damage case against UK oil giant Shell and Van Bunderen Robberechts. Is the founder of “Climate Justice for Rosa.”[1]
Beyond the giant bill [2], the exhibition provided visitors the opportunity to indicate on a collective world map, where they were confronted with climate impacts, co-creating an archive of disrupted lives and the growing unaccounted costs of the oil and gas industry.
Other exhibits included a video collage of extreme weather and displacement, showing the widening gap between political pledges and the reality of the climate crisis alongside a poem from Jackie Bernabela, a teacher from the Caribbean island Bonaire who is suing the Dutch government for failing to protect it from climate change.
Abdoulaye Diallo, Campaign Lead, Greenpeace International said: “For too long, the balance sheet of the climate crisis remained invisible. Ordinary people barely survive by swimming through flooded cities, while oil and gas corporations are showered in mega-profits. Negotiators must wake up to the growing public and political pressure to make polluters pay, and agree to new polluter taxes to unlock international climate finance in the final COP30 outcome.”
At COP30, Greenpeace is calling for a Global Response Plan to address the 1.5°C ambition gap and accelerate emissions reductions in this critical decade; a new, dedicated 5-year Forest Action Plan to end deforestation by 2030; and the establishment of a new work programme to advance the implementation of the COP29 finance outcome and developed countries’ public finance commitments – within which options should be developed on progressive environmental taxation in line with the polluter pays principle and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDR-RC).
ENDS
NOTES:
[1] In November 2015, Saúl Luciano Lliuya, a Peruvian farmer who lives in Huaraz, Peru, filed claims for declaratory judgment and damages in the District Court Essen, Germany against RWE, Germany’s largest electricity producer.
The mission of Climate Justice for Rosa is to honour the memory of Rosa, a 15-year-old girl who tragically drowned in the devastating climate-induced floods that hit Western Europe in the summer of 2021, claiming the lives of 220 people in Belgium and Germany.
[2] Data provided to Greenpeace International by leading scholars on the Social Cost of Carbon found economic damage from emissions of just five major oil and gas corporations in the last decade was estimated to be over US$ 5 trillionThe quantification of economic damages since 2015 was provided to Greenpeace International by Prof. James Rising of the University of Delaware and Dr. Lisa Rennels of Stanford University. The analysis uses data from the Carbon Majors Database and the SCC methodology. The SCC was used by former US administrations and policy analysts to assign a dollar value to future damages from an additional ton of CO₂ between the year of its emissions through to the year 2300.
Emissions data for the oil and gas companies was provided by the Carbon Majors Database, which in turn sources emissions data from publicly available company reports.
Nairobi, Kenya – As the third round of UN Tax Convention negotiations concludes today, Greenpeace is calling on countries to step up their ambition and deliver a robust and ambitious treaty that can finally set fairer and more equitable global tax rules.[1]
Nina Stros, Senior Policy Expert, Greenpeace International and Head of Greenpeace delegation said: “The deeper we go into the UN Tax Convention negotiations, the more evident it becomes that stronger, unwavering commitment is needed in order to deliver a fairer and more equitable international tax system for sustainable development. Without effective global tax cooperation, the super-rich and polluting corporations are let off the hook for their climate damages while avoiding paying their fair share of taxes. It is the people who are picking up the tab.”
“Negotiators need to maintain cohesion and solidarity in order to avoid the tax convention process slipping back to the failing status quo. As a delegate to the UN Tax Convention rightly noted, if we didn’t need a new way of doing things, we wouldn’t be here.”
Greenpeace is calling on countries that have already expressed political support for increasing the contributions of high-net-worth individuals and major polluters to translate that support into concrete proposals within this process. While Greenpeace welcomes the positive discussions on sustainable development, with some countries proposing stronger language on a need to integrate the polluter pays principle into the article on sustainable development, countries must raise overall ambition in their written submission expected by December 5th.
Fred Njehu, Fair Share Global Political Lead, Greenpeace Africa, said: “It is clear the current global tax system is unfair and unjust – we are on the brink of the world’s first trillionaire while public services everywhere are being cut due to a lack of funding. This has to change. Countries must back up their public pledges to tax the super-rich and major polluters by participating constructively in the negotiations. While that follow-through is currently lacking, there’s still time to accelerate progress, cultivate political will and bring more pragmatism, commitment and bold approaches to the negotiating table.”
“Over at COP30 in Belém, countries are debating how to transition away from fossil fuels, end forest destruction and assure adequate climate finance, when the UNTC – if negotiated with ambition – could actually be a space to unlock missing trillions in public funds for climate action, nature protection and public services. No country can afford to ignore this historic opportunity for agreeing on a global tax system that can finally put people and the planet first.”
On 8 November, hundreds of volunteers from Greenpeace Africa formed a giant human banner in the shape of the African continent and displayed a printed message Tax the Super-rich for People and Planet to demand urgent tax reform at the UN Tax Convention negotiations. Greenpeace International had taken up a billboard in Nairobi presenting a giant bill and asking for negotiators to make polluters pay.
Belém, Brazil – Brazilian artivist Mundano delivered, in partnership with Greenpeace a striking art installation to demand world leaders take bold action for forests at COP30, today. Mundano wrote the message “COP30: Rise for Forests” with transparent ink, and used ashes taken from forest fires in the Amazon to reveal the text. The ashes used in the performance were taken from the Anambé Indigenous land, near Belém, in 2024, when the territory was impacted by forest fires.
Carolina Pasquali, Executive Director, Greenpeace Brazil said: “Time is running out at COP30. We cannot leave this COP with symbolic gestures, voluntary commitments or vague promises. We need a concrete, time-bound action plan to end deforestation in all forests by 2030. The Global Stocktake at COP28 recognised this goal, but recognition is not action. This artwork stands here today as a warning and an invitation to negotiators, ministers and governments: the future is burning, and the world is watching. Deliver real action now.”
Mundano, Brazilian artivist said: “Human greed is turning entire ecosystems into ashes, and that is unacceptable. I have walked through burned forests, and the sadness there is profound. That is why, for the past four years, I have been bringing these ashes as a cry to turn burned forests into standing ones.”
At COP 30, Greenpeace and WWF are calling for a new, dedicated 5-year Forest Action Plan to halt and reverse deforestation and forest degradation by 2030.
Mauricio Voivodic, Executive Director, WWF-Brazil said: “Mundano turns into art a warning that science, Indigenous Peoples and traditional communities have been sounding for decades: without protecting native vegetation, we jeopardise the very continuity of life on Earth. The Amazon is on the brink of a tipping point — a moment after which forest loss becomes irreversible — and there is no room left for hesitation. In the coming days, Parties must show real commitment and deliver an ambitious, concrete and urgent roadmap to end deforestation and the conversion of native forests by 2030.”
Mundano is a Brazilian artivist and advocate for environmental and human rights causes. In recent years, he has been collecting residues from some of the biggest environmental crimes in Brazil, creating his own paint from toxic mud, ashes from forest fires, and oil spilled on the beaches of Brazil’s Northeast. Through his artivism, he works to fight the climate emergency.
Respect the Amazon
