Aberystwyth University project to study climate action in the Amazon

President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Photo credit: Palácio do Planalto {cc-by-2.0})

An Aberystwyth academic is leading an international team to explore the position of the Amazon Rainforest in climate politics and its place in the academic study of international relations.

In November 2025, the Amazonian city of Belém do Pará in Brazil will host the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP30).  It will be the first time the Conference has been held in the Amazon.

While COP international climate meetings are negotiations between governments, they have become a central political meeting point for a multitude of groups that seek to influence climate action.

Dr Hannah Hughes from the Department of International Politics will lead an international team of researchers who will follow Brazil’s COP presidency. They will document and support the activities of four key interest groups in the lead up to the event - the Brazilian government, climate scientists, Indigenous Peoples and climate youth groups in Brazil. 

Dr Hughes, Senior Lecturer in International Politics and Climate Change at Aberystwyth University, said:

“The place that the Amazon holds in climate politics matters and will determine how the Rainforest is valued and acted upon in the future. Brazil’s hosting of COP30 literally puts the Amazon at the centre of collective climate action and provides a unique study opportunity.

“We will work with key interest groups to document the history of their participation in the lead up to COP30, to identify their goals and to support them in realising their strategies for protecting the Amazon Rainforest and their own futures in a changing climate.”

The project will begin with a workshop involving project partners and representatives of the four key groups at the Federal University of Pará in Belém in August 2024.

The research team aim is that its collaborative and participatory approach will lead to co-created knowledge and strategies which will achieve more forest-friendly climate politics. 

Findings from the research will be shared by the project team and key groups during COP30 through official side events, booth spaces and pavilion presentations.  Feedback gathered from this engagement and discussion will inform the final project outputs.

The research project also seeks to incorporate better knowledge and understanding of the Rainforest and its position in global climate decision-making into the academic study of International Relations, to increase the relevance of the academic discipline to students and scholars in the Global South.

One of the outputs from the project will be a new International Relations textbook which will discuss the complexity of climate politics and international relations and explore how knowledge and practice can serve the Rainforest and all that depend on it. 

The project has been awarded a two-year British Academy interdisciplinary Overseas Development Aid (ODA) award of £288,697.

Project partners include Dr Diana Valencia-Duarte from the Department of History and Welsh History at Aberystwyth University, an expert on oral history gathering and the curation of memories; Dr Veronica Korber Gonçalves (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil); Dr Marcela Vecchione-Gonçalves (Centre for Advanced Amazonian Studies (NAEA) at the Federal University of Pará, Brazil); Dr Cristina Yumi Aoki Inoue (Radboud Universiteit, Netherlands); and Dr Erzsebet Strausz (Central European University, Vienna).

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