By Abbas Nazil
Combu Island in Brazil has emerged as a powerful symbol of how forest communities can shape global climate action, as world leaders gather in nearby Belém for COP30.
Rising from the Guamá River as a stretch of dense, living forest, the island shows how traditional knowledge, agroecology and community-led enterprises can protect biodiversity while creating sustainable livelihoods.
At the centre of this example is the Filha do Combu Association, founded by local entrepreneur Izete “Dona Nena” Costa. Her small chocolate-making initiative, rooted in traditional Amazonian cacao, has grown into a thriving enterprise employing 20 workers, 16 of them women.
The factory operates on agroecological principles, preserving native forest species and planting complementary trees such as bananas to attract pollinating bees essential for cacao production.
Despite the project’s success, climate impacts are becoming increasingly visible. Cacao harvests are declining, trees are drying, and drinking water scarcity is emerging as a threat.
Even during the rainy season, Combu recently went more than two weeks without rainfall.
Energy instability also disrupts productivity. Although the factory runs on solar power, outages caused by fallen trees can halt operations for days, prompting calls to double solar capacity.
These realities formed the backdrop of a visit by Annalena Baerbock, President of the 80th UN General Assembly, who returned to Combu to assess the project’s progress.
She praised the initiative as evidence that community-driven climate solutions already exist and can be scaled globally to support economic growth while protecting forests.
Baerbock emphasized that safeguarding forest communities is essential to keeping global warming below 2°C, ideally 1.5°C, stressing that forest loss is “the destruction of humanity’s life insurance.”
During a forest walk, she and Dona Nena reflected on the symbolic lessons of nature, observing a parasitic vine killing its host tree and a towering 280-year-old sumaúma that has survived centuries.
Both scenes underscored what is at stake as COP30 negotiators work to protect the Amazon and the communities who depend on it.
