Brazilian indigenous leader warns world on Amazon's fate

As the COP29 climate talks started Monday in Azerbaijan, an Indigenous leader half a world away is literally towering over Brazil with a warning about the fate of the Amazon rainforest.

"Stop the Destruction," orders -- in English -- a giant-sized mural of Alessandra Korap Munduruku painted on the side of a building in Sao Paulo, with the tag #keepyourpromise.

The 30-meter high, 48-meter wide (100-foot by 160-foot) work by Brazilian street artist Mundano highlights the deforestation of the Amazon, whose situation has been made more dire in recent months by a record-breaking drought.

Korap, who last week visited Sao Paulo to see the mural, said she was "worried" that Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was intent on tapping oil in the Amazon.

"It's not worth anything if the government demarcates some Indigenous lands if at the same time it wants to approve oil (prospecting) in the Amazon," she told AFP.

Her comments came as Brazil weighs delivering permits to exploit potentially massive oil reserves in the seabed 500 kilometers (300 miles) from the mouth of the Amazon River.

Lula has said he and his government "want to do everything legally and respect the environment, but we will not waste any opportunity to grow."

Korap is a member of the Munduruku ethnic group in Brazil's Para state. Four years ago she won the United States' prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award for her work trying to stop illegal logging in the Amazon and helping define Indigenous lands.

The 39-year-old activist said she expected little from the COP29 conference in Azerbaijan's capital Baku, nor from a COP30 to be held next year in her Para state -- "because we've already had 30 years of COPs and nothing has been solved."

But she did say she hoped leaders of the world's biggest economies converging on Rio de Janeiro next week for a G20 summit would "listen to the Indigenous population" when it comes to discussing sustainability.

"We Indigenous peoples will not negotiate away our lands," she said.