COP30 and the forest illusion: Canada’s climate promises mean nothing without Indigenous jurisdiction – David Suzuki Foundation
November 13, 2025
At the COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, on the edge of the world’s largest rainforest, Canada and other governments are eager to tout their climate credentials. Over the next days, their delegations will speak of net-zero pathways, green jobs and new trade opportunities. Yet beneath the polished language of transition lies a familiar contradiction: The Doctrine of Discovery, the legal order that once claimed Indigenous lands in the name of empire now claims them again in the name of climate progress.
In Canada, domestic laws — from the recently adopted One Canadian Economy Act to similar measures proposed in Quebec or already adopted in Ontario and British Columbia — dress old colonial hierarchies in contemporary economic jargon. The One Canadian Economy Act asserts that the federal government can declare projects to be in the “national interest,” fast-tracking industrial resource extraction and infrastructure projects at the expense of environmental scrutiny and Indigenous consent. This is not innovation; it is the Doctrine of Discovery retooled for a new century.
