By Per-Olof Sjöö, President, Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI)

“At first, I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees. Then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon forest. Now I realize I am fighting for humanity.”

Chico Mendes’ words echoed across Belém during COP30. His insight, that defending the forest is inseparable from defending its people, felt especially urgent at a COP held in the heart of the Amazon. The world came to protect an ecosystem; the people of the region came to protect their lives.

For BWI, representing 12 million workers across construction, building materials, wood industries and forestry, the message is clear: forest peoples include forest workers. They plant, manage, restore, transport and protect the forest. Without their labour, no sustainable forest economy is possible. Yet they remain largely invisible in climate negotiations and forest-finance mechanisms.

Over the past years, that invisibility began to crack. Across the Amazon basin, unions organised, not only to expose abuses but to build a shared agenda for forest protection rooted in decent work.

The Amazonian Trade Union Network (ATUN/RSA) brought together unions from Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela. Their Manifesto called for strong labour inspection, union rights, and for 30% of forest finance to support sustainable management, restoration and decent employment.

In parallel, BWI launched the Trade Union Rainforest Alliance, linking Amazon unions with those from the Congo Basin, Ghana, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Mekong. Affiliates held trainings, mapped forced labour and informality, and coordinated actions across continents, including a global day of action for the Amazon every 4^th of September. Their common message is clear:

“There is no future for the forest without the workers who sustain it.”

When COP30 arrived in Belém, this organising came into full view. Amazonian workers were not speaking about the forest from New York, Geneva or Brussels, they were speaking from their own land.

Throughout the conference, ATUN and BWI ensured that forest workers’ voices were present in spaces where they had long been absent:

• At the Forest Pavilion, BWI led “Decent Work in the Amazon Rainforest: Linking Forest Protection and Workers’ Rights,” presenting the Amazonian Decent Work Program and exposing the deep links between informality, forced labour and deforestation.
• In “Forests in Transition: Building Global Standards for Climate, People and Biodiversity,” BWI insisted that certification and timber construction must be aligned with labour rights, transparency and enforcement.
• As part of the People’s Summit, the Strategic Seminar of the Amazonian Trade Union Network (ATUN) “The Amazon is also made up of people!” brought together representatives from across the Network to strengthen and consolidate collective pressure for an Amazonian Decent Work Agenda during COP30 and in the period that follows.
• Together with other unions and social movements we took the streets in the Unified March, and in meetings with Brazilian Minister Marina Silva and the COP30 Presidency, we presented BWI and ATUN demands, and argued that forest protection and labour rights must advance together, or not at all.

These interventions were grounded in a simple truth: the forest economy still relies heavily on invisible, exploited labour. Illegal logging, land grabbing and uncontrolled fires are propped up by unsafe, informal, low-paid jobs, and in some cases, modern slavery. A “green economy” cannot be built on predatory labour.

Workers trapped in illegal logging, destructive mining or monoculture expansion need transition pathways into sustainable forestry, restoration, agroforestry and bioeconomy chains with decent work and union representation. Preserved forests sustain livelihoods and communities. When the forest survives, so do the people who depend on it.

Alongside the formal UNFCCC negotiations, one of the most groundbreaking developments around forests at COP30 was the launch of the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), a Brazil-led initiative endorsed by more than 50 countries. Its objective is to mobilise long-term, performance-based finance for countries that preserve tropical forests, with initial pledges in the billions and a pathway to scale much higher. Crucially, 20% of the resources will be earmarked for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs).

This is a historic shift in global forest finance. It recognises, at last, that conserving forests requires funding the people who steward them.

But a fundamental gap remains: forest workers are often excluded from IPLC definitions and decision-making spaces, despite being essential forest peoples. When workers fall outside governance and benefit structures, climate finance risks flowing around them, not with them. That exclusion undermines both justice and effectiveness. Sustainable forest management at scale cannot succeed without the people who restore seedlings, patrol fire lines, harvest non-timber forest products, operate mills, and manage restoration brigades.

The TFFF can be a turning point, but only if its design includes the workers who make forest protection possible.

As COP30 concludes, forest workers send a clear message that mirrors the one raised by construction workers confronting extreme heat: we are not bystanders to the climate crisis. We are the first to be affected, we are the last line of resistance and we are central to the solutions.

BWI, the ATUN and the Rainforest Trade Union Alliance call on governments, employers, forest-finance institutions and certification bodies to ensure that the next steps reflect this reality. We urge them to:

• Embed decent work as a core condition of forest protection and forest finance, including eligibility for funding under mechanisms such as the TFFF.
• Guarantee forest workers and their unions a voice and a representation in governance, from Amazon cooperation bodies and national climate strategies to certification schemes and IPLC steering committees.
• Invest in a sustainable, inhabited forest, where livelihoods and conservation reinforce one another: restoration, agroforestry, community forestry and bioeconomy value chains with strong labour standards and robust inspection.
• Align forest transitions with the new Belém Action Mechanism for Just Transition, ensuring that social protection, labour rights, gender equality and social dialogue anchor forest and land-use transitions.

Rainforests thrive when their peoples thrive. And their peoples include the workers whose daily labour keeps the forest standing.

Let us honour Chico Mendes not by repeating his words, but by realising his struggle: a future in which the forest is protected because the people who care for it can live and work with dignity.

A just transition for the Amazon will be written by its workers, not for them. COP30 gave us openings. Now we must turn them into actions that centre the dignity and agency of forest workers. From Belém to wherever the fight takes us next, through organising, solidarity and courage - a luta continua.