WAR ON CLIMATE AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLE Pakistan vs Afghanistan and Soon Venezuela?
"Yanuni" directed by Richard Ladkani
BELÉM, Brazil - As the world races toward COP 30, the UN Climate Change Conference set for Belém, Brazil, in November 2025, Indigenous communities, who protect over 80% of global biodiversity, stand ready to reshape climate justice. Hosted for the first time in the Amazon Basin, the summit boosts their voices through Brazil's Circle of Peoples, led by Indigenous Minister Sonia Guajajara. This group pushes for free, prior, and informed consent in all decisions. From blending traditional knowledge into Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to gaining funding for land defense, indigenous plans will tackle deforestation, resource exploitation, and tech gaps. Yet, as organizers of the Peoples' Summit stress, real inclusion requires strong, enforceable safeguards, not just talk, against land theft, water pollution, and old colonial patterns that push their expertise and heritage aside.
This movement grows from the worldwide energy of Indigenous Peoples Day in October 2025: Vigils from the U.S. Capitol to Amazonian ceremonies celebrated the strength of over 476 million people in 90 countries while highlighting ongoing roadblocks to fairness. At COP 30, these ideas shall grow stronger: Indigenous-led ideas seek to mix time-tested wisdom on biodiversity into global rules, fighting the environmental disasters that force communities from their homes around the world.
Indigenous peoples face linked risks tied to past exclusion from society, which make today's crises worse. In the Amazon, illegal logging and large-scale farming wear away protected areas; in Africa's Sahel and North America's prairies, droughts and pipelines spark fights over grazing lands and holy places. In the Pacific, rising seas threaten island nations' sacred sites, while in Southeast Asia, Indigenous groups battle carbon market plans that ignore their land rights.
Pollution from big industry projects endangers holy rivers and lakes, causing health emergencies and cultural losses. In Latin America and Canada, warnings continue: 40 short-term drinking water advisories affected Canadian First Nations as of October 30, 2025. These problems add to attacks on defenders who protect resources, with the dark legacy of colonization showing up in targeted killings and unfair laws. New technologies like AI bring added dangers such as biased algorithms that skip over Indigenous data in environmental monitoring, leading to faulty forecasts that miss local truths and weaken land rights. COP 30 could be a turning point, representatives hope.
Featured as nominees and winners for the Cinema for Peace Dove Award, alongside emerging docs on South Asian strife, these films serve as potent primers for COP 30 and beyond. They illuminate Indigenous and frontier resistance, exposing the human toll of indifference:
Yintah (2024, dir. Jennifer Wickham, Brenda Michell, Michael Toledano): Chronicles Wet'suwet'en defenders' decade-long battle against the Coastal GasLink pipeline on unceded British Columbia land. Through site reclamations, arrests, and cultural revival, it underscores self-governance amid fossil fuel threats - mirroring COP 30's push for Indigenous vetoes on extractive projects.
The Battle for Laikipia (2024, dir. Daphne Matziaraki, Peter Murimi): In Kenya's parched Laikipia, Samburu herders clash with landowners over dwindling water and pastures, depicting armed skirmishes in a warming world. It spotlights herder evictions, urging COP 30 investments in adaptation for climate-vulnerable pastoralists.
Water For Life (2024, dir. Will Parrinello): Tracks activists in Chile, Guatemala, and Peru enduring death threats to shield water sources from mining, agro-industry, and megadams. Crucial for COP 30 water-security dialogues, it unveils corporate extractivism's toll on health and rights.
The Territory (2022, dir. Alex Pritz): Brazil's Uru-eu-wau-wau deploy drones and patrols to defend 2.3 million acres from invaders, blending elders' lore with youth activism. As COP 30 nears, it rallies global support for Indigenous Amazon pacts
"Hollywoodgate" directed by Petra Epperlein & Michael Tucker
Pakistan vs Afghanistan
Kabul/Islamabad - As the “war on climate” erodes Indigenous territories through extraction and exclusion, literal wars echo these colonial scars elsewhere: In South Asia, the fragile October 19 truce along the 2,600-km Durand Line, mediated by Qatar and Turkey, has been held amid renewed diplomatic pushes as of November 1, 2025. Intense early-October clashes near Spin Boldak–Chaman and Kurram, sparked by mutual accusations of cross-border attacks involving Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants sheltered in Afghanistan - killed dozens, shuttered trade routes, and inflicted millions in daily losses on Afghan merchants. Pakistan’s airstrikes in Kandahar and Paktika drew Taliban retaliation against outposts, but the Doha agreement halted offensives and pledged verification mechanisms, hailed as a rare bridge between distrustful regimes.
Istanbul follow-ups, initially stalled on October 28 over TTP crackdowns and monitoring, have since yielded progress: Both sides committed to extending the ceasefire, with partial border reopenings like Torkham for refugees signaling de-escalation, and a next round set for November 6. Yet unresolved fissures persist: Islamabad demands binding TTP dismantlement and handovers, while Kabul rejects control over the ideologically aligned group, insisting on sovereignty over operations that could fracture internal ties. Verification hotlines and joint patrols falter on Durand Line disputes, Pakistan’s fencing versus Taliban’s non-recognition of the 1893 colonial border, exacerbating porous frontiers where militants thrive. Trade revival and refugee safeguards remain sequenced behind security wins, amid economic strains that hobble Afghanistan’s imports and heighten humanitarian woes.
Rooted in ethnic Pashtun divisions, the line bisects their ancestral lands like pipelines through Wet’suwet’en territory, this volatility displaces families (70% women and children, per UNHCR) into camps plagued by climate-amplified water scarcity, mirroring Sahel evictions or Amazonian flights from loggers. Emboldened IS-K could exploit chaos, destabilizing aid to warming frontiers and undermining regional NDCs. Pashtun self-determination, akin to Uru-eu-wau-wau drone patrols, demands inclusive pacts curbing external meddling, Qatar and Turkey’s non-Western mediation a model for COP 30’s border-climate dialogues.
Spotlight films illuminate this frontier fury, blending visceral testimonies with sovereignty pleas:
Hollywoodgate (2024, dir. Petra Epperlein & Michael Tucker): Taliban embeds at Kabul’s ghost CIA base quip about “that little devil filming,” exposing power vacuums that invite TTP incursions, decoding 2025’s fragile governance amid Pakistani pressures.
Drone (2014, dir. Tonje Hessen Schei): Waziristan survivors recount “peeping Tom” strikes from remote pilots haunted by silhouetted kills, unmasking U.S. legacies that stoke TTP rage and endure in today’s verification stalls urging COP 30 AI ethics for surveillance pacts.
Restrepo (2010, dir. Sebastian Junger & Tim Hetherington): Battle Company grunts endure Korengal’s “deadliest hell,” their nightmares of no-man’s-land firefights scarring Pashtun highlands that spill toward Pakistan—foreshadowing forever-war blowback on Indigenous-like tribal lands, much like the Uru-eu-wau-wau's tense drone patrols against Amazon invaders in the film „The Territory“.
US Pressures on Venezuela
Washington/Caracas - Rumors swirl of potential U.S. military strikes inside Venezuela to oust President Nicolás Maduro, amid a campaign to force his resignation. President Donald Trump denied such plans today, insisting no decision has been made on targets within the country, yet his words last week, after U.S. strikes on suspected drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, "The land is going to be next", fuel fears of escalation. This follows October's authorization of covert CIA actions and a U.S. military buildup off Venezuela's coast since August.
In response, Maduro has urgently sought military assistance and equipment from Russia, China, and Iran to bolster Venezuela's defenses, with the most fervent pleas directed at Moscow, its closest ally among the trio. Sources indicate specific requests for weaponry, though analysts warn these partners may abandon him in a true confrontation: As former CIA Latin America station chief David Fitzgerald said last week, "He's going to be out on his own and he's going to be very outgunned and outmatched by the U.S. military." Public support for strikes remains low, only 19% of Americans back them, per recent polls, yet the pressure exacerbates Venezuela's economic collapse, diverting focus from humanitarian crises to border fortifications with Colombia.
For Venezuela's Indigenous peoples, guardians of the Orinoco and Amazon basins this brinkmanship compounds the "war on climate": Illegal gold mining and oil spills, often shielded by corrupt regimes, poison sacred rivers and displace Yanomami and Pemon communities, mirroring the extractive violence in the films „Water For Life“ or „The Territory“.
COP 30's horizon demands more than awareness: It requires equitable AI protocols, ironclad land protections, and Indigenous/Pashtun/Venezuelan leaders transforming testimonies into policy. These films advocate alliance through action, not token listening, but heeding blueprints for equitable transitions. As Belém beckons, the Durand Line simmers, and Caracas braces, the imperative sharpens: Will global leaders rise to oppose all wars - climatic, colonial, or kinetic?
"Water for Life" directed by Will Parrinello
"The Battle of Laikipia" directed by Daphne Matziaraki, Peter Murimi
"Yintah" directed by Jennifer Wickham, Brenda Michell, Michael Toledano
"The Territory" directed by Alex Pritz
"Restrepo" directed by Sebastian Junger & Tim Hetherington
"Drone" directed by Tonje Hessen Schei