I was raised by a mother who believes in and pursues Collective Liberation, and a grandma that learned what that means, bit by bit, from both of us. Collective Liberation to my mother, is every little thing that must change for everyone to get free. It involves naming and understanding what has happened and a dedication to shifting systems of harm and oppression, to reduce harm and renounce oppressive systems. To my grandmother, she may not have known about the collective part, but liberation meant being free to do whatever you want, and focusing on what you know to be true.
While I was raised with these Ways of Knowing, I used to not think of myself as an activist.
I thought activism, e.g. protesting and public shouting (in my child-brain), was something for people that didn’t have to work, and white people. Not the kind that my mother is, but the ones who benefit from a continued status quo and question it nonetheless, usually when it comes to electric vehicles and renewable energies.
As I learned about Environmental Justice and Community Organizing in college at HECUA (Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs), I learned that my environment growing up was not only home, but one that was seriously affected by climate issues, systemic racism, pollution, and other barriers to success and resilience. And yet, the people I knew from my community were some of the most resilient I’d met. It’s just that our community knows environmental harms that we often don’t have the tools to advocate against.
I was taught to be a conscious individual and was always playing outside, playing multiple sports, reading any novel I could get my hands on, and had a knack for spoken language and hosting dinner parties. While I have a sharp wit, a sense of Spirit and the ability to question everything, I did not know public advocacy until adulthood. I began teaching swimming at age seventeen, when I lived in Atlanta, Georgia. Over the past 12+ years, I have had the honor of instructing people from each walk of life, as wise as six months and young as 85+ years. I have been screamed at, cried at, sneezed on, jumped on with full force in the stomach (by leaping 5-year-olds), and scratched. I have simultaneously witnessed and ushered in a whole new way of understanding the relationship with one’s environment. To create a space that is safe, loving, exciting and playful, so that you can shift formerly negative experiences into positive, is a blessing of a skill that I’ve gotten to build, and now I get to use this to inform the way I organize and engage youth.
When I get the chance to reflect on what I learned from this ongoing experience, I realize that I’ve learned how to shift the ways we view our environment, and our capacity to turn the experience that accompanies an environment that is attacking us, to one that underlines our resilience, ability to learn new ways of being, and meets folks where they’re at. To be able to work now in a capacity that leans into the ways our relationships with the environment can be healed, allows me to connect what I have learned and what I continue to learn daily.
As I got older, I learned more about the community I came from and how this influenced the way I connect environment and relationship. I grew up in and around North Minneapolis, a community which has the highest concentration of Black and Brown peoples and the highest asthma rate in the state. We experience hotter temperatures, higher pollution levels, a lack of green space, and other environmental racism and systemic injustices, in addition to a generally assumed narrative that our neighborhood is unsafe and scary. This community is under-invested-in, over-policed, and does not have consistent access to clean, healthy food, and is poisoned by countless sources. North Minneapolis is also beautiful, healing, and a home to communities that are re-writing their narratives every day. The ways in which our community has come together to re-green our spaces, shut down harmful pollution sources, educate our neighbors about ways we can advocate and know community again, are profound.
I see young folks stepping up and reclaim power, centering community and collective care.
I see families and schools and people of all ages planting trees and normalizing urban farming. And I am seeing spaces be knit together that know what needs to happen to transition North Minneapolis to a new framework of relationship to our environments.
During my last six years of working in Environmental Justice movement spaces, I have never been more proud to see the place I come from decide to re-define itself and challenge systems that seek to keep us stuck in this state of being. As I have learned more about what it means to come from this community, I have found myself in places where my skills can be amplified in advocating for liberation on many fronts, for my communities locally and globally.
Over the span of my working career, be it swimming or organizing in pursuit of Environmental Justice, I have had the pleasure of being in and holding spaces that center relational healing and community-based solutions. I get to do this work because I am abundantly blessed, but I love to do this because our relationship to our surrounding environment is one that looks so vastly different for each person, land, animal, and plant. Systems of oppression have disconnected us first from one another, and then from our environment, ensuring that we cannot know community and actualize solutions. Now we find ourselves experiencing a world where environmental impacts not only harm people and planet (not separately, nor are we separate) but continue to compound daily.
Holding all of these truths is a new reality–simultaneously heartbreaking, invigorating, depressing AF, and one that is calling for us to prepare for transformation. While we may know that our reality is changing every day, I find myself in conversations that focus on the future. I have always stood beside the Indigenous principle of taking action and being in service of/for the next 7 generations, and that is one reason why I do this work. Trees planted today must provide shade for someone who needs it down the line.
And, I continue to ask myself, what must we do to ensure that we have a better (more connected, loving, healing, relational, equitable, just, transformative +) right now, so that we see a future beyond this current context?
Analyah is a Climate Generation Window Into COP delegate for COP29. To learn more, we encourage you to meet the full delegation, support our delegates, and subscribe to the Window Into COP digest.
Analyah Schlaeger dos Santos is a young Afro-Brazilian-American woman born and raised in North Minneapolis, Minnesota. After living in Atlanta, Georgia, she moved back to Minneapolis in 2015 to study Global Relations and Environmental Justice at the University of Minnesota and the Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs. She has been an aquatic guide to all ages for 12 years and counting and loves to infuse environmental wellness into her frameworks.
She is currently the International Campaign lead at MN Interfaith Power & Light, and serves on the board of multiple local organizations.
The post A Thought on Environment appeared first on Climate Generation.
As COP30 reaches its midway point in the Brazilian city of Belém, Carbon Brief has hosted its second “ask us anything” webinar to exclusively answer questions submitted by holders of the Insider Pass.
The webinar kicked off with an overview of where the negotiations are on Day 8, plus what it was like to be among the 70,000-strong “people’s march” on Saturday.
At present, there are 44 agreed texts at COP30, with many negotiating streams remaining highly contested, as shown by Carbon Brief’s live text tracker.
Topics discussed during the webinar included the potential of a “cover text” at COP30, plus updates on negotiations such as the global goal on adaptation and the just-transition work programme.
Journalists also answered questions on the potential for a “fossil-fuel phaseout roadmap”, the impact of finance – including the Baku to Belém roadmap, which was released the week before COP30 – and Article 6.
The webinar was moderated by Carbon Brief’s director and editor, Leo Hickman, and featured six of our journalists – half of them on the ground in Belém – covering all elements of the summit:
- Dr Simon Evans – deputy editor and senior policy editor
- Daisy Dunne – associate editor
- Josh Gabbatiss – policy correspondent
- Orla Dwyer – food, land and nature reporter
- Aruna Chandrasekhar – land, food systems and nature journalist
- Molly Lempriere – policy section editor
A recording of the webinar (below) is now available to watch on YouTube.
Watch Carbon Brief’s first COP30 “ask us anything” webinar here.
The post COP30: Carbon Brief’s second ‘ask us anything’ webinar appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Mohamed Adow is the Founder and Director of Power Shift Africa
A sobering truth hangs over the COP30 climate talks in Belém: negotiators are discussing adaptation indicators with the enthusiasm of technocrats while quietly starving frontline communities of the resources they need to survive.
The UN’s latest adaptation gap report could not be clearer. Needs are skyrocketing. Finance is collapsing. And yet the global community continues to debate how to measure progress, rather than how to enable it. They act as if weighing a cow will make it fatter, rather than giving it any food.
This contradiction exposes the heart of the climate crisis: adaptation is not merely a technical challenge; it is a political and moral one. Every finance gap is a justice gap. Behind every unmet target are farmers who cannot plant, families who cannot rebuild, and communities forced into displacement because “resilience” was promised but never delivered.
Adaptation is the difference between dignity and despair. It determines whether societies can endure rising temperatures, intensifying floods, or prolonged droughts — or whether they are pushed beyond the limits of survival.
Yet, as negotiators haggle over the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) and its indicators, the foundations needed to achieve these goals are crumbling. How do we talk about climate-resilient development when the means to achieve it are drying up? How do we measure resilience while draining the very resources that make resilience possible?
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COP30 Bulletin Day 5: COP30 could greenlight work on a fossil fuel transition roadmap
At the climate talks in Belém, governments are considering whether to launch a process to craft a roadmap and how that might look -
COP30 Bulletin Day 6: First week ends with a colourful march and much work left to do
UN climate chief Simon Stiell tells governments “to give a little to get a lot”, as many thorny issues remain for ministers to resolve next week
At COP30, countries must resist the impulse to rush through a weak indicator framework simply to claim progress. This would give us a system that measures activity, not impact. – that measures paperwork, not protection.
Africa is championing a fit for purpose GGA, but some have misunderstood and wrongly accused it of stalling the GGA process. But Africa is not delaying adaptation work. Africa is living adaptation every day. For us, adaptation is not a choice or a policy preference or an interesting side issue. It is an existential threat that is already reshaping livelihoods, economies, and ecosystems.
Africa needs this COP to get the GGA right. What we reject is an approach that turns adaptation into an exercise in reporting rather than a vehicle for survival.
A meaningful GGA must track whether finance actually reaches those who need it, whether technologies are shared equitably, and whether vulnerable countries are being supported to build early-warning systems, climate-resilient infrastructure, water security, and heat-resilient health systems. Without this backbone of finance and technology-sharing by the rich world, adaptation indicators become little more than an empty checklist.
And this is where COP30 stands at a crossroads. If rich countries succeed in pushing through a set of indicators that sideline finance, it will confirm that the world’s poorest are once again being asked to run a race with no shoes. No community can adapt without resources. No farmer can withstand worsening heatwaves without irrigation and drought-resistant seeds. No coastal town can protect its people without early-warning systems and resilient infrastructure. To pretend otherwise is not merely flawed policy; it is a profound injustice.
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Let’s tax luxury air travel to fund climate adaptation and loss and damage
Taxes on private jets and first and business class would be fair, popular and bring in tens of billions of dollars each year to help countries cope with climate change -
Business-as-usual: Donors pour climate adaptation finance into big infrastructure, neglecting local needs
A deep-sea port project in Bangladesh highlights how some major donor nations are labelling funds for industry-friendly transport and energy projects as adaptation finance, reporting by Climate Home News shows -
Global South’s climate adaptation bill to top $300 billion a year by 2035: UN
Warning over massive shortfall in climate adaptation funding comes days before COP30 in Brazil, where the issue is set to be a major theme
Some will argue that indicators and finance should remain separate discussions. But this is a fiction. You cannot track progress on adaptation without the means to adapt. Adaptation is where political decisions determine whether people live safely or suffer needlessly.
The world is not short of evidence of this suffering, it is short of political courage. Extreme weather displaces more than 30 million people a year, with Africa bearing the brunt. While communities rebuild with scarce resources, developed countries continue to cut aid or repackage support as loans which shackles poor countries with eye-watering debt. This does not build resilience — it entrenches vulnerability.
The Global Goal on Adaptation will become a white elephant if it is not paired with predictable, grant-based finance. Indicators that pretend adaptation is happening without resourcing it will fail the people they claim to protect. COP30 is the moment to close the distance between science and solidarity: wealthy nations must scale up adaptation finance, share technologies, and support long-term resilience planning.
Until then, the world’s most vulnerable will continue carrying the heaviest burden with the lightest support — a defining injustice of our time.
The post Global Goal on Adaptation: Weighing the cow won’t make it fatter appeared first on Climate Home News.
Global Goal on Adaptation: Weighing the cow won’t make it fatter
Last Monday, to get the COP30 agenda agreed, Brazil promised to hold consultations on four controversial issues: emissions-cutting, transparency, trade and finance. Last night, after most delegates had spent their day off exploring the Amazon, the Presidency released a five-page document summarising what was said in those consultations.
Nothing in that “summary note” has been agreed by countries. But it collects together divergent views and forms the basis of what could become a politically agreed statement (known in the jargon as a cover decision) at the end of the COP. It has three key strands on boosting climate finance, strengthening emissions reductions and tackling trade measures linked to decarbonisation.
It includes the key rhetorical messages the COP30 presidency wants to include – that this is a “COP of Truth”, multilateralism is alive (despite President Trump’s efforts to thwart climate action) and the Paris Agreement is now moving from negotiation to implementation.
On emissions-cutting and the need to raise ambition – sorely lacking after the latest round of national climate plans (NDCs) – the note includes an option to hold an annual review and explore the “opportunities, barriers and enablers” to achieve the global efforts agreed at COP28 in Dubai to triple renewable energy and double energy efficiency by 2030; accelerate action to transition away from fossil fuels; and halt and reverse deforestation. This is essentially where any reference to a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels could be anchored.
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COP30 Bulletin Day 5: COP30 could greenlight work on a fossil fuel transition roadmap
At the climate talks in Belém, governments are considering whether to launch a process to craft a roadmap and how that might look -
COP30 Bulletin Day 6: First week ends with a colourful march and much work left to do
UN climate chief Simon Stiell tells governments “to give a little to get a lot”, as many thorny issues remain for ministers to resolve next week
The document also includes proposals to “urge” developed nations to include finance in their NDC climate plans and “encourage” all countries that have set a range of percentage emissions reductions in their NDCs – like the EU’s 66.25-72.5% – to move toward the upper end of the range.
On finance, options include a three-year work programme on provision of finance by wealthy governments and a goal to triple adaptation finance (something the least-developed countries are pushing for) or just repeating the finance goal agreed at COP29 and “noting” a new roadmap to achieve that (which rich nations very much prefer).
There are also various options for how to talk about where climate and trade overlap: an annual dialogue, roundtables, consultations, a new platform or just to keep discussing in the ‘response measures’ strand of climate talks.
Li Shuo, head of the Asia Society Policy Institute’s China Climate Hub, told Climate Home News it was highly significant that – after two years of the issue being buried in climate talks – trade has now been “anchored in the endgame of this COP”.
The various potential outcomes in the summary note could be included in existing agenda items or they could be lumped together into what is usually referred to as a cover text but the Brazilian government would likely prefer to call a “mutirão decision” or a delivery, response or global action plan.
Essentially, after governments ignored the presidency’s pleas not to add contentious items to the agenda, it looks like they could get at least some of what they want by turning those issues into the headline deal from COP30 .
At the start of the high-level segment of the conference on Monday morning, where environment ministers deliver their speeches, UN climate chief Simon Stiell urged governments “to get to the hardest issues fast”.
“When these issues get pushed deep into extra time, everybody loses. We absolutely cannot afford to waste time on tactical delays or stone-walling,” he added.
The presidency consultations on the issues in the note will continue on Monday, along with negotiations on adaptation metrics and a Just Transition Work Programme among others. The COP30 president then plans to convene a “Mutirao” meeting of ministers and heads of delegation on Tuesday “to bring together various outcomes”.
Korea joins coal phase-out coalition at COP30
As fossil fuels have grabbed headlines at COP30, major coal producer South Korea kicked off the second week of the Belém conference with an actual concrete pledge: the country will phase out most of its coal power by 2040.
Operating the seventh-largest coal fleet in the world, Korea announced on Monday that it will join the Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA), an initiative launched in 2017 by the UK and Canada to encourage countries to wean themselves off the planet’s largest source of emissions. Oil and gas exporter Bahrain is another new member.
Asian industrial giant Korea said that out of 62 operating coal power plants, it will commit to retiring 40 of them by 2040. The phase-out date of the remaining 22 plants “will be determined based on economic and environmental feasibility”.
Korean Minister of Environment Kim Sung-Hwan said at an event announcing the pledge that the country will play a “leading role” in the energy transition.
“South Korea is known as a manufacturing powerhouse. Unfortunately renewable energy has taken a low share in our power mix, but going forward we are determined to foster renewable energy industries,” he told journalists. “We will show the world that we can create a decarbonised energy transition.”
Asked about a fossil fuel transition roadmap – an idea floated around by many governments in Belém – Sung-Hwan said “humanity and all of the governments should work together to achieve a decarbonised green transition”, adding that “COP30 will be an important momentum”.
UK climate minister Katie White said Korea was taking an “ambitious step”, and that they can “reap the rewards that we are seeing from our own clean energy transition”.
Korea is a major importer of oil and gas. Domestically, it has historically relied on coal for electricity, but the country’s production of the fossil fuel has decreased steadily by 86% in the last 25 years, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Their nuclear fleet, on the other hand, has nearly doubled in the same time period.
The post COP30 Bulletin Day 7: Brazil outlines options for a possible deal in Belém appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP30 Bulletin Day 7: Brazil sets out options to reach a deal in Belém
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