Reflections on Community at CCL’s 4th Annual Inclusion Conference
By Phalika Oum, CCL Inclusion Fellow
Maybe it was Karina’s plumeria hair clip, paying homage to the land and the native peoples of Hawaii; she humbles us with a reminder that we are merely guests here. Perhaps it was Wanda’s Elsa doll or Karis’ worn-out, well-loved book. Or perhaps it was Mike’s gentle tone, swiftly dancing to the music of multiplicity: We contain multitudes and our identities cannot be distilled into words. Words that we too often take for granted.
What’s it like to choose stillness in times of great civil unrest and mounting ecological turmoil? What’s it like to choose to love in the face of disjuncture? How do we keep moving forward, despite it all?
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From Friday, Sept. 26, to Saturday, Sept. 27, Citizen Climate Lobby’s People of the Global Majority and members of the Inclusion team hosted their 4th annual virtual Inclusion Conference, “Rooted in Care, Growing in Community,” dedicated to sharing stories from CCL’s Affinity Action Teams and practical tools for managing anxiety at the intersections of climate and inclusion. With 77 community members attending the Friday reception and 181 members attending the Saturday conference, this year’s event demonstrates the power of convening as a community.
The event kicked off with a show and tell reception, where community members shared stories about an object of their choosing. This created room for cultural, familial, and personal reflections and storytelling, setting the stage for a weekend of intention and belonging. In this space, we saw the coming together of difference, with attendees ranging in age, race, profession, gender orientation, and more.
The Saturday conference was supported by Spanish interpretation from Gabriela and ASL interpretation from Jessy and Joe. Kendyl, a leader from our Persons with Disability affinity group, encouraged the usage of visual descriptions—an accessibility tool used by the speaker to identify themselves in a presentation. Karina also shared a playlist to celebrate the songs of difference, submitted by the People of the Global Majority (PGM) Caucus.
Jacob Shores-Argüello, Costa Rican-American environmental humanist, writer, and author of Paraíso and In Absence of Clocks, started the day off by reading poetry from his new book “Grief for the green that was.” Jacob challenged concepts of geographical boundaries and reminisced about his late mother, exploring how grieving for his mother translated to grieving for his motherland. The “grief for the green that was,” as he so eloquently stated it, is a deep longing to come home. Hear Jacob read his poetry here:
Then Julian Cauzae, a seminary student at Harvard Divinity School interested in conversations around climate change and the apocalypse, created space for attendees to share their experiences conversing about the climate question. From conversations about inductive gas stoves and the restoration of democracy to the question of human extinction, Julian patiently listened and responded by weaving in themes of time and agency.
Mayor Ukeme Awakessian Jeter
Mayor Ukeme Awakessien Jeter of Upper Arlington, Ohio, joined the conversation to share her understanding of cultural competency. While recognizing the importance of data in storytelling and advocacy, Jeter encouraged us to use a different and more qualitative method for gathering information: going directly to the people most impacted by the crisis. She walked us through how to effectively integrate cultural competency into our walk as the “connector” of community, pointing to three key steps: access your own cultural awareness, invest in your own cultural development, and foster a culture of curiosity. Ukeme challenged us to have the integrity to say, “I have some work to do here, and I am going to do the work to get there.”
The next hour of the conference included breakout sessions on various topics, led by CCL community members and members of the People of the Global Majority Caucus. The sessions included:
- “Faith, Stewardship, and the Climate Crisis: How Religion Shapes Environmental Action,” led by Mike Roman, a member of CCL’s Peace Corps Action Team
- “Our Water and Climate Change,” led by Manolo Matos, CCL’s Kentucky State Coordinator
- “Resistance is Edible: The Poetics of Food and the Teachings of Ancestors,” led by Phalika Oum, a 2025 Inclusion Fellow
- “Putting Partisan in the Past: Changing our perspectives during engagements from ‘you and I’ to ‘we’ to truly embrace our value of nonpartisanship,” led by Drew Eyerly, CCL’s Action Teams Director
- “Building Community Resilience with Educational Gardens,” led by Lucy Xue, a member of CCL’s Asian Pacific Action Team
- “At the Intersection: Gender, Justice, and the Climate Crisis,” led by Allison Fabrizio, a member of CCL’s People of the Global Majority Action Team
After, we rejoined the main conference room to hear from Clara Fang, Founder of Green Tara Consulting. Clara shared strategies for preventing burnout and productivity, as well as the value of dismantling oppression and colonial regimes through self-care, a radical form of resisting the culture of white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism. Clara recognized the work of CCL’s Personal Resilience Action Team, which seeks to strengthen group and personal resilience through trainings and workshops. She also encouraged attendees to join her Activism Hour, held every Tuesday at 6 p.m. ET, as a coworking meeting for activists.
Pamela Benson Owens
Vanessa Nakate sent along a video message for conference attendees, urging us to join people in the frontlines of the climate crisis with a spirit of one-ness, community, and care. Vanessa spoke about a world without oppression where nature is recognized and treated as the source of life.
Our final speaker, Pamela Benson Owens of Edge of Your Seat Consulting, Inc., shared a powerful message about the importance of integrating inclusion into every organizational standard. Using her experience training other organizations, including like-minded groups and disagreeing parties, she urged us to create space for relationship-building and communication by seeing each other as humans first, anchored in the common experience. Pamela held the truth that to build on inclusion, we need to have respectful communication, which includes active listening, inclusive language, and curiosity without judgement.
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It’s times like this I feel the most connected with the world, with humanity, and with my body. Historians, anthropologists, and all other scientists alike say there was a time before written language, following the language of gestures. It was in these times that our ancestors passed down knowledge and wisdom through the practice of oral storytelling and share outs. How incredible it is to return to our roots and dance with words together in the blight of monoculture and during the age of erosion!
Conferences, such as this one, leaves us feeling empowered and ready to act. But what comes next? What do you do the day after? The month? The year?
Many attendees shared that their motivation for engaging in climate work are their children, grandchildren, neighbors, friends, and even strangers—this is the heart of inclusion in climate work, for we cannot sufficiently address climate justice without addressing the ones currently most impacted and will be most impacted by what’s to come if we do not act.
Phalika Oum, CCL 2025 Inclusion Fellow
Over the years, I’ve placed my hope in places and rhythms that leave me feeling more helpless. For reasons I’m still piecing together, this multicultural and intergenerational space that the CCL Inclusion team has cultivated left me with security. I am one of the lucky ones to stand alongside veterans, retirees, high school students, college students, academics, climate professionals, and more to discuss the very pressing issues in our climate and celebrate the beauties of inclusion.
For all the attendees who chose to use their weekend to attend CCL’s 4th Inclusion Conference, thank you. Thank you for your presence and solidarity. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences. And thank you for being open-minded and choosing to listen to difficult conversations. I feel forever grateful.
As for me, I sit with wonder. My chest fills with gravity and eagerness. And somehow, the air feels lighter knowing that I have a whole community to reflect alongside. I continue to meditate on the praxis of holding space for people and communities. I’m walking a tightrope held together by tensions and truths. This, I know, will be a lifetime of reflection and endurance.
Phalika Oum has served as CCL’s Inclusion Fellow since January 2025.
The post Reflections on Community at CCL’s 4th Annual Inclusion Conference appeared first on Citizens' Climate Lobby.
Reflections on Community at CCL’s 4th Annual Inclusion Conference
Drought and heatwaves occurring together – known as “compound” events – have “surged” across the world since the early 2000s, a new study shows.
Compound drought and heat events (CDHEs) can have devastating effects, creating the ideal conditions for intense wildfires, such as Australia’s “Black Summer” of 2019-20 where bushfires burned 24m hectares and killed 33 people.
The research, published in Science Advances, finds that the increase in CDHEs is predominantly being driven by events that start with a heatwave.
The global area affected by such “heatwave-led” compound events has more than doubled between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, the study says.
The rapid increase in these events over the last 23 years cannot be explained solely by global warming, the authors note.
Since the late 1990s, feedbacks between the land and the atmosphere have become stronger, making heatwaves more likely to trigger drought conditions, they explain.
One of the study authors tells Carbon Brief that societies must pay greater attention to compound events, which can “cause severe impacts on ecosystems, agriculture and society”.
Compound events
CDHEs are extreme weather events where drought and heatwave conditions occur simultaneously – or shortly after each other – in the same region.
These events are often triggered by large-scale weather patterns, such as “blocking” highs, which can produce “prolonged” hot and dry conditions, according to the study.
Prof Sang-Wook Yeh is one of the study authors and a professor at the Ewha Womans University in South Korea. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When heatwaves and droughts occur together, the two hazards reinforce each other through land-atmosphere interactions. This amplifies surface heating and soil moisture deficits, making compound events more intense and damaging than single hazards.”
CDHEs can begin with either a heatwave or a drought.
The sequence of these extremes is important, the study says, as they have different drivers and impacts.
For example, in a CDHE where the heatwave was the precursor, increased direct sunshine causes more moisture loss from soils and plants, leading to a drought.
Conversely, in an event where the drought was the precursor, the lack of soil moisture means that less of the sun’s energy goes into evaporation and more goes into warming the Earth’s surface. This produces favourable conditions for heatwaves.
The study shows that the majority of CDHEs globally start out as a drought.
In recent years, there has been increasing focus on these events due to the devastating impact they have on agriculture, ecosystems and public health.
In Russia in the summer of 2010, a compound drought-heatwave event – and the associated wildfires – caused the death of nearly 55,000 people, the study notes.
The record-breaking Pacific north-west “heat dome” in 2021 triggered extreme drought conditions that caused “significant declines” in wheat yields, as well as in barley, canola and fruit production in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, says the study.
Increasing events
To assess how CDHEs are changing, the researchers use daily reanalysis data to identify droughts and heatwaves events. (Reanalysis data combines past observations with climate models to create a historical climate record.) Then, using an algorithm, they analyse how these events overlap in both time and space.
The study covers the period from 1980 to 2023 and the world’s land surface, excluding polar regions where CDHEs are rare.
The research finds that the area of land affected by CDHEs has “increased substantially” since the early 2000s.
Heatwave-led events have been the main contributor to this increase, the study says, with their spatial extent rising 110% between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, compared to a 59% increase for drought-led events.
The map below shows the global distribution of CDHEs over 1980-2023. The charts show the percentage of the land surface affected by a heatwave-led CDHE (red) or a drought-led CDHE (yellow) in a given year (left) and relative increase in each CDHE type (right).
The study finds that CDHEs have occurred most frequently in northern South America, the southern US, eastern Europe, central Africa and south Asia.
Threshold passed
The authors explain that the increase in heatwave-led CDHEs is related to rising global temperatures, but that this does not tell the whole story.
In the earlier 22-year period of 1980-2001, the study finds that the spatial extent of heatwave-led CDHEs rises by 1.6% per 1C of global temperature rise. For the more-recent period of 2022-23, this increases “nearly eightfold” to 13.1%.
The change suggests that the rapid increase in the heatwave-led CDHEs occurred after the global average temperature “surpasse[d] a certain temperature threshold”, the paper says.
This threshold is an absolute global average temperature of 14.3C, the authors estimate (based on an 11-year average), which the world passed around the year 2000.
Investigating the recent surge in heatwave-leading CDHEs further, the researchers find a “regime shift” in land-atmosphere dynamics “toward a persistently intensified state after the late 1990s”.
In other words, the way that drier soils drive higher surface temperatures, and vice versa, is becoming stronger, resulting in more heatwave-led compound events.
Daily data
The research has some advantages over other previous studies, Yeh says. For instance, the new work uses daily estimations of CDHEs, compared to monthly data used in past research. This is “important for capturing the detailed occurrence” of these events, says Yeh.
He adds that another advantage of their study is that it distinguishes the sequence of droughts and heatwaves, which allows them to “better understand the differences” in the characteristics of CDHEs.
Dr Meryem Tanarhte is a climate scientist at the University Hassan II in Morocco, and Dr Ruth Cerezo Mota is a climatologist and a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Both scientists, who were not involved in the study, agree that the daily estimations give a clearer picture of how CDHEs are changing.
Cerezo-Mota adds that another major contribution of the study is its global focus. She tells Carbon Brief that in some regions, such as Mexico and Africa, there is a lack of studies on CDHEs:
“Not because the events do not occur, but perhaps because [these regions] do not have all the data or the expertise to do so.”
However, she notes that the reanalysis data used by the study does have limitations with how it represents rainfall in some parts of the world.
Compound impacts
The study notes that if CDHEs continue to intensify – particularly events where heatwaves are the precursors – they could drive declining crop productivity, increased wildfire frequency and severe public health crises.
These impacts could be “much more rapid and severe as global warming continues”, Yeh tells Carbon Brief.
Tanarhte notes that these events can be forecasted up to 10 days ahead in many regions. Furthermore, she says, the strongest impacts can be prevented “through preparedness and adaptation”, including through “water management for agriculture, heatwave mitigation measures and wildfire mitigation”.
The study recommends reassessing current risk management strategies for these compound events. It also suggests incorporating the sequences of drought and heatwaves into compound event analysis frameworks “to enhance climate risk management”.
Cerezo-Mota says that it is clear that the world needs to be prepared for the increased occurrence of these events. She tells Carbon Brief:
“These [risk assessments and strategies] need to be carried out at the local level to understand the complexities of each region.”
The post Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 6 March 2026: Iran energy crisis | China climate plan | Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ wind turbine
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Energy crisis
ENERGY SPIKE: US-Israeli attacks on Iran and subsequent counterattacks across the Middle East have sent energy prices “soaring”, according to Reuters. The newswire reported that the region “accounts for just under a third of global oil production and almost a fifth of gas”. The Guardian noted that shipping traffic through the strait of Hormuz, which normally ferries 20% of the world’s oil, “all but ground to a halt”. The Financial Times reported that attacks by Iran on Middle East energy facilities – notably in Qatar – triggered the “biggest rise in gas prices since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine”.
‘RISK’ AND ‘BENEFITS’: Bloomberg reported on increases in diesel prices in Europe and the US, speculating that rising fuel costs could be “a risk for president Donald Trump”. US gas producers are “poised to benefit from the big disruption in global supply”, according to CNBC. Indian government sources told the Economic Times that Russia is prepared to “fulfil India’s energy demands”. China Daily quoted experts who said “China’s energy security remains fundamentally unshaken”, thanks to “emergency stockpiles and a wide array of import channels”.
‘ESSENTIAL’ RENEWABLES: Energy analysts said governments should cut their fossil-fuel reliance by investing in renewables, “rather than just seeking non-Gulf oil and gas suppliers”, reported Climate Home News. This message was echoed by UK business secretary Peter Kyle, who said “doubling down on renewables” was “essential” amid “regional instability”, according to the Daily Telegraph.
China’s climate plan
PEAK COAL?: China has set out its next “five-year plan” at the annual “two sessions” meeting of the National People’s Congress, including its climate strategy out to 2030, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. The plan called for China to cut its carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) by 17% from 2026 to 2030, which “may allow for continued increase in emissions given the rate of GDP growth”, reported Reuters. The newswire added that the plan also had targets to reach peak coal in the next five years and replace 30m tonnes per year of coal with renewables.
ACTIVE YET PRUDENT: Bloomberg described the new plan as “cautious”, stating that it “frustrat[es] hopes for tighter policy that would drive the nation to peak carbon emissions well before president Xi Jinping’s 2030 deadline”. Carbon Brief has just published an in-depth analysis of the plan. China Daily reported that the strategy “highlights measures to promote the climate targets of peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030”, which China said it would work towards “actively yet prudently”.
Around the world
- EU RULES: The European Commission has proposed new “made in Europe” rules to support domestic low-carbon industries, “against fierce competition from China”, reported Agence France-Presse. Carbon Brief examined what it means for climate efforts.
- RECORD HEAT: The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said there is a 50-60% chance that the El Niño weather pattern could return this year, amplifying the effect of global warming and potentially driving temperatures to “record highs”, according to Euronews.
- FLAGSHIP FUND: The African Development Bank’s “flagship clean energy fund” plans to more than double its financing to $2.5bn for African renewables over the next two years, reported the Associated Press.
- NO WITHDRAWAL: Vanuatu has defied US efforts to force the Pacific-island nation to drop a UN draft resolution calling on the world to implement a landmark International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on climate, according to the Guardian.
98
The number of nations that submitted their national reports on tackling nature loss to the UN on time – just half of the 196 countries that are part of the UN biodiversity treaty – according to analysis by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- Sea levels are already “much higher than assumed” in most assessments of the threat posed by sea-level rise, due to “inadequate” modelling assumptions | Nature
- Accelerating human-caused global warming could see the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C limit crossed before 2030 | Geophysical Research Letters covered by Carbon Brief
- Future “super El Niño events” could “significantly lower” solar power generation due to a reduction in solar irradiance in key regions, such as California and east China | Communications Earth & Environment
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)