Standing in the Blue Zone in Belém, Brazil, surrounded by thousands of negotiators, activists, scientists, and Indigenous leaders, I’m struck by how profoundly location shapes conversation. This is the first COP held in the Amazon rainforest—not symbolically nearby, but actually within it.
Through Climate Generation’s support, I’m able to spend two weeks here building strategic relationships and supporting mission-driven organizations. Their partnership — rooted in a mission to ignite and sustain the ability of educators, youth, and communities to act on systems perpetuating the climate crisis — enables Terra40 to deliver strategic event campaigns that include comprehensive Event Planning, Marketing, and Delegation Management to organizations like HBCU Green Fund at COP30.
Here’s what the first week has taught me.
The Beautiful Congregation
One of my favorite aspects of global forums is the congregation itself: diverse nations, peoples, and languages weaving together in one space. You hear Portuguese, Spanish, French, Chinese, Indigenous languages, Arabic — all at once. It’s a powerful reminder that we’re interconnected yet unique, each bringing something distinct to the table, yet all here for the same urgent purpose. But that diversity isn’t just poetic — it’s strategic. Different cultures approach negotiation, relationship building, and decision-making in fundamentally distinct ways. Understanding these differences determines whether you can build coalitions that actually drive policy change. For Climate Generation’s work with educators and youth, teaching students about these diverse approaches prepares them to be more effective climate advocates.
Indigenous Leadership Takes Center Stage
The most significant shift at COP30 is the centrality of Indigenous voices. In previous COPs, Indigenous peoples often felt relegated to side events. Here in Belém, they’re in the negotiating rooms, leading pavilions, and setting the agenda.
Indigenous leaders from Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, and beyond are presenting traditional ecological knowledge that challenges and complements Western scientific frameworks. They’re not asking for a seat at the table — they’re reminding everyone that this is their table, their land, their knowledge systems that have sustained these ecosystems for millennia.
This directly connects to acting on systems perpetuating the climate crisis—one of those systems is the marginalization of Indigenous knowledge in climate solutions. For Minnesota classrooms, this means teaching students that climate solutions already exist in communities worldwide. Our job is to listen, learn, amplify, and support.
The Unglamorous Reality
Let me be honest about what Week One actually looked like: jet-lagged client meetings, navigating a massive venue, negotiations stretching past midnight, building relationships over coffee in crowded corridors, and adjusting strategy in real-time. Global forums look polished from the outside. Inside, they’re an organized chaos that requires flexibility, cultural competence, strategic thinking, and stamina. But this is also where the magic happens — where an environmental justice leader from Louisiana connects with an Indigenous forest guardian from Acre, where relationships form that outlast the two-week conference.
This messiness matters for climate education. Real climate action isn’t always tidy. It’s a mix of coalition-building, compromise, setbacks, breakthroughs, exhaustion, and hope. Preparing young people for this reality — while sustaining their ability to act — is precisely what Climate Generation’s mission describes.
Connecting Global to Local
What does COP30 mean for Climate Generation’s work with Minnesota educators, youth, and communities?
- Local solutions matter globally. Minnesota’s work on agricultural climate adaptation and renewable energy transition is part of conversations happening here. Small-scale innovations can influence international policy.
- Relationship-building is a strategy. Just like at COP30, meaningful climate work requires cultural intelligence, trust-building, and long-term relationship investment—not just data and messaging.
- Diverse voices strengthen solutions. Climate Generation’s vision of ‘a just and abundant world beyond climate crisis’ requires centering voices often marginalized: Indigenous communities, communities of color, rural communities, and young people.
- Personal connection drives action. The most effective negotiators here connect abstract targets to individual experience. This transforms information into action—exactly what Climate Generation does in Minnesota classrooms and communities.
Looking Ahead
As we head into Week Two, negotiations intensify. I’ll continue sharing insights through this partnership — because understanding how global climate policy happens should be accessible to everyone, from international negotiators to teachers in Minnesota. The climate crisis is global. But so are the solutions, relationships, and movements being born here in Belém. When educators, youth, and communities in Minnesota learn from these global convenings, they’re better equipped to act on the systems perpetuating the crisis — right where they are.
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Fuzieh Jallow is the Founder & CEO of Terra40. This blog was written in partnership with Climate Generation
About This Partnership: Climate Generation provided COP30 credentials to Terra40 in exchange for on-the-ground insights and educational content. Learn more at climategen.org. Follow Terra40 @terra40global for real-time COP30 updates.
The post Week One at COP30: Reflections from the Amazon appeared first on Climate Generation.
The case shows that climate change is a fundamental human rights violation—and the victory of Bonaire, a Dutch territory, could open the door for similar lawsuits globally.
From our collaborating partner Living on Earth, public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by Paloma Beltran with Greenpeace Netherlands campaigner Eefje de Kroon.
A Tiny Caribbean Island Sued the Netherlands Over Climate Change, and Won
Climate Change
Greenpeace organisations to appeal USD $345 million court judgment in Energy Transfer’s intimidation lawsuit
SYDNEY, Saturday 28 February 2026 — Greenpeace International and Greenpeace organisations in the US announce they will seek a new trial and, if necessary, appeal the decision with the North Dakota Supreme Court following a North Dakota District Court judgment today awarding Energy Transfer (ET) USD $345 million.
ET’s SLAPP suit remains a blatant attempt to silence free speech, erase Indigenous leadership of the Standing Rock movement, and punish solidarity with peaceful resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Greenpeace International will also continue to seek damages for ET’s bullying lawsuits under EU anti-SLAPP legislation in the Netherlands.
Mads Christensen, Greenpeace International Executive Director said: “Energy Transfer’s attempts to silence us are failing. Greenpeace International will continue to resist intimidation tactics. We will not be silenced. We will only get louder, joining our voices to those of our allies all around the world against the corporate polluters and billionaire oligarchs who prioritise profits over people and the planet.
“With hard-won freedoms under threat and the climate crisis accelerating, the stakes of this legal fight couldn’t be higher. Through appeals in the US and Greenpeace International’s groundbreaking anti-SLAPP case in the Netherlands, we are exploring every option to hold Energy Transfer accountable for multiple abusive lawsuits and show all power-hungry bullies that their attacks will only result in a stronger people-powered movement.”
The Court’s final judgment today rejects some of the jury verdict delivered in March 2025, but still awards hundreds of millions of dollars to ET without a sound basis in law. The Greenpeace defendants will continue to press their arguments that the US Constitution does not allow liability here, that ET did not present evidence to support its claims, that the Court admitted inflammatory and irrelevant evidence at trial and excluded other evidence supporting the defense, and that the jury pool in Mandan could not be impartial.[1][2]
ET’s back-to-back lawsuits against Greenpeace International and the US organisations Greenpeace USA (Greenpeace Inc.) and Greenpeace Fund are clear-cut examples of SLAPPs — lawsuits attempting to bury nonprofits and activists in legal fees, push them towards bankruptcy and ultimately silence dissent.[3] Greenpeace International, which is based in the Netherlands, is pursuing justice in Europe, with a suit against ET under Dutch law and the European Union’s new anti-SLAPP directive, a landmark test of the new legislation which could help set a powerful precedent against corporate bullying.[4]
Kate Smolski, Program Director at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “This is part of a worrying trend globally: fossil fuel corporations are increasingly using litigation to attack and silence ordinary people and groups using the law to challenge their polluting operations — and we’re not immune to these tactics here in Australia.
“Rulings like this have a chilling effect on democracy and public interest litigation — we must unite against these silencing tactics as bad for Australians and bad for our democracy. Our movement is stronger than any corporate bully, and grows even stronger when under attack.”
Energy Transfer’s SLAPPs are part of a wave of abusive lawsuits filed by Big Oil companies like Shell, Total, and ENI against Greenpeace entities in recent years.[3] A couple of these cases have been successfully stopped in their tracks. This includes Greenpeace France successfully defeating TotalEnergies’ SLAPP on 28 March 2024, and Greenpeace UK and Greenpeace International forcing Shell to back down from its SLAPP on 10 December 2024.
-ENDS-
Images available in Greenpeace Media Library
Notes:
[1] The judgment entered by North Dakota District Court Judge Gion follows a jury verdict finding Greenpeace entities liable for more than US$660 million on March 19, 2025. Judge Gion subsequently threw out several items from the jury’s verdict, reducing the total damages to approximately US$345 million.
[2] Public statements from the independent Trial Monitoring Committee
[3] Energy Transfer’s first lawsuit was filed in federal court in 2017 under the RICO Act – the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a US federal statute designed to prosecute mob activity. The case was dismissed in 2019, with the judge stating the evidence fell “far short” of what was needed to establish a RICO enterprise. The federal court did not decide on Energy Transfer’s claims based on state law, so Energy Transfer promptly filed a new case in a North Dakota state court with these and other state law claims.
[4] Greenpeace International sent a Notice of Liability to Energy Transfer on 23 July 2024, informing the pipeline giant of Greenpeace International’s intention to bring an anti-SLAPP lawsuit against the company in a Dutch Court. After Energy Transfer declined to accept liability on multiple occasions (September 2024, December 2024), Greenpeace International initiated the first test of the European Union’s anti-SLAPP Directive on 11 February 2025 by filing a lawsuit in Dutch court against Energy Transfer. The case was officially registered in the docket of the Court of Amsterdam on 2 July, 2025. Greenpeace International seeks to recover all damages and costs it has suffered as a result of Energy Transfers’s back-to-back, abusive lawsuits demanding hundreds of millions of dollars from Greenpeace International and the Greenpeace organisations in the US. The next hearing in the Court of Amsterdam is scheduled for 16 April, 2026.
Media contact:
Kate O’Callaghan on 0406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
The Trump administration’s relentless rollback of public health and environmental protections has allowed widespread toxic exposures to flourish, warn experts who helped implement safeguards now under assault.
In a new report that outlines a dozen high-risk pollutants given new life thanks to weakened, delayed or rescinded regulations, the Environmental Protection Network, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group of hundreds of former Environmental Protection Agency staff, warns that the EPA under President Donald Trump has abandoned the agency’s core mission of protecting people and the environment from preventable toxic exposures.
Former EPA Staff Detail Expanding Pollution Risks Under Trump
A Tiny Caribbean Island Sued the Netherlands Over Climate Change, and Won
Greenpeace organisations to appeal USD $345 million court judgment in Energy Transfer’s intimidation lawsuit
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