When Climate Conferences Feel Like Parodies

Do you ever feel like the conferences and industry events you attend are unfolding like parodies of themselves? This has been my experience as of late—except there's nothing comical about this satire.

In the climate world, despite the fact that countless, dedicated entrepreneurs, investors, and activists show up to share their innovation and initiatives in the name of building a better world, a wall of geopolitics, bureaucracy, fear, and business as usual consistently keeps us spinning.

In the United States, the Inflation Reduction Act has created more than 300,000 clean energy jobs. Yet, last year the U.S. produced record high levels of oil and gas. In Colombia, COP16, the largest global convening of governments to discuss protecting nature and biodiversity took place. Indigenous peoples were widely celebrated for protecting 80% of the world's biodiversity. Yet, while Indigenous representatives were invited to speak on stage, they weren't invited to the negotiating table. The contradictions and counterproductivity are enough to make anyone feel disenchanted—if they're lucky. The unlucky ones are those whose lives are in danger in the here and the now.

As Tina Stege, climate envoy for the Marshall Islands, one of the countries most at risk from climate change, said of COP29, “Countries seem to have forgotten why we are all here. It is to save lives.”

It's statements like Stege's and plights of people on the frontlines of climate and humanitarian crises that can be our North Star against all the disappointment and frustration we may be feeling. It's the unearthing of stories shared by them that will keep us together as a community.

For Indigenous peoples, failure to increase biodiversity finance is a matter of life or death

Earlier this month, I wrote a column for Reuters featuring interviews I conducted at COP16 with three Indigenous leaders from the Amazon. I asked them if they think these international gatherings are making a difference in addressing climate change and nature and biodiversity loss—or if we’re all just talking in circles. Here's what they had to say.

Alexandra Narvaez, Indigenous guard of the A’i Cofn community of Singangoe and winner of the 2022 Goldman Environmental Prize, said, “This is my first time at COP, and there isn’t much participation from Indigenous Peoples. It seems that they (the organizers) do everything behind closed doors. Then they come out with a document, and we really don’t have any say. The invitation the conference extends to us is simply to have us show up, but not to contribute to the negotiations.”

Narvaez went on to tell me about how climate change, biodiversity loss, and the changing habitats are making life in her home in Ecuador harder day by day. Because the Amazon River is dry her people aren’t able to fish, and because the swampy areas where women normally gather medicine are desiccated, the women need to travel farther to find remedies.

“We can’t easily connect with nature anymore because it’s changing,” said Narvaez. We have to find new ways to maintain that bond.”

Justino Piaguaje, territorial leader of the Siekopai nation of Ecuador, recently led his people to a monumental victory, opens new tab, recovering their ancestral land after 80 years of struggle.

But he said they don’t know if the government is going to keep its word. The state oil company Petroecuador, is still pumping oil in the Yasuni National Park in the Amazon, a year after a historic referendum called on it to stop crude oil extraction there.

Wider Guaramag, president of the A’i Cofan community of Sinangoe, said, “globalization, technology, and perhaps even educational systems around the world are a threat to our (Indigenous) culture because they only teach one side of the story. It’s important to strengthen our cultural identity through our traditional knowledge and elders, and in order to implement our collective rights we need territory without contamination.”

The full column can be read here.