Daniela’s day started bright and early, woken up by a stream of light peeking through the windows and the sound of lively music coming from beyond the dormitory doors. She followed the music into a school patio with smells of a home-cooked breakfast. She grabs herself a plate and chats with the people around her, exchanging pleasantries and getting ready for the first day of the Global Meeting for Climate and Life, or dubbed AntiCOP. It occurred approximately a week before the 29th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or informally called COP 29.
Daniela Bobadilla Romero, the Data and Impact Director at ReEarth Initiative, fondly recounts these details about staying in an old school-turned-headquarters for AntiCOP in Oaxaca, Mexico from November 4 to 9, 2024. “The climate is incredibly different [from COP spaces],” she recalls, who has also been to climate COP's. Small, intimate, and full of life.
Those words would be the furthest adjectives to describe the Climate COPs, often synonymous with massive conference rooms, luxury hotels, and people dressed in business attire. Since March 1995, these events are meant to foster conversations between diplomats, activists, academics, and community members from across the globe seeking to find common goals and solutions to combat climate change. However, there have been many critiques questioning the effectiveness of COP and the exclusivity of attendance, particularly with activists, youth, and Indigenous and other minority voices.
“The system is [...] rigged to give the illusion of diplomacy [when in reality] it’s very much stacked against the most oppressed,” Daniela says. To illustrate, Climate COPs are divided into two spaces: negotiation rooms and the Pavilions. Daniela explains that the Pavilions, stands or open rooms hosted by organizations and governments where talks about climate solutions and global collaborations occur, are separate from where political decision makers and negotiators are. In enclosed rooms, at the opposite side of large conference venues—with security, air conditioning, and fancy dinners afterwards—decision makers oftentimes have their answers to final negotiations solidified long before COP began. There is a disconnect between the decision makers and the Pavilions—and a disconnect between the people in power and the realities of climate change in underdeveloped and poorly represented communities.
Sacni, one of the organizers of the Global Meeting for Climate and Life, says they built AntiCOP as a separate space by and for grassroots and social movements to re-evaluate what is considered important in the fight against climate change. Way beyond a counter-movement to COPs, AntiCOP seeks to challenge “extractivism, green colonialism, and megaprojects that strip our communities of their resources and lands” and instead, build solutions and communities “in harmony with ecosystems, biodiversity, and justice.”
“[COP talks] about loss and damage, [...] carbon credits, and a lot of legislation about climate change,” Sacni says, “We need to focus on what’s important, [what] is threatened the most. Life has to be put in the center [of the conversation].”
During discussion sessions, climate activists and land defenders shared problems and co-created solutions for five topics: the water crisis, forced displacement/climate change migration, commodification of life, militarization and megaprojects, and extractivism. Then, time was dedicated to carving out agreements between the climate movement and land defense movement, developing concrete and tangible goals that can be achieved.
Sacni emphasized the importance of these discussion sessions, holding space for Indigenous peoples and land defense peoples to say their piece. “It was very powerful to listen to them and the resolutions they came up with without us [the climate activists]” said Sacni, “If we have the platform and the resources and the possibility to make these connections [with] people that need the most attention, we need to do that [...] They have voices! We need to take a step behind and let them take ownership of [these spaces]. Those voices need to be in the center. ”
When asked about what COP could learn from AntiCOP to improve its effectiveness in addressing climate change for all people, Daniela lists many things: a more community-made process, trust developed between people, and a shift from profit to social justice. “But the main one would be… just actually caring.”
Connection, trust, and empathy are expressed as the keys to meaningful climate goals, leading to tangible actions that can be achieved. Activism should not be seen as black and white where one solution must fit all. Action must be taken from the current generation and the many generations before us, especially from those who have tended the land for many eons.
“[There is] importance in youth energy powering the ideas that people have been thinking, discussing, and perfecting [from] way before we were born,” Daniela expressed in her final reflections on attending AntiCOP, "Each of us has a different place in this movement to build better worlds, what we need most is collaboration"
Sacni expressed a similar perspective on the role activists have within the environmental movement. If we want people from all walks of life to become involved in the solutions, activists need to create the spaces that will allow them to raise their voices. And that can be as simple as breaking down language barriers in AntiCOP as youth activists eagerly volunteered to translate for folks who could not speak English or Spanish. To Sacni, those little moments of servitude were like magic. As she so aptly put it: “We are activists… let’s help!”
To learn more about the outcomes of AntiCOP 2024, you can read the Final Statement here. You can also keep up to date with updates on AntiCOP’s commitments on the platform Mirrors of the Global South.
About the Author:
Esther Duong (she/her) is a Vietnamese-American storyteller, activist, and lover of native plants from the Bay Area, California, USA. With more than five years of experience in grassroots advocacy, she advocates for environmental justice, policies, and education with a particular interest in creating sustainable and equitable communities. Esther has a major in Environmental Policy Analysis and Planning from University of California, Davis, with a minor in Landscape Restoration and intends to pursue conservation planning. In her free time, she likes to read fantasy and sci-fi novels, listen to pop/k-pop/indie music, and try new food spots.
