Year after year, climate negotiations have been steered less by science and justice than by corporate power. At COP29, around 1,773 fossil-fuel industry lobbyists were recorded. They didn’t just attend—they shaped the agenda, promoting carbon markets, risky geoengineering, and so-called “nature-based” schemes that displace Indigenous Peoples and undermine urgent, rights-based measures to phase out fossil fuels.
These false solutions fuel new waves of extraction, dispossess communities from their lands and waters, intensify unpaid care burdens on women, and silence those defending their territories—all while consolidating corporate and political power in the Global North. They are not climate solutions; they are climate colonialism dressed in green.
In contrast, peoples-led solutions reclaim sovereignty and redistribute power away from corporate and state actors, back to those protecting bodies, lands, and ecosystems. Grounded in human rights, self-determination, collective care, and the lived leadership of historically oppressed communities, these approaches point the way toward real system change.
Our message is clear: real climate solutions come from the peoples, not from polluters.
Objectives
- Expose false solutions and corporate capture, and reaffirm the principles of peoples-led, rights-based climate action.
- Center frontline narratives in COP30 negotiations on mitigation, adaptation, finance, just transition, land, oceans, and human rights.
- Reclaim global climate ambition by showing how peoples-led alternatives must shape the outcomes and direction of COP30 and the broader global response to the climate crisis.
Speakers
- Martha Devia Grisales, Comité Ambiental en Defensa de la Vida / ESCR-Net (Colombia)
- Ana Celestial, Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (Philippines)
- Adrian Martínez, La Ruta del Clima (Costa Rica)
Moderator: Patricia M. Wattimena (ESCR-Net)
Opening Statement: Read on behalf of Elisa Morgera, UN Special Rapporteur on Climate Change.
Contact for Media Inquiries
Esther de la Rosa (ESCR-Net Communications Director) 📧edelarosa@escr-net.org I Whatsapp/signal +13059846650
Resources for journalists
For press materials, reports, and visuals, visit: escr-net.org/initiative/escr-net-at-cop
- COP30 Briefing Note: Centering Peoples-Led Solutions for a Decolonized Climate Future (Available in English, Spanish, French, Arabic)
- Comic: Beyond Green Lies: Real Solutions to the Climate Crisis Exist (Available in English, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Portuguese)
- Statement: From Impunity to Accountability: Binding Rules for Human Rights and Climate Justice
