VICTORIA, Seychelles, Nov 25 2025 (IPS) – When the world gathered in Glasgow for COP26, the mantra was “building back better.” Two years later, in Sharm El Sheikh, COP27 promised “implementation.”
This year, in Belém, Brazil, COP30 arrived with a heavier burden: to finally bridge the chasm between lofty rhetoric and the urgent, measurable steps needed to keep 1.5 °C alive.
James Alix Michel
What Was Expected of COP30 were modest yet critical. After the disappointments of Copenhagen (2009) and the optimism sparked by Paris (2015), developing nations, small island states, Indigenous groups and a swelling youth movement demanded three things:
1. Binding phase out timelines for coal, oil and gas. 2. A fully funded Loss and Damage Facility to compensate vulnerable countries already suffering climate impacts. 3. Scaled up adaptation finance—tripling the $120 billion a year pledge and ensuring it reaches the frontline communities that need it most.
However the negotiations evolved into a tug of war between ambition and inertia. Wealthier nations, still reeling from economic shocks, offered incremental increases in adaptation funding and a new Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF) worth $125 billion, with 20 percent earmarked for Indigenous stewardship. The Global Implementation Accelerator—a two year bridge to align Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) with 1.5 °C—was launched, alongside a Just Transition Mechanism to share technology and financing.
However, the text on fossil fuel phase out remained voluntary; the Loss and Damage Fund was referenced but not capitalised; and the $120 billion adaptation pledge fell short of the $310 billion annual need.
But there were Voices That Could Not Be Ignored.
Developing Nations (the G77+China) reminded the plenary that climate justice is not a charity—it is a legal obligation under the UNFCCC. They demanded that historic emitters honor their “common but differentiated responsibilities.”
Island States(AOSIS) warned that sea level rise is no longer a future scenario; it is eroding coastlines and displacing entire cultures. Their plea: “1.5 °C is our survival, not a bargaining chip.”
Indigenous Peoples highlighted the destruction of Amazon and Boreal forests, urging that 30 percent of all climate finance flow directly to communities that protect 80 percent of biodiversity.
Youth — The Gen Z generation, marched outside the venue, chanting “We will not be diluted” demanding binding commitments and accountability mechanisms.
The Legacy of Copenhagen, Paris, and the Empty COPs –
I attended COP15 in Copenhagen (2009), where the “Danish draft” was rejected, and the summit collapsed amid accusations of exclusion. The disappointment lingered until Paris (2015), where the 1.5 °C aspiration was enshrined, sparking hope that multilateralism could still work. Since then, COPs have been a carousel of promises: the Green Climate Fund fell $20 billion short; the 2022 Glasgow Climate Pact promised “phasing out coal” but left loopholes. Each iteration has chipped away at trust.
COP30 was billed as the moment to reverse that trend.
And the result? Partial progress, but far from the transformational shift required.
Did We Achieve What We Hoped For?
In blunt terms: No. The pledges secured are insufficient to limit warming to 1.5 °C, and critical gaps—binding fossil fuel timelines, robust loss and damage funding, and true equity in finance—remain unfilled.
Yet, there are glimmers. The tripling of adaptation finance, the first concrete allocation for Indigenous led forest protection, and the creation of an Implementation Accelerator signal that the architecture for change exists. The challenge now is to fill it with real money and accountability.
Let us look at ‘What Must Happen Next’
1. Full Capitalisation of Loss and Damage Fund – G20 nations must commit 0.1 % of GDP and disburse within 12 months. 2. Binding Fossil Fuel Phase out – Coal, oil and gas with just transition financing for workers. 3. Scale Adaptation Finance to $310 billion/yr – Re channel subsidies from fossil fuels to resilience projects. 4. Direct Funding for Indigenous and Youth Initiatives – Allocate 30 % of climate finance to community led stewardship. 5. Strengthen Accountability – Mandate annual NDC updates with independent verification and penalties for non compliance.
But for all this to become reality there must be a determined effort to achieve Future Actions. We have watched promises fade after every COP, yet the physics of climate change remains unforgiving. The urgency is not new; the window to act is shrinking. But hope endures – in the solar panels lighting remote villages, in mangroves being restored to buffer storms, in the relentless energy of young activists demanding a livable planet.
Humanity has the knowledge, technology, and resources. What we need now is the collective political will to use them. Let COP30 be remembered not as another empty summit, but as the turning point where the world chose survival over complacency.
The future is not written; we write it with every decision we make today.
James Alix Michel, Former President Republic of Seychelles, Member Club de Madrid.
DHAKA, Bangladesh, Nov 25 2025 (IPS) – COP30 in Belém is not just another annual climate meeting, it is the 32-year report card of the world governance architecture that was conceived at the Rio Earth Summit of 1992. And that is what report card says: delivery has been sporadic, cosmetic and perilously disconnected with the physics of climatic breakdown.
M. Zakir Hossain Khan
The Amazon, which was once regarded in Rio as an ecological miracle of the world, is now on the verge of an irreversible precipice. Even the communities that struggled to protect it over millennia also demonstrate against COP30 to make it clear that they do not oppose multilateralism, but because multilateralism has marginalized them many times.
Rio Promised Rights, Take Part, and Protection, But Delivery Has Been Fragmented
Rio Summit gave birth to three pillars of international environmental control: UNFCCC (climate), CBD (biodiversity) and UNCCD (desertification). Every one of them was supposed to be participating, equitable and accountable. But progressively delivery disintegrated:
• Rio has only achieved 34 per cent biodiversity commitments (CBD GBO-5). • CO₂ emissions rose over 60% since 1992. • The globe is headed to 2.7 o C with the existing policies (UNEP 2024). • The funding obligations are in a chronic state of arrears, adaptation requirements are three times higher than the real flows.
Rio gave the world a vision. COP30 demonstrates the fact that that vision is yet to be developed.
The Rights Gap: The Key Failure between Rio and Belém
Although Rio pledged to involve Indigenous people, Indigenous people today are only getting less than 1 percent of climate finance. In addition, it caused a rising trend of carbon market-related land grabs and resource exploitation, because of the lack of binding power in the decisions regarding climate. This is not a delivery gap but a right gap. COP30 has been improved technically but has failed to redress the inherent imbalance at Rio that remained unaddressed: decision-making in the absence of custodianship.
The Sleepiness Menace Came to Rio and Detonated by COP30
Rio established three overlapping conventions that lacked a single governance structure. Climate to oceans, food, forests, finance, security, and technology; CBD to traditional knowledge, access and benefit-sharing, and UNCCD to migration, peace and livelihoods all increased over the decades.
The outcome is an institution that is too broad to govern effectively, making watered-down decisions and poor accountability. COP30 is being developed, however, within a system that was never intended to deal with planetary collapse on this level.
The Amazon: The Ultimate Test of Rio on Prognosis
Rio glorified forests as the breathing organs of the world. However, three decades later:
• Amazon was deforested by 17 per cent and was close to the 20-25 per cent dieback mark. • Native land protectors become increasingly violent. • Carbon markets run the risk of stimulating extraction in the name of green growth.
Another pledge is not required by Amazon. It requires energy from its protectors. That was missing in Rio. It is still missing in COP30. Indigenous people depicted in CoP30 in all their frustration and agitation are the consequences of the system failure to provide them with a say in the decision-making process and the unceasing denial of their natural rights.
Young: The Post-Rio Generation that was Duped by Incrementalism
The post-Rio generation (those that were born after the year 30) is more than 50 percent of the world population. They left behind a) tripled fossil subsidy regime; b) soaring climate debt; c) ever-turbid biodiversity collapse; d) rising climate disasters; and e) inability to send up $100B/year finance on time.
They are only impatient not because of emotions. They observe that a system that was developed in 1992 to address a slow-paced crisis can no longer be applied to the fast emergency of 2025.
Natural Rights Led Governance (NRLG): Making Good What Rio Left, but Left Incomplete
Natural Rights-Led Governance (NRLG) provides the structural correction that Rio has evaded: a) Nature as a law-rights holder, not a resource; b) Indigenous peoples as co-governors, not consultants; c) Compulsory ecological and rights-based control, not voluntary reporting; d) Direct financing to custodians, not bureaucratic leakage; e) Accountability enforceable in law, not conditional on political comfort. NRLG is not the alternative to the vision of Rio, it is the long-deserved update that will turn the arguments of Rio into reality.
The Verdict: COP30 Moves forward, yet Rio Business Unfinished Haunts it
The advancement of COP30 with its stronger fossil language, more comprehensible measurements of adaptation, new pressure on financing is a reality that is inadequate. It advances the paperwork. It is yet to develop the power shift that would safeguard nature or humanity. As long as rights are not yet non-negotiable, the Rio-to-COP30 trip will be a tale of great promises, half-fulfilled and increasingly dangerous.
What the World Must Do Now
Include nature and Indigenous rights in the COP document; construct governance based on custodianship and co-decision; a system of NCQG to deliver finance to communities; no longer voluntary but obligatory commitments reflecting the final Advisory of ICJ assuming integration of natural rights as a prelude to human rights; and use NRLG as the backbone to all future multilateral climate action.
Rio taught us what to do. COP30 is an education about the consequences of procrastinating. The 30-year period is not going to forgive the errors made in the previous 30. The world should stop being a promise and change to power, negotiate to justice, Rio dream of NRLG deliveries. The deadline is not 2050. It is now.
Rio had sworn justice and rights, but COP30 taught a crueler lesson: the world made promises and not protection. Emission increased, ecosystems failed, money is not spent on fulfilling the finances and Indigenous guardians, to the last remaining forests, continue to get less than 1% of climate money and nearly no say. It is not a policy gap but a failure of rights and governance. If the leaders of the world do not recalibrate climate architecture based on natural rights, since co-decision of the Indigenous and on binding commitments rather than a voluntary one, COP30 will be remembered as the moment when the system was exposed as limiting, not as the moment when the system was fixed. This is no longer a promising problem it is a power problem. And the deadline is not 2050. It is now.
M Zakir Hossain Khan is the Chief Executive at Change Initiative, a Dhaka based think-tank, Observer of Climate Investment Fund (CIF); Architect and Proponent of Natural Rights Led Governance (NRLG).
Brazilian Indigenous leader and environmentalist Cacique Raoni Metuktire (center) during the closing ceremony of the Peoples’ Summit in Belem on November 16, 2025. Credit: Tanka Dhakal/IPS
BELÉM, Brazil, Nov 17 2025 (IPS) – Brazilian Indigenous leader and environmentalist Cacique Raoni Metuktire appealed for support for Indigenous peoples and their land. From the podium of the Peoples’ Summit, Cacique Raoni warned negotiators at the UN climate conference in Belém that without recognizing Indigenous peoples’ land rights, there will be no climate justice.
“It is getting warmer and warmer. And a big change is going on with the earth. Air is harder to breathe; this is only the beginning,” he said on Sunday while addressing representatives of the global climate justice movement at the Peoples’ Summit. “If we don’t act now, there will be very big consequences for everyone.”
Indigenous people and civil activists from around the world took part in the Peoples’ Summit. Credit: Tanka Dhakal/IPS
While Belém city is hosting world leaders, government officials, scientists, policymakers, activists, and more than 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists to decide the future course of global climate action, the Peoples’ Summit gathered frontline voices.
About nine kilometers from the COP30 venue, at the grounds of the Universidade Federal do Pará (UFPA-Federal University of Pará), activists engaged in diverse dialogue for five days and issued the “Declaration of the Peoples’ Summit Towards COP30” in the presence of Indigenous leaders like Raoni, which was handed over to the COP presidency.
The Declaration states that the capitalist mode of production is the main cause of the growing climate crisis. It claims that today’s environmental problems are “a consequence of the relations of production, circulation, and disposal of goods, under the logic and domination of financial capital and large capitalist corporations.” It demands the participation and leadership of people in constructing climate solutions, recognizing ancestral knowledge.
Artists performing indigenous folklore during the closing event of the Peoples’ summit. Credit: Tanka Dhakal/IPS
Sebastián Ordoñez Muñoz, associated with War on Want, a UK-based organization and part of the political commission of the Peoples’ Summit, said the political declaration constructed through the summit process reflects peoples’ demands and proposals. “It has our solutions, people’s solutions,” he said. He explained that crafting the declaration was a convergence of diverse voices, uniting around clarity on what needs to happen to address the climate crisis.
“It is an expression of the autonomy of people’s movements coming together, converging to develop clear proposals that are based on the real solutions happening on the ground-in the territories, in the forests, in the seas, in the rivers, and so on,” he added. “It’s important to hand it over because we need to make sure that our voices are represented there [at COP]. Any space that we have inside the COP has always been through struggle.”
As a space for community members to come together and deliver the public’s point of view, Peoples’ Summits have been organized as parallel conferences of the COP. It did not take place during the last three COPs. But in Brazil, civil society is actively making its case.
The Peoples’ Summit attracted a large number of Indigenous leaders and community members, whereas at COP their access is limited. Credit: Tanka Dhakal/IPS
“We need to continue making our voices heard there, but also not to beg-to state that we have the solutions and that we must be listened to, because none of these answers, none of these solutions are possible without the communities themselves,” Ordoñez Muñoz told IPS News from the Peoples’ Summit ground. “I think it’s a statement and a road map. Where do we go from here?”
Unlike COP30, the Peoples’ Summit attracted diverse groups of community members and civil society leaders. The COP venue follows the process of negotiations, while the summit emphasizes collaboration to find solutions and celebrate unity. It blends discussion with Indigenous folklore and music to bring stories of community.
“If you go into the COP summit, it’s so stale. It’s so sterile. It’s so monotonous. So homogeneous. So corporate,” Ordoñez Muñoz said. “Over here, what we have is the complete opposite. We have such diversity-differences in voice, vocabulary, language, and struggles.”
He added that the COP process is moving in one direction, unjust in nature, and reproducing many of the dynamics that led to the crisis in the first place.
“Over here, we’re all moving together. We have unity.”
This feature is published with the support of Open Society Foundations.
On a humid morning in August 2025, two small environmental groups in Panama — Centro de Incidencia Ambiental and Adopta Bosque Panamá — found out through social media that they were being sued for “slander” and “crimes against the national economy.” Their offence? Criticising a port project on the country’s Pacific coast.
A few days later, across the border in Costa Rica, two environmental content creators woke up to find their bank accounts frozen and salaries withheld. Their “crime” was posting videos about a tourism project they said was damaging Playa Panamá’s fragile coastline.
In both cases, the message was straightforward: speak out, and you’ll pay for it.
These are part of a growing global trend that is particularly ominous as climate activists, Indigenous defenders, and journalists push their demands upon the upcoming COP30 negotiations. The battle to protect the planet increasingly comes with an additional cost: defending yourself in court.
SLAPPs: Lawsuits Designed to Scare, Not Win
The acronym sounds almost trivial — SLAPP — but its impact is anything but. SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, a term coined decades ago to describe legal actions intended not to win on merit but to intimidate, exhaust, and silence those who speak out on matters of public interest.
According to Transparency International, “SLAPPs are also known as frivolous lawsuits or gag lawsuits, as they silence journalists, activists, whistleblowers, NGOs and anyone who brings facts to light in the public interest.”
These are not just lawsuits; they are in fact strategy. They don’t need to win, they just need to drain your time, your money, and your hope.
The claimants are usually powerful, ranging from corporations, politicians, or investors.
In the Costa Rican case, the company linked to the Playa Panama tourism project did not even allege material harm. Yet the court imposed “precautionary embargoes,” blocking credit cards, freezing wages, even restricting property rights, punishing through the process.
In Panama, the developers of the Puerto Barú port project filed a criminal complaint against environmental NGOs who had challenged the project’s environmental impact assessment before the Supreme Court. Those challenges are still pending. Rather than waiting for the judiciary’s ruling, the company launched a separate legal attack, accusing those NGOs of harming the national economy.
Observers call it “judicial intimidation.” The case triggered several alerts across the EU SEE Early Warning Mechanism, warning of a “chilling effect on civic participation.”
‘Unfortunately, in Panama, judicial harassment of journalists and activists by politicians and businesspeople is already common practice because criminal law allows it. Reform is needed in relation to so-called crimes against honour and the grounds for seizure of assets. International organisations such as the Inter-American Press Association have warned about this,’ says Olga de Obaldía, executive director of Transparency International – Panama Chapter, a national member of the EU SEE network.
In Costa Rica, the embargoes imposed on content creators Juan Bautista Alfaro and Javier Adelfang sparked outrage. Within days, 72 organisations and more than 3,000 individuals — from academics to Indigenous leaders — signed an open letter condemning the action as “an assault on public interest advocacy.”
The backlash worked: members of the Frente Amplio Party introduced a bill to restrict the use of preventive embargoes in cases involving public interest speech.
But for those already targeted, the damage – emotional, financial and reputational – has already been done.
We do not just see SLAPPs deployed in Latin America. Examples of SLAPPs as a means of lawfare by the rich and powerful have been around for a long time across the globe.
In Thailand, Thammakaset sued several members of the NGO Fortify Rights and other activists for denouncing abusive working conditions. Still today content posted by communities or NGOs, or even comments under local government posts, are often picked up and turned into criminal defamation cases.
Despite the existence of anti-SLAPP provisions in the Criminal Procedure Code, experiences indicate that they are largely ineffective. The constant threat of facing litigation based on online content disrupts CSO work and chills free speech.
Climate Activism Under Pressure
As the world heads toward another global climate summit in Brazil – where journalist Amanda Miranda faces a SLAPP by government officials for uncovering corruption – we face a paradox: while governments make promises about protecting the environment, environmental defenders are being prosecuted for holding them accountable.
Brazil’s baseline snapshot on an enabling environment also highlights a related trend: environmental defenders are frequently framed as “anti-development,” a narrative used to delegitimise their work and undermine public support. SLAPPs reinforce this strategy. Beyond draining time and resources, these lawsuits inflict reputational harm, serving as tools in broader campaigns to discredit and silence critics.
According to research from the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, the highest number of SLAPPs – almost half of them – took place in Latin America, followed by Asia and the Pacific (25%), Europe & Central Asia (18%), Africa (8.5%), and North America (9%). Nearly three-quarters of cases were brought in countries in the Global South and 63% of cases involved criminal charges. Furthermore, most individuals and groups facing SLAPPs raised concerns about projects in four sectors: mining, agriculture and livestock, logging and lumber, and finally palm oil.
In an International Center for Non-Profit law – ICNL – study on over 80 cases of SLAPPs across the Global South, out of them “91% were brought by private companies or company officials(…) 41% brought by mining companies and (…) 34% brought by companies associated with agriculture.”
According to data from the CASE Coalition, SLAPP cases have risen sharply in recent years: from 570 cases in 2022 to over 820 in 2023 in Europe alone. Around half of those targeted climate, land, and labor rights defenders. Fossil fuel and extractive industries remain the most frequent initiators.
It is important to remember that those numbers under-represent the extent of SLAPP use, they are based on reported legal cases and can’t include the many cases in which the mere threat of a lawsuit was enough to silence before filing a complaint
The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre has documented that companies linked to mining, tourism, and large infrastructure projects are increasingly using SLAPPs to paralyse critics ahead of international events like COP, when scrutiny intensifies.
The danger of SLAPPs lies in their quietness. They happen behind closed doors, in legal language, far from the marches and hashtags. The trials often do not even end up in lawsuits. Yet their effect is profound. Every frozen bank account, every unpaid legal fee, every public apology extracted under duress weakens the collective courage needed to hold power to account.
Across regions, SLAPPs follow the same playbook: identify outspoken defenders, sue them on vague charges like “defamation” or “economic harm”, drag the process out for years, win by exhausting, not convincing.
Of course, the specific tactics vary by legal context. In some countries, certain charges carry strategic advantages. For example, in the Philippines, authorities frequently rely on serious, non-bailable allegations — including charges like illegal possession of firearms — to keep activists detained for extended periods.
The Philippines remains the most dangerous country in Asia for land and environmental defenders with frequent attacks linked to mining, agribusiness, and water projects.
Authorities have also used fabricated firearms and explosives charges to target activists, journalists, and community leaders, often accompanied by asset freezes, surveillance, and prolonged detention. In these settings, SLAPPs can “weaponise” the criminal justice system itself to remove critics from public life entirely.
SLAPPs have become the invisible front of the climate struggle, a slow-motion suppression campaign that rarely makes headlines.
But implementation remains uncertain. The Vice-President of the European Commission, Vera Jourova, called the Directive “Daphne’s law,” in memory of the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed in 2017 while she was the victim of numerous legal proceedings against her, and whose tragic story helped raise awareness of the issue.
Beyond the European context, similar efforts to counter SLAPPs have emerged elsewhere, for example in Colombia with the Guerra v. Ruiz-Navarro case. This case illustrates the importance of investigating sexual violence and abuse of power, recognising it as a matter of public interest that warrants protection. This ruling sets a strong precedent against the misuse of courts to silence the press by influential figures and underscores that defending victims and informing the public are acts of defending human rights.
In Indonesia, another country where SLAPPs are being deployed, civil society groups continue to advocate for stronger legal protections, including legislation to protect from SLAPPs. A small step forward came in September 2024, when the Ministry of Environment and Forestry issued Regulation No. 10/2024, on legal protection for environmental defenders.
“While the Ministry of Environment and Forestry Regulation No. 10/2024 represents an initial step toward safeguarding environmental defenders, civil society organisations expect its effective implementation, coupled with broader anti-SLAPP legislation, to ensure comprehensive protection against retaliatory lawsuits and foster a secure environment for public participation in environmental governance,” says Intan Kusumaning Tiyas of INFID, national civil society platform in Indonesia.
These include stronger legal safeguards by enacting robust national anti-SLAPP laws that allow for early case dismissal, ensure defendants can recover legal costs, and penalise those who file abusive lawsuits.
Setting up solidarity and support through regional and global networks can quickly mobilise legal assistance, mental health support, and emergency funding for those targeted.
Finally, actions around visibility and accountability are needed to bring SLAPPs into the public eye and raise awareness. SLAPPs need to be framed not as ordinary legal conflicts, but as violations of human rights that weaken an enabling environment for civil society, democratic participation and obstruct climate justice.
At COP30, negotiators will debate carbon credits and transition funds. But the real test of climate commitment may lie in whether states protect the people defending rivers, forests, and coastlines from powerful interests.
Civil society hopes to push a bold message into COP30 discussions: defending the environment requires defending those who defend it and supporting an enabling environment for civil society.
This article was written with the support of the Forus team, particularly Lena Muhs, and members of the EU SEE network.
Indigenous activists continue to fight for a seat at the table in solving climate change, asking for self-determination and financial agency.
Activists demand loss and damage reparations outside the hall where the COP29 negotiators were concluding their negotiations. Credit: UN Climate Change/Kiara Worth
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 17 2025 (IPS) – As climate-induced disasters continue to devastate the Global South, nations are steadily mounting pressure at the United Nations for wealthier countries to deliver on long-promised climate reparations through the Loss and Damage Fund. For Indigenous peoples, whose territories are often the most ecologically intact yet most damaged by climate change, these negotiations define survival, sovereignty and recognition as rights-holders in global climate governance.
After the fund’s operationalization at the 29th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29) in Baku last fall, developing countries say that the pledges so far—approximately USD 741 million—fall drastically short of the trillions needed to recover from climate devastation.
This low number is acutely felt in Indigenous communities, whose local economies rely on thriving ecosystems.
“A lot of rich biodiversity, carbon sinks and the most preserved parts of the world are within indigenous territories,” said Paul Belisario, Global Coordinator for the Secretariat of the International Indigenous Peoples Movement for Self-Determination and Liberation (IPMSDL), in an interview with IPS. “Without recognizing Indigenous people’s right to take care of it, to govern it and to live in it so that their traditional knowledge will flourish, we cannot fully address the climate crisis.”
UN Secretary-General António Guterres echoed this sentiment in Baku, saying, “The creation of the Loss and Damage Fund is a victory for developing countries, for multilateralism and for justice. But its initial capitalization of USD 700 million doesn’t come close to righting the wrong inflicted on the vulnerable.”
These “wrongs,” Indigenous leaders argue, must include the exclusion of traditional and tribal knowledge in decision-making. In light of pushback to make climate action a legal responsibility rather than a political agreement, many are hopeful that COP30 will yield a more successful negotiation for adequate compensation.
The call for action is led by coalition blocs including the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and G77, an alliance of developing countries with China as its primary political and financial supporter. Both alliances represent the countries most vulnerable to climate-related natural disasters. G77 was particularly vocal during COP29, where their rejection of the deal was backed by a number of climate and civil society organizations who criticized the negotiating text for giving developed countries too much leeway to shirk their climate finance obligations.
For Indigenous groups, this criticism stems from concerns that funding will not successfully reach their communities due to bureaucracy or geographical and political isolation.
Secretary-General António Guterres meets with André Aranha Corrêa do Lago, President-designate of COP 30, the 2025 UN Climate Change Conference, which will be held in Belém, Brazil. Credit: UN Photo
Janene Yazzie, director of policy and advocacy at the NDN Collective, spoke about the importance of Indigenous involvement in funding distributions, saying, “What we’re advocating for is to ensure that these mechanisms… are accessible to Indigenous Peoples, uphold the rights of Indigenous Peoples, and can be utilized towards solutions and responses that are designed and prioritized by Indigenous Peoples.”
Last year, countries eventually settled on mobilizing USD 300 billion annually by 2035 to developing countries for climate finance—far below the USD 1 trillion experts say is the minimum for effective mitigation and adaptation. The financial commitment is voluntary, meaning that countries can withdraw without consequence and no protections exist to ensure the money is distributed with regard for Indigenous governance systems.
However, a recent International Court of Justice (ICJ) report has created new legal pathways. The court placed stringent obligations on states to prevent significant climate harm and tackle climate change, stating that failure to do so triggers legal responsibility. Scientific evidence can link emissions to specific countries, allowing those affected by climate change to seek legal action, which could include getting money back, restoring land, improving infrastructure, or receiving compensation for financial losses.
Indigenous activists at COP29. Credit: UN Climate Change/Kiara Worth
This legal opinion opens new pathways for seeking restitution—not only in money but also in land recovery, infrastructure for adaptation, and guarantees of political participation.
This legal shift comes at a crucial time. In April 2025, thousands of Indigenous Brazilians marched in the capital ahead of COP30 in Belém, demanding land rights and decision-making influence. Meanwhile, the National Organization of the Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon (OPIAC) also issued a statement about the summit for Deforestation of the Amazon. They outline an action plan to end deforestation, strengthen land rights and phase out oil and gas exploration.
After indigenous groups were denied a co-presidency for COP30, Conference President André Corrêa do Lago pledged to establish a “Circle of Indigenous Leadership” within the conference. Many leaders found the arrangement insufficient—the FSC Indigenous Foundation called instead for “co-governance models where Indigenous Peoples are not just consulted but are leading and shaping climate action.”
Indigenous people make their message clear during COP29. Credit: UN Climate Change/Lara Murillo
Other groups were more explicitly critical. The Indigenous Climate Action co-authored a statement at the end of COP29 saying, “There is nothing to celebrate here today… While we urgently need direct and equitable access to climate finance for adaptation, mitigation and loss and damage across all seven socio-cultural regions… we reject the financial colonization that comes from loans and any other financial mechanisms that perpetuate indebtedness of nations that have contributed the least to climate change yet bear the brunt of its tragedies.”
Belisario frames the funding question as a matter of justice rather than charity.
“This funding is not just corporate social responsibility or compensation,” he told IPS. “This is historical justice.”
However, without Indigenous influence in the distribution of money from the Loss and Damage Fund, it remains unclear how effective this aid will be in combating climate change based on Indigenous knowledge and science. Many activists advocate for more localized approaches to climate action.
Belisario acknowledges the limitations of international negotiations.
“It’s been a running joke that we will negotiate until COP100, and we might not have that long. What we would really like to get out of COP30 is to meet many communities to discuss the common problems and make them realize that this COP is just a part of how we would like to solve our climate crisis,” he said. “We really believe that more radical ways to enact accountability and responsibility will start with movements in people’s own countries, in their own localities.”
As the FSC Indigenous Foundation concluded, “Indigenous Peoples must lead the design, management, and oversight of financial mechanisms that affect their lands, lives, and futures. Climate justice will only be possible when Indigenous Peoples are recognized as rights-holders and partners in decision-making.”
Gereltuya Bayanmukh speaks about her motivations to become involved in climate activism. Credit: Leo Galduh/IPS
ULAANBAATAR, Jul 9 2025 (IPS) – Youth activist Gereltuya Bayanmukh still reflects on the events in her formative years that inspired her to become a climate activist. When she was a child, she would visit her grandparents in a village 20 km to the south of the border between Russia and Mongolia.
She was happy to see each of the nomadic people in their traditional gers power up their settlements using solar power.
“I remember seeing my neighbors own a solar panel and a battery to accumulate power. They were turning on lights and watching TV using solar power. Nowadays, they even have fridges,” she says.
She thought the herders made a conscious choice about their lifestyles and understood the need of the hour in the face of the looming climate crisis. That is to say, switch to renewable energy and power a safer future.
“This was the reason I became a climate activist,” she says.
No matter how unwitting her notion about her community achieving self-sufficiency with renewable energy was, the findings about what entailed this system revealed something else.
“I later learned that the solar panels were partially subsidized by the government as a part of the nationwide government to equip 100,000 nomadic households with solar energy,” she says.
What she perceived turned out to be a nationwide renewable energy scheme by the Mongolian government for the nomadic herders.
The scheme, called the National 100,000 Solar Ger [Yurt] Electricity Program, introduced in 2000, provided herders with portable photovoltaic solar home systems that complement their traditional nomadic lifestyle.
At least 30 percent of Mongolia’s population comprises nomadic herders. Before 2000, when the scheme came into effect, herders had limited or no access to modern electricity. By 2005, the government managed to equip over 30,000 herder families through funds from several donor nations.
However, the full-scale electrification effort for herders was beginning to stagnate. The 2006 midterm custom audit performance report by the Standing Committee on Environment, Food and Agriculture of the Parliament carried sobering revelations.
The scheme in its initial phase was poorly managed: there was no control over the distribution process, with some units delivered to local areas landing in the hands of non-residents violating the contract, failure to deliver the targeted number of generators, misappropriation of the program funds, and inability to repay the loans within the contractual period.
However, in the third phase–2006-2012–the program was able to expand its implementation with the support of several international donors, including the World Bank.
“At first, I thought how great that we started out with the renewable energy transition, giving access to renewable energy at a lower price. And it was even in 1999. That was when I was just four years old. I believe we were on our way to building a future like this. Like we visualized here. The future of green nomadism. However, my optimism faded when I read the midterm audit report and discovered that the program had been (just as) poorly managed as the first part. It was only with the assistance of the international partners that the program finished well,” says Gereltuya.
Gereltuya is the co-founder and board director of her NGO, Green Dot Climate, which focuses on empowering youth as climate activists and raising awareness and practical skills for climate action.
One of the mottoes of her NGO is to change the youth’s and Mongolian people’s attitudes and practices around climate change issues as well as solutions.
In the past year, the NGO has been successful in reaching over half a million Mongolians, including nomads, helping them become more environmentally conscious and empowering the youth to be climate activists—makers and doers themselves.
“In the past year, we have reached over half a million Mongolians. Our Green Dot youth community has logged more than 100,000 individual climate actions, saving over 700,000 kg of CO₂, 25 liters of water, and 80,000 kilowatt-hours of energy. Next, we will aim for a million collective actions, a stronger community and a minimum of 50 collaborative climate projects in Mongolia,” Gereltuya said during her delegate speech at the One Young World Summit, a global event that brings in young leaders from around the world to discuss global issues, in 2023.
The state of Mongolia’s nomads in the current energy system
Mongolia as a country heavily relies on coal for energy production, which contributes to 90 percent of its energy production. Coming to just transition, the government aims for a 30 percent renewable energy share by 2030 of its installed capacity, as enshrined in the State Policy on Energy 2015-2030. Mongolia is also committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 22.7 percent by 2030 while the energy sector accounts for 44.78 percent of the total emissions as of 2020 according to Mongolia’s Second Biennial Update Report.
Gereltuya’s NGO, Green Dot Climate, has been mapping Mongolia’s energy systems for the past few years now. As of 2024, Mongolia’s electricity sector relies on CHP [combined heat and power] plants and imports from Russia and China to meet its electricity demands.
Only 7 percent of its total installed energy comes from renewable sources, with the Central Energy System accounting for over 80 percent of the total electricity demand. “We found that about 200,000 households remain unaccounted for in the centralized energy grid calculations. These are likely the same nomadic families or their later generations who likely adopted their first solar systems at least two decades ago,” she explains.
Although Mongolia has promised to increase its renewable energy share to 30 percent by 2030, it is still far behind in the race to achieve its target.
In the 2020 Nationally Determined Contribution [NDC] submission to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC], Mongolia set its mitigation target to “a 22.7% reduction in total national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030,” which can increase to a 27.2 percent reduction if conditional mitigation measures such as the carbon capture and storage and waste-to-energy technology are implemented. Further, if “actions and measures to remove GHG emissions by forest are determined”, the total mitigation target would rise to 44.9 percent by 2030.
“Instead of focusing on decarbonizing its coal-based economy, Mongolia shifted to focus on carbon-sink and sequestration processes to reduce its emissions. This suggests that despite our many promises, policies and past efforts to mainstream renewables, we may still end up with business as usual. A case of bad governance, stagnation and vicious cycles,” she says.
Recommendations for Mongolia’s energy sector
Gereltuya’s NGO has been actively engaged in the survey ‘Earth Month 2025’ that is aimed at collecting specific recommendations from the youth voices in the country for the NDC 3.0 that the government is expected to submit in COP30. She shares a few recommendations that she believes can help improve the country’s energy systems.
On the demand side, households not connected to the grid should update and improve their solar home systems, especially now that the solutions are much cheaper and more efficient.
According to the 2024 World Bank ‘Mongolia Country Climate and Development Report,’ the average residential tariff for electricity in Mongolia was estimated to be 40 percent below cost recovery, and subsidies were worth 3.5 percent of GDP in 2022. The lack of cost recovery created hurdles in efforts to enhance energy efficiency and investment in renewable energy. In the context, those connected to the grid should pay more for their energy use to reflect the real cost of energy production and support renewable energy feed-in tariffs. There should be responsible voting of citizens demanding better policies and implementations and not trading in policies for short-term gains.
On the supply side, there is a need to stop new fossil fuel projects immediately: there are at least six such projects, including one international project under Mongolia’s current Energy Revival Policy, underway.
Secondly, Mongolia’s electricity infrastructure needs significant improvement. As the UNDP recently highlighted, Mongolia’s infrastructure is aging, inefficient and heavily subsidized.
Thirdly, fully utilize installed energy capacity, which is at only 30 percent, largely owing to the infrastructure inefficiency.
Fourth is to increase the overall renewable energy capacity five times to meet demand, which means 15 times the energy made in full demand. And phase out coal-based power, replacing it with fully renewable energy.
