by Laura Restrepo Alameda
Every year, when climate negotiation season arrives, the same uncomfortable question resurfaces: “Why do you go?”, “What’s the point of traveling to a COP if the world is still burning?” And behind that question, there is sometimes a silent judgment: that those of us who participate there are far from our territories, far from coherence, far from “real” activism.
But what is almost never seen is the other truth: that entering a COP also means entering a territory of moral dispute. A place where those who still imagine futures of dignity (and other possible worlds) coexist —in constant tension— with those who defend pasts that no longer sustain life. We don’t go for glamour or protocol. We go because stepping back would be surrendering the playing field. We go because absence has never been a strategy for justice. We go because, as the Earth Charter says in its preamble: “we are citizens of different nations and of one world at the same time, where the local and global are linked.” And this meeting cannot be built through silence.
At COP30, that struggle became visible again. While governments negotiated commas and verbs, civil society walked the hallways with a clarity that needs no microphones: reminding that 1.5°C is not a number but the ethical boundary between a livable planet and a broken one. Reminding that there is no just transition if justice is left out of the text. Reminding that we didn’t come to ask for permission but to claim a right: the right to a future.
It’s true: there were painful blockages, especially the refusal —once again— to assume the political commitment to move away from fossil fuels. There were stalled negotiations confirming that geopolitics still prevails over science, and that some countries prefer to bet on their present power rather than on the life to come. But there were also glimpses of the future: the inclusion of children in key decisions, progress on the mechanism for a just transition, and the strengthening —from Latin America— of an ambitious ethic that sustains life and can no longer be erased from multilateralism.
Activism inside the COPs is not comfortable. It’s not meant to be. It is an act of presence that disrupts, an exercise in imperfect coherence, a constant reminder that even in the most worn-out arenas, a seed of transformation can sprout. The Earth Charter teaches us that hope is a verb practiced through action, and that the path toward justice requires both protest in the streets and resistance inside negotiation rooms.
Leaving COP30 leaves a taste of partial victory and total urgency. Because what we achieved was the fruit of a full year of collective struggle. And what we did not achieve —especially the lack of willingness to envision a near future without fossil fuels, and the lack of transparency in the process— is a reminder that ethics still does not guide climate policy.
What comes next is bigger than any conference:
rebuilding trust,
expanding solidarity,
weaving just transitions from the territories,
and continuing to inhabit all spaces where the fate of life is decided.
Being at the COP does not make us less activists. It makes us persistent.
It makes us stubborn for life.
It makes us part of that “global partnership” the Earth Charter envisioned 25 years ago and which, in the face of planetary emergency, we need more urgently than ever.
Because if we learned anything in Belém, it’s that ethics is also defended by walking —and that every step, inside or outside the COP, can be a way of caring for the world.
Laura Restrepo Alameda is an educator and a young leader of the Earth Charter International. She currently serves as Advocacy Officer at the Climate Action Network Latin America (CANLA), where she drives bi-regional processes on just transition, climate justice, and cooperation between Europe and Latin America, accompanying multilateral spaces. She is co-founder and national co-facilitator of the Colombian Platform for Children and Youth, an organization that advises LCOY Colombia and promotes the participation of girls, adolescents, and young people in climate action. She is also part of the regional front of World’s Youth for Climate Justice, where she advocates for the recognition of climate change as a human rights issue.
