COP30 won’t fix climate crisis unless it empowers Latin America’s civil society

All states engaging in international efforts to fight the climate crisis have complete governmental control over their territories. That’s the wrongful assumption often made by COP and other global governance organisations – a mistake that has worrying consequences.

Take, for example, the 2015 Paris Agreement, which world leaders signed at COP21, the 21st annual conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The treaty sets out a framework for a global carbon market to help limit global heating to a maximum of 2℃ above pre-industrial levels.

The agreement is built on the basis that national governments control their territory and its natural resources – and crucially that they can prevent deforestation and illegal mining. This state-centric view does not reflect the on-the-ground reality in many countries, including the host of this year’s COP30: Brazil.

Governments in regions such as the Amazon frequently struggle to effectively manage their territories, with power fragmented and change driven by independent local actors, often through violence and illegal activities.

In the Brazilian Amazon, for example, British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian researcher and Indigenous leader Bruno Pereira were murdered in 2022 by a criminal organization that is allegedly involved in poaching and illegal fishing in the area.

Similarly, in the Colombian Amazon, the armed group Estado Mayor Central (EMC), which is one of the new ex-FARC dissident groups, has exploited its control over illegal deforestation as a bargaining tool with the authorities. And in Peru, illegal mining has persisted with a significant impact on ecosystems and key water sources, deeply affecting human health in the area as well.

The UN’s assumption that governments have control of their territory is understandable. National sovereignty is among the founding principles of such organisations. At its most fundamental level, it assumes a national government has a monopoly on the use of force and violence within its territory and has control over its natural resources.

From their inception, global governance structures have struggled to balance and negotiate between respecting the concept of sovereignty and achievements in the realm of international cooperation. This is relevant for the climate crisis; a global and transboundary problem.

While these problems will not be resolved through one-size-fits-all proposals, COP could make a start by being more sensitive to the realities of different regions and the actors struggling for power within them.

One way to do so would be by engaging more deeply with local civil society actors – non-governmental organisations and institutions with diverse cultural, religious, and special interest backgrounds that represent the interests and will of citizens.

Power to the people?

From the mass mobilisations of Fridays for Future to Indigenous-led resistance against extractivism, grassroots activists around the world have succeeded in forcing climate issues onto political agendas where more institutional approaches have failed.

In this way, civil society actors worldwide — scientific organisations, youth movements, Indigenous communities, and environmental NGOs — have been at the forefront of pushing governments toward more ambitious and transformative climate policies.

Yet the UNFCCC continues to sideline the role of civil society empowerment in climate governance. If it is serious about climate action, it must recognise that governments are not the only – or even the best – drivers of urgent climate policies.

In a talk at COP29 in Azerbaijan in November, Swedish entrepreneur Ingmar Rentzhog, the CEO of We Don’t Have Time, a social media platform for climate action, attempted to show policymakers where to focus climate mitigation efforts.

Rentzhog let go of a bunch of helium-filled balloons representing carbon dioxide, which floated up to the conference hall’s ceiling. There, he said, they were far too difficult for anybody to get down – much like the carbon dioxide emissions that will remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years.

He then let go of another bunch of balloons, this time representing methane emissions. These did not contain helium, and so fell to the stage. Unlike carbon dioxide, Rentzhog explained, methane emissions last only 12 years and stay near the earth’s surface.

Popping the balloons that lay scattered on the stage, Rentzhog pointed out it is easier to reduce methane emissions than attempt to get the ‘carbon dioxide’ balloons down from the ceiling or emissions out of the atmosphere.

The analogy was simple and effective, translating scientific and technical knowledge into digestible messages for policymakers and corporate leaders. But who decides what knowledge is prioritised and who has the political capital to act on it?

While persuasive and useful, Rentzhog’s talk represented a dominant conception of politics among many speakers and negotiators at COP, one that prioritises messages for political elites over structural empowerment for grassroots actors.

Politics can be defined as the potential to impact the community in which we live through the process of collective legitimisation of ideas. Through politics, these ideas spread within our communities and transform into values, ideals, ideologies, public policies, or identities. Engaging in politics requires political capital, that is the tangible and intangible resources by which an actor obtains collective validation to mobilise others.

In other words, civil society leaders and political actors seeking to build legitimacy for adaptive changes in their countries and localities need resources that go beyond financial aid to help them with their goals. They require the skills, knowledge, networks and economic means to engage in local disputes over democratic decisions shaping climate actions.

The UNFCCC’s Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE) framework – established under Article 6 of the UNFCCC and Article 12 of the Paris Agreement – is an effort to address this. It recognises that education, awareness and participation are essential for achieving climate goals by fostering a society-wide response to the crisis.

It acknowledges civil society’s unique position to put pressure on governments and empower grassroots actors to demand accountability from authorities. But it fails to understand the real issue; the problem is not a lack of engagement by civil society organisations, but a failure to transfer real influence to them.

Civil society is expected to be educated and engaged, but not in a way that disrupts, contests, or reshapes governments’ policies from below

The ACE framework does not effectively transfer power to grassroots actors because it does not equip them with the political capital needed to challenge the status quo. It keeps them in a passive, advisory role, confined to side events and consultations rather than decision-making spaces.

In doing so, it reinforces the COP’s elitist conception of politics — one where the primary goal of the conferences is to translate scientific and technical expertise into policy recommendations for authorities. It frames the public and civil society leaders as an audience, not political agents. Civil society is expected to be educated and engaged, but only in a way that supports policy adoption by governments — not in a way that disrupts, contests, or reshapes those policies from below.

Grassroots actors, Indigenous communities, labour unions, and environmental justice movements are not just consumers of climate information; they are frontline political actors, whose legitimacy in shaping climate policy should be recognised. Yet the UNFCCC and COP do not provide them with the institutional leverage, financial resources, or direct access to decision-making processes that would allow them to act as true counterweights to government and corporate inertia.

Consequences in Latin America

As measures to empower domestic grassroots civil society allies remain insufficient, the climate struggle is experiencing two key setbacks in Latin America: the increasing traction of climate denialism and rising threats to environmental advocates.

While climate scepticism remains a minority view in Latin America, it is gaining ground among powerful actors, who are reshaping national climate policies.

In Brazil, former president Jair Bolsonaro attacked climate science, firing researchers and suppressing deforestation data. Individuals resisting deforestation also faced arrests, physical attacks, and online intimidation. In Argentina, incumbent president Javier Milei dismissed climate change as a “socialist invention”, withdrew from COP29, and dismantled environmental institutions, while repressing Indigenous groups opposing land dispossession and criminalizing climate activism.

The El Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele, has weaponised state security forces against environmental defenders, using arbitrary detention and intimidation to silence critics of extractivist policies​. And our research suggests that right-wing factions in Chile and Colombia are fostering distrust in global climate agreements, weakening their government’s Paris Agreement commitments.

Far-right leaders and corporations in Latin America have resources, networks and direct access to power. They can influence climate policy and suppress opposition through harassment, surveillance and criminalisation of civil society actors, who are forced to bear escalating violence.

The region is the deadliest for climate activism, with alarming levels of murders of environmental defenders. Yet ACE provides them with no legal or financial support or concrete protections or tools to hold governments and corporations accountable.

Participation and education do not translate into power when civil society remains politically sidelined. ACE’s approach must shift to prioritise equipping grassroots actors with the skills, resources, and institutional footholds to engage as equal stakeholders in climate governance. And global frameworks must evolve to empower civil society and local communities, integrating their insights and capabilities into decision-making.

Anything less will mean the fight for climate justice in Latin America and the rest of the Global South continues to be an uphill battle. Only by bridging the gap between elite policy and on-the-ground realities can we build a truly inclusive system capable of meeting the urgent challenges of our warming world.