BELÉM, Brazil - When I was 18, taking the bus from my neighbourhood in Realengo, Rio de Janeiro, to university, I noticed the stark absence of trees and green spaces. What should have been ordinary public spaces, parks where children could play or families could come together, didn’t exist. It was a sign that some lives, some communities are systematically excluded from decisions about the world they live in.
I, like many young people in my community, refused to accept it. We fought to transform an abandoned army munitions factory into Parque Realengo Susana Naspolini, a place where culture, community and nature intersect. That pulled me into climate activism and eventually led to my appointment as the Presidency Youth Champion for COP30.
My path has shown me that real change happens when people have the power to act, when their voices shape the policies that affect their lives.
Right now, our societies are being pulled apart by polarisation and distrust. This division is stopping us from taking the actions that everyone knows are necessary. The climate crisis doesn’t just demand new technologies but a new kind of politics that can bring people together across divides and give everyone a real voice in our shared future. Facing denial and disinformation will take both courage and strategy.
At the heart of today’s political crisis lies a deep sense of exclusion. Decisions about our lives, our communities and our planet are too often made behind closed doors by officials who are too often disconnected from our lived experiences. Many people feel that politics happens to them, not with them. Everyone deserves a voice. Only through deeper democracy and true inclusion can we move fast enough and put justice at the heart of the climate transition.
Countless governments and communities around the world have already shown what this looks like in practice. In 2020, the OECD published ‘Catching the Deliberative Wave’, a report documenting how citizen deliberation has helped tackle some of the hardest challenges we face. But it barely scratched the surface, overlooking many of the deep participatory traditions across the Global South.
In Brazil, participatory budgeting gives millions a direct say in how public funds are spent, building trust in governments. In Indonesia, the practice of Gotong Royong (mutual cooperation) and Bali’s Subak irrigation cooperatives have sustained social and ecological harmony for centuries. Across Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, the Baraza system brings communities together to hold leaders to account in public forums. And today, youth-led initiatives are connecting local solutions to global climate goals through the Mutirão das Juventudes, a platform that maps projects from young people around the world and ensures voices feed into the broader COP30 Agenda.
These approaches share a deeper understanding of politics, one not built on competition or consensus alone, but on mutual respect and deep listening. When people truly hear one another across differences, new possibilities emerge. For example, the Citizens’ Assembly on abortion in Ireland mobilised participants who began with opposing views (anti-abortion and pro-choice) and ended up expressing profound respect, even affection, for one another. That process paved the way for historic legislation protecting women’s rights.
COP30, the people’s COP, is our opportunity to bring this spirit to the global stage. It must be remembered for launching a new kind of politics, one that deliberately brings together those who disagree, not to win arguments, but to understand each other’s realities and constraints, in order to build together a transition that works not only for the greater good but also for each one of us.
This is exactly the goal of the Citizens’ Track, just launched by the COP30 Presidency to connect thousands of local community assemblies worldwide to a permanent Global Citizens’ Assembly. The first track cycle aims to engage over 100,000 participants in 30 countries, with the initial findings to be presented next year at the Bonn Climate Conference.
The decisions ahead of us are not simple: How do we extract vital minerals for the green transition without destroying ecosystems or dividing communities? How do we protect forests while supporting the people who live within them? How do we care for workers in high-emitting sectors when their livelihoods are at risk? How do we bring justice, human rights and culture to the center of climate action?
Answering these questions requires more than expert reports or top-down policies, it requires listening to the people most affected. That is the spirit of the Global Mutirão, a concept from Indigenous peoples of Brazil and put forward by the COP30 presidency: connecting local communities, their concerns and their willingness to act to global decision makers and climate goals.
One example of this approach, endorsed by Brazil, is the Global Citizens’ Assembly, which brings together both local and global assemblies where people can deliberate and share their perspectives, but also take action and request others to act.
In the words of Ana Toni, the CEO of COP30, “there is no sustainable transition without democracy”. That is why Brazil is committed to making COP30 the People’s COP, and to bring back citizen participation to the core of climate negotiations. Let’s now make sure that we pursue that vision beyond Belém.
Some politicians say we’re ‘losing the argument’ on climate. But that’s simply wrong. Strong and stable majorities across the world support more ambitious climate action. Over 80% of citizens globally say they support stronger measures, and 69% claim they would contribute 1% of their income to address the crisis.
The problem isn’t public apathy but political disconnection. Citizens’ assemblies can help to bridge that gap. That’s why I believe that they could become COP30’s most enduring legacy: to stop simply fighting for the planet and start reimagining how humanity decides its future, together.
Marcele Oliveira is the COP30 Presidency Youth Climate Champion and is leading the mobilisation of children, teenagers and youth in the Global Mutirão against Climate Change. Director of Perifalab, she is a cultural producer and has been working since 2019 to fight environmental racism in Realengo, in Rio de Janeiro's West Zone. Founder of Coalizão o Clima é de Mudança, she was part of the Realengo 2030 Agenda and the Youth Climate Negotiators program.
