BELEM, Brazil — COP30 is now in its second week, and climate activists are sounding the alarm over the growing number of fossil fuel lobbyists attending the negotiations.

For environmental activist Ana Celestial, COP30 has become a space dominated by states presenting themselves as providers of real climate solutions. But 30 years after the first COP and a decade after the Paris Agreement was signed, Celestial says the climate crisis has not been addressed. 

“Yung mga iba’t ibang isyu ng iba’t ibang grupo dito ay iisa lang ang ugat: imperyalismo. Ang ugat niyan ay pangangamkam, pagkagahaman, at yung kagustuhang kontrolin ang lahat ng resources ng mundo,” (The root cause of all the issues raised here is imperialism. The root cause is resource grabbing, greed and the desire to control the world’s resources) Celestial says.

For Celestial and her group, hope does not lie in the hands of world leaders negotiating at COP, but in the hands of the people who are tired of hearing empty promises and false solutions.

(Report by Anne Marxze D. Umil)

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