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It took Samoan activist Tunaimati’a Jacob Netzler three flights and a bus ride over the course of 24 hours to reach the big climate conference. The plan was to join nearly 200 other campaigners from around 40 countries to discuss the fate of the planet.
But Netzler wasn’t traveling to Baku, Azerbaijan, for COP29. Instead, he headed to Oaxaca, Mexico, for the Global Meeting for Climate and Life that organizers dubbed an “anti-COP.” The gathering would strike a decidedly different tone than its more formal United Nations counterpart. Luxury hotels and private jets gave way to dormitories and composting toilets that reflected the activists’ aim to create a more egalitarian space.
“It really brought together people that wouldn’t normally be engaged in the formal COP process,” said Netzler, the Pacífic campaign associate for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative. “It brought those in the frontline communities.”
Last week’s event was a byproduct of the sentiment that, after almost 30 years, COPs are doing too little to address runaway greenhouse gas emissions. Even the former head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which governs the annual meeting, has called the whirlwind events — which attracts everyone from heads of states to oil industry lobbyists — “distracting.”
Activists gathered in Oaxaca also rallied around a shared feeling of exclusion from the international confab, and concerns that the solutions that come out of it are harming communities. Anti-COP aimed to provide “a space to articulate our struggles and propose concrete alternatives [to the status quo].” The five-day gathering ended with a final statement that outlined the movement’s next steps — including plans for increased coordination amongst participants and a proposal to send caravans of activists to next year’s COP in Brazil.
One primary goal of the event was to foster understanding between climate and land-defense movements that have historically worked in relatively separate spheres.
“There is a lot of hesitation from the Indigenous groups to collaborate with........