Like an alarm siren, activists brought the voice of the world inside Cop 25 in Madrid. The results from leaders did not come, but their cries and messages were stronger than ever, even for those who were not there.
"We have changed the face of Cop." And nothing could be more true. The voice of people, activists, indigenous peoples and young people entered the United Nations climate conference in Madrid as never before.
Their presence at Cop 25 might have seemed obvious in the historical moment we find ourselves in, defined by the urgency to act against the climate crisis — a cry sounded by science and by people all over the world — yet the opposite is true. Each one of them fought to be there where world leaders met to discuss the future — theirs, ours — earning a presence that made the climate conference, and its disastrous outcomes, feel less abstract and remote.
Some travelled across the world to be there and make their voices heard, some journeyed for days through the forest, some skipped school and exams, some risked arrest. Yet the will was stronger, with the awareness that that presence was necessary even for those who did not have the same privilege of being there.
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It was a responsibility — both to carry the voice of those most affected by the climate crisis and of those who do not (yet) experience it on their own skin, and to remind the political representatives of the countries present of their duty. That is, to set ambitious and concrete targets to reduce CO2 emissions and limit global warming, because with current commitments the temperature is set to rise by more than 3 degrees against the 1.5 needed to avoid disastrous consequences. But those numbers in between are not merely figures to be agreed upon at a table: they are people dying, species going extinct, ecosystems disappearing.
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For this very reason their cry, in the form of protests, songs, shouts and banners, was like a constant alarm siren within the walls of the conference halls, a reminder of the delays and ineffectiveness of the negotiations. So much so that it became a nuisance, to the point that during some protests outside the plenary, demonstrators were made to leave the venue and entrances were blocked to observers for the entire day.
But that nuisance was and is necessary, because it cries out not only the urgency, but also the violence, the oppression, the ordeals faced by those who fight every day to protect the Earth — people and communities for whom Cop 25 represented their last chance.
And so they came from every corner of the world: from Russia, where those who strike for the climate are arrested, from Australia, which is choking in smoke from the wildfires, from the Amazon, which is being exploited and whose indigenous communities are being evicted, from Chile, which is risi