How do we keep care and solidarity at the heart of COP30?

As the COP process grows, so too does its complexity. Each year, more activists, negotiators, civil society groups, and private stakeholders join the negotiations, making the space more dynamic—but also more difficult to navigate and build lasting power. How do we maintain a culture of collaboration and solidarity when the scale is expanding so rapidly? How do we ensure that the local realities most critical to understanding the climate crisis remain at the center of the conversation? And how do we build power in ways that are people-centered, equitable, and effective at this scale?

These questions are especially pressing as we look ahead to COP30 in Belém, Brazil, where nearly 90,000 people are expected to gather in November 2025 for two weeks of negotiations. However, what happens there is shaped by the many dialogues, activations, forums, and negotiations that take place throughout the year. These pre-COP spaces create the foundation for the high-level decisions we see in November. 

One such space is the UNFCCC’s annual summer meetings – the Subsidiary Bodies (SBs) – in Bonn, Germany. These summer negotiations helped set the agenda for COP, and this year, Icarus Complex partnered with the Entertainment + Culture Pavilion to host the Culture x Climate Forum at the LVR-LandesMuseum. The Forum brought together artists, storytellers, activists, and negotiators to highlight the role of culture in shaping climate action. Supported by the City of Bonn as part of the Summer of Change festival, it extended climate conversations beyond policy rooms and into the public imagination.

It was within this space that Icarus Complex launched our new series, On the Dynamics of Scale, to interrogate what “scale” means in the context of the climate crisis. Our session explored how power is built from the ground up – through trust, solidarity, and care in community organizing – and how these forms of power ripple outward to influence institutional change. The workshop was facilitated by Yatou Sallah, Digital Editor at Icarus Complex, alongside speakers: Farhana Yamin, an internationally celebrated climate lawyer, activist, and key architect of the Paris Agreement; and Pimpichcha Sillivan-Tailyour, a climate justice organizer with the Bonn Climate Camp, a collective that creates space for grassroots resistance and solidarity around the UNFCCC negotiations. 

Participants – including youth negotiators, UNFCCC representatives, grassroots organizers, and policy analysts – brought layered perspectives on how power is constructed and contested in climate spaces. Together we asked: What does community organizing mean to you? Which forms of power are most essential, and how do we build them? What role does solidarity play in movement building, and how does it translate into meaningful action?

Farhana reflected that, over time, her understanding of organizing has shifted, saying,

“I’ve come to see organizing as less about driving people toward a fixed goal and more about creating space for emergence. It means letting people move at their own pace, really listening to what they need, and holding those needs with care.”

For Pim, organizing is about staying grounded in shared purpose. As she explained,

“For me, organizing means rooting ourselves in each other and in our shared purpose—staying grounded rather than being swayed by external pressures like visibility or branding. At the Bonn Climate Camp, that has meant holding one another accountable and building a community of care that extends into the wider climate movement.”

Participants emphasized that through community organizing enables organisations to build power grounded in relationships and solidarity, and when sustained, this power reverberates across scales in climate negotiations. 

For many, localized disruptive action becomes a vital form of power, especially when institutions fail to deliver justice. Pim noted that the Bonn Climate Camp often plays a crucial role in enabling this kind of activism, explaining, “During the SB’s most of the protests and actions that we’ve seen have been supported by us in terms of resources, getting the right people matched up, getting transport of resources to the location, getting registration to the German government for like the space so activists are safe.”

Addressing grief, burnout, and wellbeing was also recognized as integral to sustaining activism. There was an intimate discussion about the pain and exhaustion that often accompany climate work, and participants highlighted the need for spaces where people can share emotions openly rather than being forced into silence and productivity.

“For negotiators – many of whom carry grief, rage, and exhaustion while representing their communities – culture, art, and creativity can provide a sense of home far from home, and a way to hold those emotions beyond just the technical demands of negotiation.”

Similarly, alternative spaces such as camps, cultural forums, and artistic interventions were seen as essential to sustaining collective imagination and resilience. Farhana, who has become increasingly focused on supporting arts and cultural activations at climate negotiation forums, described how culture can support even those within formal processes, noting that, “For negotiators – many of whom carry grief, rage, and exhaustion while representing their communities – culture, art, and creativity can provide a sense of home far from home, and a way to hold those emotions beyond just the technical demands of negotiation.”

Across the session’s surveys and group discussions, one consensus emerged: narrative power is the most essential form of power for successful climate action. This insight resonates deeply with the work we do at Icarus Complex – recognizing that reporting itself contributes to a form of narrative power, reflecting local realities in ways that shift perspectives and language on a global scale. Each local story contributes to the broader picture of urgent action and justice.

So what does this mean for COP30 and for culture?

It means recognizing that while the COP process is defined by scale, true power often begins small – through relationships of care, solidarity, and narrative. Culture is the connective tissue that allows local struggles to resonate globally, ensuring that voices of justice and resilience are not drowned out by the machinery of high scale negotiation. As Belém prepares to host COP30, culture can act as a bridge: bringing frontline knowledge into global spaces, sustaining solidarity across geographies, and challenging top-down defaults with people-centered approaches.

If we are to meet the challenges of this moment, we must ensure that the dynamics of scale do not eclipse the beating heart of climate action: communities building power in solidarity with one another, and stories shaping the futures we need.