News stories by Joyce Chimbi, page 2

BELÉM, Brazil, November 18 (IPS) - “I am the founder of the ‘I Lead Climate Action Initiative,’ which is a Pan-African movement that carries out grassroots-based climate action to address the climate crisis in Africa. We advocate for the restoration of Lake Chad, the world’s largest environmental crisis through research and engagement,” says Adenike Titilope Oladosu.

BELÉM, Brazil, November 17 (IPS) - COP30 negotiations are midway. So far, talks about historic agreements are moving forward, backward, or stalling, depending on who you ask. The most pressing issues on the table are finances, adaptation, fossil fuel phase-outs, and climate justice.

BELÉM, Brazil, November 17 (IPS) - Mutirão first entered the global climate discourse in Ambassador André Corrêa do Lago’s first letter to the world, which was sent in March 2025 as part of his COP30 presidency.

BELÉM, Brazil, November 14 (IPS) - An open letter by more than 1,000 organizations from 106 countries, including trade unions, Indigenous leaders, feminist and youth movements, Afro-descendants, peasant groups, environmental advocates, disability networks and community organizations, to all States Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is calling for a people-centered Just Transition.

BELÉM, Brazil, November 14 (IPS) - A young woman at COP30 speaks about retracing her father’s footsteps. At only 16, her father and her grandfather were among the first families displaced by an unfolding climatic crisis of erratic weather and worsening climate conditions that goes on to date from their ancestral village in Sundarbans. Nearly 60 years later, she is on a mission to reclaim her ancestral lands.

BELÉM, Brazil, November 13 (IPS) - Binaifer Nowrojee, a human rights lawyer and the president of the Open Society Foundations (OSF), has lauded the Brazilian government “for significant steps taken to breathe life into the climate commitments.”

BELÉM, Brazil, November 12 (IPS) - In a departure from the past two COPs, in Dubai and Azerbaijan, there have been increasingly intense demonstrations from activists at the COP30 venue in Belém, the capital of the northern Brazilian state of Pará.

BELÉM, Brazil, November 11 (IPS) - “Devastating climate damages are happening already, from Hurricane Melissa hitting the Caribbean, Super Typhoons smashing Vietnam and the Philippines to a tornado ripping through Southern Brazil,” said Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change, on the eve of COP30 in the Amazonian City of Belém. “This is why COP must achieve three things: It must send a clear signal: nations are fully on board for climate cooperation—that means agreeing to strong outcomes on all the key issues.”

NAIROBI, October 14 (IPS) - The Gambia’s lead negotiator on mitigation believes that COP30 presents a unique opportunity to rebalance global climate leadership.

NAIROBI, October 8 (IPS) - Once a year, the COP presidency or the role held by the Minister of Environment from the host government at a Conference of the Parties (COP) meeting, sets out on an ambitious, year-long journey in hopes of delivering the climate deal of a lifetime.