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By Mercy Mbevi
The African Coalition of Communities Responsive to Climate Change (ACCRCC) has joined global civil society organizations at a powerful side event at COP30 in Belem, Brazil, to denounce the troubling trend and deepening corporate capture of the United Nations climate negotiations.
Speakers warned that fossil fuel companies, financial institutions, and carbon market actors are tightening their grip on the COP processes—undermining real climate justice and threatening the rights and livelihoods of millions of vulnerable communities.
The meeting, attended by community leaders, human rights advocates, and the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Climate Change, Prof. Elisa Morgera, in Brazil, emphasized the failure of corporate-led solutions to address climate change and historical injustices.
Participants called for the redistribution of power from corporations to communities and for the creation of multilateral spaces where local and Indigenous knowledge drives the transition to sustainable systems.
“We are witnessing the hijacking of climate negotiations by the same corporate actors responsible for the crisis,” said Patricia Wattimena, Coordinator of the Environment and ESCR Working Group. “The carbon market and so-called ‘nature-based’ solutions are colonial scams, extractive systems repackaged in green language. It’s time to reclaim our narratives and put communities at the center.”
Prof. Morgera’s statement underscored that human rights must anchor all climate action. She urged the Global North to cooperate in supporting community-led initiatives and for fossil fuel companies to finance the closure and clean-up of industrial sites, compensate affected communities, and invest in real loss and damage solutions.
The African Coalition of Communities Responsive to Climate Change (ACCRCC) echoed these calls, noting that Africa’s grassroots communities, which are the least responsible for emissions, bear the greatest impacts of climate change.
“African communities have the solutions,” said Henry Neondo, a policy advocacy and influencing advisor at the ACCRCC. “Agroecology, local energy innovations, and traditional conservation systems offer real pathways to sustainability. But these are being ignored while corporations dominate the agenda. We call for a conflict-of-interest policy to keep polluters out of negotiations,” he noted.
Speakers, including Martha Grisales of Comité Ambiental en Defensa de la Vida and Anna Celestial from the Asia Pacific region, further emphasized the importance of accountability, reparations, and feminist collective care. They denounced the hypocrisy of trillions spent on military expansion while only modest funds are allocated for loss and damage.
The meeting concluded with a joint Pledge for Human Rights-Based Climate Action, co-developed with the Brazilian Special Envoy on Just Transition and Human Rights. The pledge seeks to connect movements, amplify local knowledge, and channel resources toward community-led solutions.
Dr. Rosalid Nkirote, the Executive Director of the ACCRCC, urged COP30 delegates to prioritize people over profit, justice over corporate interests, and community voices over elite capture, noting that it is the people who suffer mental anguish when they see their homes, crops, livestock, and other livelihoods swept away by floods or wiped out by drought.
“The path to climate justice begins where extractive power ends,” she affirmed.
