On this page:
- Why COP30 Matters
- Movement Partner Priorities
- Key Global Greengrants Fund and Partner Events
- Additional Resources
The 30th UN Climate Change Conference (COP30), to be held in Belém, Brazil, marks a pivotal moment in the global response to the climate crisis. COP30 will bring together world leaders and negotiators from the member states (or Parties) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to further global progress, with business leaders, young people, climate scientists, Indigenous Peoples, and civil society sharing insights and best practices to strengthen global, collective, and inclusive climate action. Since the first Conference of the Parties (COP) convened in 1995, these annual summits have served as the primary forum for negotiating international climate agreements—most notably the Paris Agreement of 2015, which set the goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C. At COP30, nations are expected to submit updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) by September, outlining stronger climate targets for the coming decade.
The agenda also includes advancing the “Baku–Belém roadmap” to mobilize US$1.3 trillion in annual climate finance, operationalizing the Global Goal on Adaptation with measurable progress indicators, and scaling funding for resilience in vulnerable communities. In addition, COP30 will focus on implementing the Just Transition Work Programme to ensure equity, social inclusion, and workers’ protection in the shift from fossil fuels, as well as enacting a new Gender Action Plan to elevate women’s leadership and participation in climate decision-making.
Supporting grassroots participation in COP30 is a crucial step in a much longer journey—a journey toward redistributing power in climate governance, fostering intersectional advocacy, and establishing alliances that will endure beyond any single negotiation.
Following the momentum of the 3rd Global Nyéléni Forum in Sri Lanka in September, where hundreds of farmers, fishers, Indigenous leaders, feminists, workers, and funders from 102 countries gathered, COP30, coined the Indigenous People’s COP, presents a rare opportunity to continue linking social movements across continents that share common struggles.
Global Greengrants Fund is proud to support nearly 50 partners from across Africa, Latin America, and Asia in attending COP30—not as observers, but as protagonists in shaping what a just transition truly means. We are also providing funding support to several key movement spaces and infrastructure initiatives during COP30, including the People’s Summit, People’s COP, People’s Tribunal Against Ecocide, the Global South House, and the Socio-Environmental Journalism Hub. These spaces are groundbreaking and yet a testament to decades of social movement organizing and action. Our decades of support to grassroots movements deepen networks, relationships, and impact, making transformation possible.
Through grants that support the participation of social movements, Global Greengrants is fostering exchanges between African and Afro-Brazilian environmental defenders, Indigenous leaders, and women and youth-led organizations working at the intersections of land, gender, and justice. A just energy transition is central to the work of many partners who will be in attendance. We believe that the transnational connections emerging in these spaces are transformative—the very fabric from which social movements arise.
Their participation is part of a deliberate, long-arc strategy to build people power, strengthen transnational solidarity, and ensure that grassroots voices influence global climate decision-making far beyond a single COP. Global Greengrants Fund’s COP30 engagement is a coordinated movement-building and narrative-change strategy, centered on grassroots leadership, feminist and Indigenous perspectives, and solidarity from the Global South.
Follow Global Greengrants Fund on LinkedIn throughout the month for real-time updates from Belém.
Global Greengrants Fund’s movement partners are tracking and participating in the following conversations at COP30:
- Fair, Accessible Climate Finance: Movements demanding that financial flows be restructured to benefit local communities and adaptation projects on the ground directly.
- Phase-out of Fossil Fuels and Just Energy Transition: Movements advocating for the complete elimination of fossil fuel production and burning, which are responsible for the majority of global emissions, while also showing how social movements can achieve an energy model based on justice.
- Forest, Amazon Protection and Biodiversity Protection: Funding mechanisms to protect forest and biodiversity based on justice—including gender equity and respect and implementation of human rights—and to provide direct funding for Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and other groups affected by climate change and biodiversity loss.
- Respect of Indigenous Peoples’ Rights and Territorial Governance: Movements advocating for formal demarcation of traditional territories, Free, Prior, and Informed Consent implementation, and an end to extractive industries, deforestation, and formal demarcation of traditional territories, integrating ancestral knowledge into official climate action plans.
- Climate Reparations/Loss and Damage: Movements advocate that the countries and corporations most responsible for the climate crisis (from the Global North and the fossil fuel industry) should pay for the damage they have caused.
- Gender Inclusion: Movements focused on a new, robust Gender Action Plan (GAP), demanding dedicated, accessible climate finance for women, ensuring equal participation and leadership in decision-making, and integrating gender perspectives across all climate policies.
- Disability Inclusion: Movements are demanding dedicated, accessible climate solutions for people with disabilities, ensuring equal participation and leadership in decision-making, and integrating disability justice across all climate policies.
- Social Movement Participation: Frontline communities and civil society are participating to be heard and to influence decision-makers towards more ambitious and just outcomes, and connecting the People’s COP and People’s Summit agendas with UNFCCC negotiations.
Social Participation in Action: GGF Initiatives Shaping COP30 in Belém:
Global Greengrants Fund + Key Partner Events
People’s COP Reception – Building connections and sharing stories
November 10 | 6:00pm | People’s COP, Travessa Piedade, 426, Reduto
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Climate Policy for All: Advancing LGBTQ+ Inclusive and Gender-Transformative Climate Action
A Roots Rising event in partnership with Out for Sustainability
November 11 | 3-4:30pm | Blue Zone, Side Event Room 5
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People’s Summit
November 12-16 | 7:00pm | UFPA, Complexo Vadião, Travessa Igarapé Tucunduba, Guamá
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Global South House Launch
November 12 | 9-1:00pm | CANTO Coworking, Edifício Manoel Pinto da Silva, in front of the Praça da República
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The People’s Tribunal Against Ecocide from People’s COP
November 13-14 | All Day | Ministério Público Federal, Rua Domingos Marreiros, 690 – Umarizal
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COP30 & Defenders at the Center of the Climate Discussions
Media roundtable at SocioEnvironmental Journalism House
November 13 | 5-6:30pm | Casa de Jornalismo Socioambiental, R. Arcipreste Manoel Teodoro, 864 – Batista Campos
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Global Greengrants Movement Power Celebration
November 17 | 7:30pm | CANTO Coworking, Edifício Manoel Pinto da Silva, in front of the Praça da República
RSVP + More Info
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From Roots to Futures: African and Afro-descendant Paths to Climate Justice at COP30 and beyond
In partnership with Geledés and People’s COP
November 18 | 4:30-6:00pm | People’s COP, Travessa Piedade, 426, Reduto – Sala
RSVP + More Info
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Creating Bonds: Environmental Defenders from the Amazon, Africa, and Across the World
November 19 | 8:30am | People’s COP, Travessa Piedade, 426, Reduto –External area
RSVP + More Info
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From the Territory to the Climate: Community-Led and Financed Nature-Based Solutions
November 19 | 4-6:00pm | Blue Zone, Room 6
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Ken Saro-Wiwa, 30 Years Later: Reflections on Justice and Energy at COP30
Media roundtable at SocioEnvironmental Journalism House, in partnership with OilWatch International
November 20 | 10:00am | Casa de Jornalismo Socioambiental, R. Arcipreste Manoel Teodoro, 864 – Batista Campos
*Note: All calendar details subject to change. Last updated: November 11, 2025
For more information, please email cristiane@globalgreengrants.org.uk.
Additional Resources:
Read our COP30 Brief for more details on our COP30 strategy and the movements we are supporting on the ground in Belém.
Read Investing in the long arc: Philanthropy must back grassroots movements at COP30 (and beyond), a new op-ed for Alliance Magazine by B de Gersigny, VP of External Relations at Global Greengrants Fund, to learn more about our strategic engagement at COP30.
Read two articles that Global Greengrants Fund had the honor of supporting the creation of during COP30:
- People’s Charter delivered to the COP president after mobilization gathering thousands in Belém
- Environmental Defenders from the Global South Show Why Climate Justice Starts with Funding – highlights the need for funding environmental defenders in Brazil, across Africa, and globally during COP30.
- Women Environmental Defenders from the Amazon and Africa Draw Parallels from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis at COP30 – Juma Xipaia and Joanita Babirye, two leaders from the Global South, report on violence, funding barriers, and the erasure of women in climate policy—and advocate for COP30 to recognize those who support real solutions in the territories.
- False Climate Solutions Advance in the Amazon as COP30 Discusses the Planet’s Future – an investigation sounding an urgent alarm: “false climate solutions” are advancing across the Amazon, from carbon-market schemes to mega-projects that displace communities while being marketed as “green.”
Follow Global Greengrants Fund on LinkedIn throughout the month for real-time updates from Belém.