Permission vs. Pressure - What COP30 Taught Me About Structural Change

By Pearl Mitchell, 2025 Global Voices COP30 Fellow

Entering the 30th Conference of the Parties (COP) as a marine scientist and first-time participant in a global multilateral space, I carried both hope and scepticism. Multilateral forums like COP are often presented as the peak of collective climate action, yet they remain deeply shaped by colonial systems of governance, power, and extraction. That contrast became tangible before I even arrived. On the flight to Belém, government officials prepared for negotiations in business class, while young people in ‘Save Amazonia’ shirts sat behind them, travelling with fewer resources but equal stakes in the outcome. Coming from regional NSW and working in coastal systems where climate impacts are immediate and tangible, I’ve long felt disconnected from decisions made in distant forums. COP30 didn’t reconcile that gap. Instead, it forced me to confront my own position within systems I critique and to realise that discomfort is precisely where the value of being present lies.

For me, the visibility and influence of Indigenous voices at COP30 became the clearest example of how disruption operates in multilateral systems. Indigenous communities have long articulated the impacts of climate change on their lands, waters, and livelihoods. What felt different at COP30 was how these voices could no longer be easily sidelined. As the second largest UN climate summit ever and the first since COP26 held in a country that permits public protest, civil society pressure was visible throughout. Daily protests culminated in a “great people’s march” on the middle Saturday. This sustained pressure contributed to the recognition of four new Indigenous territories in Brazil and aligned with the framing of COP30 as part of the “Global Mutirão,” which emphasised a shift from negotiation to implementation. While these gains didn’t dismantle COP’s structural inequities (only 360 Indigenous groups from the Amazon accessed the main negotiating “blue zone,” compared to 1,600 fossil fuel-linked delegates), they did disrupt them. The contrast clarified a central lesson for me that meaningful change within colonial systems does not emerge through permission, but through sustained pressure.

Witnessing this disruption prompted deeper reflection on how knowledge is valued in multilateral spaces. As a scientist, I’m trained to produce evidence, yet COP showed how poorly science translates into policy. Scientific information is abundant, but the language of negotiations is rarely accessible to communities or reflective of lived experience. Evidence alone doesn’t drive decisions. What mattered most in the rooms I observed was not just what could be proven, but what could be communicated in ways that aligned with values, culture, and place. This realisation has shaped how I want to design my research to consider communication, community context, and policy relevance alongside rigour.

This shift in understanding was reinforced by the concept of confluence, established by Brazilian activist Nêgo Bispo. At COP, the framing of science as operating within disciplinary and ecological silos, structured around hypothesis, experiment, and result, dissolved. The melting of glaciers in Nepal, warming in the Mediterranean, and changing dynamics of the Southern Ocean are not isolated events, but interconnected processes circulating across systems. My research on kelp restoration in Port Phillip Bay is embedded within these global dynamics, not separate from them.

Seen through this lens, marine science emerged as both a technical and cultural practice. Multilateral negotiations take place in rooms defined by borders and jurisdictions, yet the ocean recognises none of these lines. Water underpins food systems, community, story, and identity. Across Amazonia, the Pacific, and coastal Australia, struggles differ in context but share patterns of dispossession, ecological disruption, and resistance. These shared realities, best articulated by Indigenous and community leaders, felt more aligned with the complexity of the climate crisis than many formal texts.

I do not expect those historically excluded from colonial systems to feel optimistic about the COP, but I can offer my own shift in perspective. I witnessed how community underpins global mobilisation, reinforcing for me that science is not separate from diplomacy, but one thread in a broader fabric of knowledge and responsibility. One phrase stayed with me: nobody has to do everything, but everybody has to do something. In a space as overwhelming as COP, this reframed my engagement as a collective responsibility across roles, disciplines, and communities. Fragile and contested as the future of multilateral climate governance may be, the growing presence of young people willing to critically engage with the systems they inherit offers real potential for broader perspectives, deeper accountability, and stronger solidarity. That possibility is why these spaces still matter.

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The views and opinions expressed by Global Voices Fellows do not necessarily reflect those of the organisation or its staff.