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Explore our work with partners, globally and locally, to tackle social and economic injustice using a human rights lens.
São Paulo Strategy Meeting Brought Together Climate, Gender, and Justice Agendas
On 6 November, the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, together with the British Consulate in São Paulo and with the support of the Chevening Alumni Programme Fund (CAPF), GFLAC, Fundación Avina, the Climate & Care Initiative, and the Global Alliance for Care (GAC) convened a strategic meeting at the Consulate to look ahead to COP30 in Belém, Brazil.
The aim was to bring movements, agendas, and regions into conversation, using COP30 as a shared anchor, and to ensure that climate negotiations no longer treat people, care, and democracy as an afterthought.
“The climate crisis doesn’t just hit the planet in the abstract,” said Camila B. Maia, Executive Director for GI-ESCR, during the discussion. “It hits people and economies directly. COP30 is hard to read politically, it’s fragmented, heavily influenced by corporate interests, and difficult to navigate, but that is precisely why we need to understand it better and act together as a movement.”
Gender, Care and Just Transitions: From “Vulnerable Sectors” to Structural Actors
As Gina Cortés Valderrama, co-Focal Point of the UNFCCC Women and Gender Constituency, explained, their work began from a simple question: how could they participate more effectively in a space that is neither anti-capitalist nor feminist, but where many of their struggles are at stake?
“We want to stop treating people as ‘vulnerable sectors’ and start recognising them as part of the structure of society. Our priorities are clear: adaptation, just transition, and the Gender Action Plan. We want care to be at the centre of these discussions”.
For Cortés Valderrama, this also means resisting the assumption that “gender issues” would naturally be handled by feminist organisations alone. The group insisted that the needs of people with disabilities, rural and campesino communities, and other historically marginalised groups had to be visible in government programmes and climate policies, not as an add-on, but as a core requirement.
Participants at the meeting also recognised that the process was often abstract and hostile, and that COP30 would not be an exception. Precisely for that reason, building collective strategies and mutual support is essential.
From a “Finance COP” to an “Adaptation COP”
The meeting also served to share lessons and concerns from previous climate summits.
Nicole Makowski, Senior Associate in International Climate Finance at GFLAC, recalled that the last COP29 had been widely known as “the finance COP”. There, governments agreed on a New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on climate finance. But the quantum set was insufficient, remained largely aspirational, and included modalities which are incompatible with the needs of the developing world. At the same time, participants noted that it would be hard to have a serious political conversation in Belém about financing outside of the Baku to Belém Roadmap, a recently launched bilateral declaration drafted by the successive Azerbaijani and Brazilian COP presidencies, unpacking initiatives and proposals to raise USD 1.3 trillion on climate finance, as mandated in the NCQG.
Looking ahead to COP30, Thales Machado, Advisor for the Defence of Socio-environmental Rights at Conectas Human Rights, observed that if COP29 had been the “finance COP”, COP30 was already being framed as the “adaptation COP”. Adaptation is moving to the centre of the agenda, with debates structured around this. “We are in a moment of trade-offs,” Thales explained. “We need indicators that are not overly abstract, that allow comparison and accountability, and that carry a human rights lens across the board. It’s not just about having 100 indicators; it’s about having 100 good ones.”
Care as a Political Entry Point for Climate Finance
Another key theme of the meeting was how to shift the narrative on climate finance itself.
At COP29 in Azerbaijan, Ezequiel Steuermann, Programme Officer on Economic Justice at GI-ECSR, observed a familiar pattern: even when civil society was well-coordinated, if decision-makers were not effectively targeted, impact remained limited. The dynamic often is one where prominent civil society voices speak in front of authorities who face no real consequences for agreeing upon unambitous climate finance commitments once they return home. Even more so, the lack of a clear political mandate from capital hinders the ability of negotiators to define the bold financing reforms needed to effectively tackle the climate emergency and meet the rights-based imperatives it so urgently demands.
“We need new narratives that change the political cost of doing nothing,” Ezequiel argued. “One powerful entry point can be the care agenda: how the presence – or absence – of financing shapes care systems and everyday life. If we can show how climate finance decisions affect who cares, who is cared for, and under what conditions, and if we can create active mobilisation and political pressure domestically on that basis, it becomes much harder for decision-makers to ignore these issues and keep on going with business as usual.”
This connects directly with the concerns raised by Maggie Rochi, Programme Officer on Climate Justice at GI-ESCR, around the Gender Action Plan. The draft renewal of the GAP includes care, but the challenge this year will be to ensure it remains there. Additionally, civil society is fighting for the establishment of the Belém Action Plan, which could serve as a platform to advance a caring society. For Maggie Rochi and others, care needs to be explicitly integrated into just transitions, rather than being left on the margins.
A Strategy Session on the Road to Belém
Through this initiative, GI-ESCR and its partners aimed to create a space for organisations working on various yet interconnected agendas – including climate finance, care, gender equality, public services, and economic and social rights – to collaborate on exploring potential synergies at COP30 and beyond.
Many participants were passing through São Paulo en route to Belém. The meeting provided an opportunity to pause, align, and design strategies that transcended movements and borders, prioritising care and human rights at the centre of bridging disciplinary divides and developing strategies for active, compelling, and ultimately more impactful advocacy.
