Watch GLF Climate on demand, and follow our live coverage of COP30.

It’s been 33 years since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro – the event that gave birth to the three so-called Rio Conventions on climate, land and biodiversity – and a decade since the Paris Agreement was signed.

But try as we may, we’re no closer to solving the climate crisis today. In fact, we might be further away than ever, with global heating now fast approaching 1.5 degrees Celsius and on track for 2.6 degrees by century’s end.

So, as world leaders and delegates return to Brazil for the COP30 climate summit in Belém, the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) organized its own side event to showcase and demand recognition for the real climate action already being taken by communities around the world.

GLF Climate 2025: A New Vision for Earth gathered over 10,000 people online from 178 countries and hundreds more in person at COP30. Here are five important lessons we learned.

Less talk, more action

After years of frustratingly slow progress, patience with UN climate conferences is wearing thin. Some civil society groups have given up on these negotiations entirely.

“It is utterly absurd that we are still negotiating ways to die more slowly when we know how to keep ourselves alive and well, happy, fed and secure,” said Tainá Marajoara, an Indigenous chef and activist from the Aruã Marajoara people.

“They have refused for 30 years to concretely discuss implementation,” added Sunday Geofrey, coordinator of SUHUCAM and GLFx Yaoundé in Cameroon.

“Is this the world I’ll hand over to my children – a world where people make beautiful speeches, forgetting that those on the front line of climate change go to bed hungry, without food, without jobs?”

As the negotiations continue behind closed doors in Belém, communities around the world are devising and implementing their own climate solutions day by day – albeit without receiving the recognition and support that they need.

“This is a solution that works: restoration,” Geofrey continued: “restoration that enriches our soil, creates jobs, improves livelihoods, attains community resilience and helps communities adapt to climate change.”

“The world has given me the opportunity to sit in rooms like this, but the world has refused to give me resources to go help those communities.”

Not a seat at the table, but a new table

The UN and other international organizations publicly champion Indigenous Peoples, young people, women and other groups disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis. But are they really listening?

“There’s a lot of performance – whether it’s talking about Indigenous Peoples, young people, marginalized people – because all we do in spaces like this is talk,” said Pakistani-American activist Ayisha Siddiqa, founder and executive director of the Future Generations Tribunal.

“The way that we change it is we start financing those groups. The climate crisis needs so much more finance, especially Indigenous communities, who are living in extreme poverty.”

Ethical reasons aside, there are also strong economic arguments for financing local action: Indigenous and other traditional communities are applying generations’ worth of knowledge to tackle multiple global crises at the same time – something the Rio Conventions have failed to do.

“If you look at the local level, these agendas are actually not divided,” said Marielos Peña Claros, a professor of tropical forest ecology at Wageningen University.

“Local communities and Indigenous Peoples depend on biodiversity. Carbon is a consequence of that: because they’re caring for the forest, carbon stocks are protected and managed.”

For many Indigenous activists, what’s needed isn’t simply to be consulted but to work with scientists to improve and scale up their own solutions.

“We are here to teach scientists our knowledge of the forest so that they can confirm it and we can take direct action to combat climate change,” said Carl Nduzi Gakran, president of the Instituto Zág and co-coordinator of GLFx Zág Xokleng.

“I recommend that Indigenous Peoples always be at the center of climate debate and action so that we can bring nature-based solutions and also receive more investment in our local organizations, because what we do is global.”

Feed climate action

Agriculture has been a hot topic at COP30, which has appointed a special envoy for family farming for the first time ever.

After all, agrifood systems are responsible for around one-third of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, much of it through land use change – more specifically, the destruction of forests to make room for farmland.

That means any transformation to fix our food systems must also tackle the issues of deforestation and forest degradation.

Mariana Pereira, a program manager at Solidaridad, pointed out that nearly a third of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon takes place within rural settlements.

“This is a tragedy, and it’s the result of a journey of disorganized occupation and land reform that didn’t happen,” she said, adding that only 18 percent of the country’s family farmers are receiving the technical assistance they need.

“We need to promote good land use on small farms, eradicating deforestation, using pasture lands better, and improving and increasing agroforestry systems with cocoa.”

But forests and agriculture don’t exist in isolation: they’re also deeply intertwined with other ecosystems, which is why it’s crucial to look at landscapes as a whole.

“In many developing countries, forestry departments only consider state forest lands as ecosystems that support climate change mitigation – the rest of the land is forgotten,” said Beria Leimona, theme leader for climate change, energy and low-carbon development at CIFOR-ICRAF.

“There should be more collaboration and exchange of information and a recognition that carbon sequestration doesn’t just come from forests but from landscapes. Forests, agroforestry and agriculture should be seen as one integrated system.”

Buy into the planet

It’s often said that climate finance isn’t charity – it’s the most cost-effective way to prepare humanity for the climate challenges that lie ahead.

Unfortunately, public funding is being cut right when it’s needed more than ever, with many rich countries slashing development aid and resisting demands to ramp up climate finance at last year’s COP29.

The challenge, then, is to make a strong business case to attract private investors to grassroots solutions – the subject of a separate GLF side event at COP30 the following day, as well as a key theme at GLF Climate.

“We need better financing mechanisms for smallholders,” said Pereira. “Now, 90 percent of the financing in the Amazon is for livestock, because banks are prepared to finance livestock systems, but they don’t know how to do it for agroforestry.”

That lack of funding also extends to the partnerships needed to implement solutions at the landscape level.

“One of the main challenges of the landscape approach is how to fund governance,” said Max Yamauchi Levy, a project manager at EcoAgriculture Partners and member of the Latin American Model Forest Network.

“Unfortunately, most donors, financiers and even local governments don’t want to pay for meetings and coordination. People nowadays only want numbers, but they don’t understand that you need quality governance.”

“Governance has to be inclusive and participatory, with real engagement in the planning and decision making across all levels,” added Alain Du Cap, senior international development officer at Global Affairs Canada.

“But at the core of this, most important is community-based action, because it’s when communities co-design and lead on action that you see the most ownership and the most sustainable results.”

Check our progress

At COP28 two years ago, countries concluded the first ‘global stocktake’ – a progress report assessing how much more needs to be done to achieve the Paris Agreement goals.

What could this process teach us about the state of climate action on the ground?

“I don’t think we’re doing a good global stocktake on all the millions of people who are working on climate change in different directions,” said Siddiqa.

“We need a stocktake of what solutions are succeeding and what aren’t. We can’t keep planting trees every five years and have commitments to that – it’s not doing anything.”

That means scrutinizing quick techno-fixes like direct air capture and AI, which often come with their own negative social and environmental impacts.

“We are investing in technologies and infrastructure that are highly intensive in the use of minerals, energy, water and land,” said José Renato Laranjeira de Pereira, a researcher at the University of Bonn’s Sustainable AI Lab.

“This is already impacting Brazilian territory, including Indigenous territories. On Yanomami land, for instance, there is gold being extracted through violence, by contaminating rivers, and this gold is being sold to companies such as Apple, Amazon and Alphabet.”

One thing is for certain: the status quo isn’t working, and another 30 years of discussions are unlikely to change that – if we can even wait that long.

“The more talks we have, the more confused and uncertain we are, so it is important that we do things differently and believe in change,” said Geofrey.

“Believing in change means we move from talks to action and implementation – because at least that is what will give us hope.”

“There is no longer time for transition,” said Marajoara. “We can only talk about just transitions, just food systems and just energy when there is in fact justice.”

“There will only be justice with the end of genocide, colonialism and racism, the recognition of women and the self-determination of peoples, the demarcation of all of the territories of the original and traditional peoples of this planet – and understanding that our cultures, practices and knowledge are not inferior. They are complex, sophisticated technologies.”