With a sprig of leaves and rainwater carried from her island in the Philippines, Grace Talawag delivered a prayer and a blessing for her delegation and onlookers in a negotiation hall at the United Nations climate summit. The leaves included bamboo, to represent the resiliency needed to contend with climate change, and jade vine, a creeping plant that Talawag said “will climb any tree up in the jungle to see the light."
The latter symbolizes her hope that negotiators at the COP28 talks “will listen to the voices of the Indigenous people" — especially Indigenous women who have traveled to the conference to share valuable insights into addressing some of the challenges of climate change.
