It’s been another year of climate chaos and inadequate political action. And it’s hard not to feel despondent and powerless.
I joined the Guardian full time in 2019, as the paper’s first environmental justice correspondent, and have reported from across the US and the region over the past six years. It’s been painful to see so many families – and entire communities – devastated by fires, floods, extreme heat, sea level rise and food shortages. But what’s given me hope during these six years of reporting as both an environmental and climate justice reporter are the people fighting to save our planet from catastrophe – in their communities, on the streets and in courtrooms across the world.
I have always tried to use a justice and equity lens in my journalism on the causes, impacts and solutions relating to the climate crisis. For me, that has meant telling the stories of people who are often ignored or sidelined despite their lived experience and expertise – especially Indigenous people, protesters, activists and local communities fighting back. I have also tried to examine how the climate crisis intersects with – and often exacerbates – other forms of inequity, such as economic inequality, racism, misogyny, land struggles and unequal access to housing and healthcare. The uncomfortable truth is that we are not all in this together. We didn’t all contribute to the climate crisis equally, we’re not all feeling its impacts equally and we don’t all have equal access to resources that might help us cope with or even solve it.
In my final piece for the Guardian, I salute the grassroots organizers, scientists, health workers, Indigenous peoples, students and youth activists, peasant farmers, human rights experts and journalists taking on governments and corporations. The climate justice movement scored major victories in 2025, and it has shown us that ordinary people power can – and is – dismantling the status quo.
People power is reshaping the climate fight
“While the majority of states and businesses try to continue doing business as usual, we’re starting to see cracks in that inertia as the power of the people has helped to give light to what is not working – and identify the actual actions that we need,” said Astrid Puentes Riaño, the UN special rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
Despite the UN climate negotiations in Belém failing to agree, yet again, to phase out fossil fuels, Cop30 did establish the first-ever just transition mechanism (JTM), a plan to ensure that the move to a green-energy economy is fair and inclusive and protects the rights of all people, including workers, frontline communities, women and Indigenous people.
While far from perfect, the JTM was agreed only after years of civil society organising, including impossible-to-ignore protests during Cop30. The mechanism represents an important step in putting people at the centre of climate policy after decades of technocratic fixes, according to Puentes.
There were also encouraging signs that a growing number of states – from the global south and north – have had enough of the inertia and obstructionism blocking meaningful action, and are prepared to stand with affected communities and go their own way.
Colombia and the Netherlands, backed by 22 nations, will independently develop a roadmap to fossil fuel phaseout, beginning with a conference in April 2026 in the coal port city of Santa Marta, Colombia. The plan is for states, cities, affected communities and health, science, human rights and other experts to share experiences and best practices, and implement policy ideas outside the snail-paced, consensus-based Cop process.
This parallel fossil-fuel roadmap initiative could establish regional solutions and a trading bloc with the power to sanction nations – and financial institutions – that continue to support fossil fuels.
Elisa Morgera, the UN special rapporteur on climate change and human rights, said the new alliance could be the gamechanger. “We now have a sizeable group of states from all regions who want to engage in good faith and make progress on phasing out fossil fuels and cannot wait any longer for the Cop process,” she said.
“It is so important for people around the world to see that there is political will and political power to advance this, and to see what it looks like, as there is a big gap in imagination. We’ve been so bombarded by climate disinformation from fossil fuel companies that it is hard to imagine what our life would be like without them, but there are examples of cities, towns and communities doing it.”
Both Colombia and the Netherlands were pushed hard by ordinary people to do the right thing.
In 2023, Colombia, a major fossil fuel producer with fierce, well-organized climate and social justice movements, signed on to the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty that now includes 18 countries, 140 cities and subnational governments, the World Health Organization, more than 4,000 civil society organisations and more than 3,000 scientists and academics.
It was this civil society-led initiative that first created a blueprint to halt new fossil fuel projects and manage an equitable phaseout of coal, oil and gas.
“Many political leaders are captured by fossil fuel interests or lack the courage to challenge them, while developing countries are held back by the rich world’s failure to deliver finance and technology anywhere near a fair share,” said Harjeet Singh, a veteran climate activist and strategic adviser to the non-proliferation treaty. “That’s why movements are indispensable watchdogs – naming the polluters, exposing greenwashing and demanding the funds, timelines and protections workers and communities need to transition with rights and dignity.”
And change can be contagious. After mounting protests and litigation by Indigenous communities and environmental groups over Brazil’s expansion of oil and gas projects in the Amazon, Cop30 president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced the first step toward a national fossil fuel phaseout roadmap. Still, head-spinning contradictory policies are all too common among states lauded as climate leaders – and Brazil also recently passed the so-called “devastation bill”, which critics warn will accelerate deforestation in the Amazon.
Courts are becoming a frontline for climate justice
Failure to transition away from fossil fuels is a violation of international law, according to an international court of justice (ICJ) ruling in July 2025, alongside multiple other international courts and tribunals.
The ICJ advisory opinion, which was initiated by Pacific Island law students, confirmed what communities had argued in courts around the world for a decade. Governments have a whole host of legal duties arising as a result of the climate crisis, including phasing out fossil fuels and regulating polluting corporations.
The landmark ruling by the highest court in the world can be traced back to a 2015 lawsuit when the Netherlands became the first state ordered to take stronger climate action, in a case brought by 900 Dutch citizens and the Urgenda Foundation, an environmental group.
“In just 10 years, climate litigation has evolved from a handful of complaints before domestic courts to a global accountability system recognised by the highest international courts and tribunals,” said Dennis Van Berkel, legal counsel at the Urgenda Foundation, in a recent report by the Climate Litigation Network. “That transformation was built case by case, country by country. Some judgments failed, but each contributed – refining arguments, strengthening alliances, raising public awareness and laying the groundwork for those that followed.”
A recent judgment in South Africa halted a major internationally funded offshore gas and oil project opposed by coastal communities and environmental groups. The government has paused all other new oil and gas proposals, pending an appeal.
“Access to justice and litigation is the most peaceful way to advance and help states and businesses to correct mistakes, make the right decision and advance climate action. It’s not that litigation solves everything, but it’s a very important piece in order to advance the systemic changes that we need,” Puentes of the UN said.
Indigenous knowledge points the way forward
For thousands of years, Indigenous peoples have lived in respectful harmony with the planet – using, not exploiting, natural resources from our forests, seas, rivers and land. In addition to this vast ancient knowledge, we have 21st-century tools and technologies, and innovative grassroots and regional solutions that together should be the heart of global efforts to tackle the climate crisis.
Next year, like every year, it will fall on ordinary people to harness their immense power through the courts, protests, multilateral spaces and the ballot box to ensure climate-impacted communities and human rights become the centre of negotiations and climate action.
“If we wait for Cop31 to save us, we have already surrendered,” said Raj Patel, a research professor at the University of Texas and author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System.
“The test is not whether diplomats can craft better language in Antalya [in Turkey] next year, but whether farmers’ movements, Indigenous movements and climate movements can generate enough political pressure to make governments fear inaction more than they fear confronting corporate power.”
Nina Lakhani is a climate justice reporter for the Guardian US
