We Effect`s global positioning for COP30

COP30, held for the first time in the heart of the Amazon, marks a decisive moment for global climate action. In a region that is an epicenter of biodiversity, vibrant cultures, and intense extractive pressures, the world gathers to confront a crisis that disproportionately affects those least responsible for its causes. We Effect works in territories that are critical to global climate action, including Amazonian ecosystems in Bolivia, where communities defend the forest against extractive pressures and the accelerating impacts of climate change. Drawing from our work in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and from the experiences our partner organizations are bringing to COP30, we articulate a global voice shaped by decades of collective action with rural communities, cooperatives, and social movements.

The climate crisis is not only an environmental problem; it is also a crisis of the dominant development model: extractive, unequal, and disconnected from the territories. Across all regions where we work, rural families, Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendant communities, and peri-urban residents are already facing the consequences of climate change through intensified droughts, biodiversity loss, displacement, food insecurity, and violations of their rights. Yet these same communities are leading powerful responses based on collective practices, community resource management, sustainable agriculture, forest protection, and cooperative models.

For We Effect, COP30 represents a strategic opportunity to highlight these solutions and demand that global climate action acknowledge and support community leadership. Negotiations must adopt real commitments to climate justice, understood as territorial, social, economic, and gender justice. Without this lens, international policies risk reproducing inequalities and sidelining the very voices that sustain life in the territories.

From our experience across more than 20 countries, we observe clear and recurring patterns:

In East Africa, rural communities are strengthening climate-resilient production systems, capturing rainwater, and defending their lands against corporate pressures.
In Latin America, cooperatives and rural collectives are advancing housing models, sustainable production, and the protection of forests and watersheds, including highly pressured Amazonian territories.
In Southeast Asia, women-led rural groups are advancing land rights and developing nature-based adaptation strategies.

Across all these contexts, solutions do not emerge from markets or external actors, they emerge from community organization, collective action, and local territorial management. For this reason, we affirm:

Rural communities are strategic actors in mitigation and adaptation, not merely populations affected by the crisis.
Agroecology, the social and solidarity economy, and cooperative models are pillars of a just transition.
Gender equality and the leadership of women and youth are indispensable for effective climate action.

Institutional positioning pillars of We Effect

1. Fair, direct, and accessible climate finance
   Climate finance must reach the territories, without excessive intermediaries or bureaucratic barriers. Communities, cooperatives, and local organizations need flexible, accessible funding to implement real and sustainable climate solutions.
2. A just transition rooted in agroecology and cooperative models
   Production systems must strengthen food sovereignty, biodiversity, and climate resilience. Agroecology, combined with cooperative organization, is essential to confront the crisis through sustainability and care for life.
3. Territorial rights and protection of the commons
   Defending forests, water, seeds, and biodiversity requires full recognition of collective territorial rights, including binding participation and the right to free, prior, and informed consultation on decisions that affect their territories.
4. Leadership of rural women and youth
   The climate crisis deepens existing inequalities. Global action must place rural women and youth at the center of decision-making, ensuring resources, political participation, and access to climate education.
5. Narratives and communication led from the territories
   Climate solutions must be grounded in the concrete experiences of those who inhabit and care for their territories. We Effect is committed to amplifying their voices and strengthening their presence in national and international agendas.

We Effect’s demands for COP30

1. Integrate climate and territorial justice into all COP decisions.
2. Guarantee direct climate finance for communities, cooperatives, and local organizations.
3. Formally recognize the role of Indigenous peoples, rural communities, and small-scale producers as essential custodians of ecosystems.
4. Incorporate agroecology and cooperativism into national mitigation and adaptation strategies.
5. Ensure the full, informed, and binding participation of rural women and youth.
6. Establish transparent commitments and accessible monitoring mechanisms for communities.

 We Effect will continue strengthening its partner organizations and supporting community-led processes that promote climate resilience, gender equality, and cooperative development. We are committed to integrating climate action across all our programs, reducing our own environmental footprint, and elevating territorial voices in global decision-making spaces.

Climate justice is not only an environmental goal, it is a project of dignity, democracy, and life.
We Effect works so that no community is left out of the solution.