Has the Climate Been Burdened Beyond Its Limits? Why I Heard the Voice of the Land Loudest - Hala S. Murad
Hala Murad
Has the Climate Been Burdened Beyond Its Limits? Why I Heard the Voice of the Land Loudest - Hala S. Murad
As COP30 ends, I find myself finishing these lines aboard a flight from São Paulo to Doha, en route to Amman. What I witnessed in Belém is impossible to ignore. I attended official sessions, side events, and corporate showcases, and saw how major companies managed to reshape the climate narrative and steer it toward a single idea: “the energy transition is not a tool to protect the planet, but an economic engine, a vehicle for endless prosperity, as they like to frame it.”
Throughout the conference, the same phrases echoed across speeches,
panels, and press releases: climate investment is a historic opportunity, green
growth is the key to prosperity, green industries will rebuild the global
economy. Technology was presented as an undisputed moment of salvation, as if
anyone who dares to question this narrative is opposing the future itself. I
watched how the language of justice was replaced by the language of markets,
and how climate protection was turned into an investment product defined by
jobs, returns, and competitiveness, while the real costs paid by people and
ecosystems were quietly erased.
The sharpest irony was that this language grew louder in the very heart
of the Amazon, where Indigenous peoples live and resist. In small circles of
dialogue and civil society gatherings, I learned again a truth we all know yet
choose to forget: the climate story begins with the land, not the market. Those
who have protected the forest, the river, and the biodiversity of this planet
for centuries now find their territories targeted as maps of extraction,
corridors of supply chains, and energy projects. This expansion is sold as a
service to humanity, not as a direct threat to their homes, identities, and
cultures.
Meanwhile, the “green growth” narrative avoids talking about workers
who will lose their livelihoods in declining sectors, about communities that
will bear the burden of rare-mineral extraction, or about countries that will
remain locked into the role of raw-material suppliers while profits and
technologies concentrate in the Global North. I sat through programs that
celebrated new markets and global integration, yet the central question was
absent: who decides the fate of the land, and who pays for those decisions?
Corporate dominance at COP is not reflected merely in the number of
badges or side events. It is expressed in the power to impose an entire
vocabulary, one that speaks of green competitiveness, green economic
architectures, and partnerships for new growth driven by renewable energy. The
vocabulary of territorial justice, community rights, and the principle of a
just transition remains marginal, without the same platform or legitimacy. In
this corporate grammar, the energy transition becomes a single track: more
investment, faster growth, and the commodification of nature under a green
label.
Yet I didn't leave Belém believing that we must dismantle the economy
or abandon work opportunities. As someone from the Global South, I know we do
not have such luxuries. What we need are people-centered economies, not
investors. Economies that allow small and medium enterprises to thrive,
especially those rooted in justice-oriented innovation. Anyone who understands
daily life knows that income and dignity are not luxuries. The lesson I learned
in Belém was that the economy itself is not the problem if it is designed for
people rather than for financial extraction. If it is an economy that protects
land and communities instead of draining them, a transition that is a pathway
for workers, not a guillotine for their future, and a system where benefits are
distributed, not where old hierarchies are repackaged under a green logo.
The danger of the dominant discourse is not only its excessive
optimism. It is its capacity to swallow the language of justice. It promises
shared prosperity without engaging in historical debt. It promises green jobs
without securing workers’ rights or the presence of unions. It invokes
inclusion while refusing to address how growth is distributed within and
between countries. Even the official UN language often falls into this trap:
climate success measured by economic benefits and improvements in “millions of
lives,” without asking who those millions are, and who remains outside the
frame.
What Belém taught me is that justice is not a rhetorical accessory. It
is the starting point. We must ask who controls energy, not just who produces
it. Who holds investment power, not only who is offered employment. Who decides
the shape of the economy, not only the type of technology it deploys? A just
transition cannot be crafted through decorative growth. It requires
redistribution of power and resources, an acknowledgment of ecological limits,
and the prioritization of life over corporate profits.
I return from COP30 more convinced than ever that what we are fighting
for is not a shinier green economy. It is a just transformation that begins by
protecting the land and giving Indigenous peoples their rightful place at the
center of decision-making, not at its margins. We do not need more declarations
promising new engines for growth. We need political courage to say clearly: we
must share resources, redistribute economic power, and reduce consumption.
Otherwise, the green sheen will fade, like any coat of paint on the old wall of
structural inequality, and everyone will finally see the illusion of what it
is.
The struggle for climate justice is long, complex, and far from being resolved. The most dangerous illusion is believing we are close.
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