Beyond the Negotiating Table: Indigenous Knowledge, Climate Justice, and the Politics of Participation
What this Episode Offers
An inside view of COP30 and the politics of global climate decision-making
A critical exploration of the gap between Indigenous visibility and decision-making power
Reflection on the financial and linguistic barriers that shape participation in climate forums
Insight into the experiences of women, young people, grassroots organisations, and small island states
A discussion of Indigenous and Maroon communities as knowledge holders, researchers, and stewards of land
Attention to the emotional, cultural, and ancestral dimensions of climate loss
A vision of climate justice grounded in cooperation, traditional knowledge, art, science, and collective responsibility
In this episode of Saltwater Reasonings, I sit with anthropologist Dr Doreen Gordon to reflect on her experiences at COP30, held in Belém, Brazil, in November 2025. She takes us inside a global climate forum shaped by contradiction, where Indigenous communities were highly visible and declared that “the answer is us”, while many remained excluded from the spaces where major decisions were made.
Our reasoning explores the tensions between presence and power, the financial and linguistic barriers that shape participation, and the continued marginalisation of young people, women, grassroots organisations, and small island states. We also consider what meaningful inclusion requires when Indigenous and Maroon communities enter climate conversations as knowledge holders, research partners, decision-makers, and stewards of land and climate finance.
The conversation moves beyond policy and economics to the intimate and ancestral dimensions of climate loss. Doreen reflects on what it means to lose homes, coastlines, burial grounds, cultural memory, and relationships with land, while inviting us to imagine climate futures shaped through cooperation, traditional knowledge, science, technology, art, and collective responsibility.
This episode is a reasoning about inheritance, climate governance, belonging, and the knowledge we must carry forward together.
