Returning to local realities post-COP Belém

Pedro Walpole SJ (presentation during the Mindanao Climate Justice and Solidarity Conference 2025 in Malaybalay, Bukidnon)

Welcome back home for those who were in the COP30 climate conference in Belém, Brazil and greetings to those locally on the ground trying to see if the COP can help us in our local realities in any way.

This challenge arose especially with the Mindanao Week of Peace celebration from 27 November to 3 December 2025. Observed annually in the Philippines since 2001 through Presidential Proclamation No 127, the theme for this year is Transparency and Accountability: Our Hope for Justice and Peace.

The Mindanao Climate Justice and Solidarity Conference 2025 from 27 to 29 November highlights our collective journey toward peace, justice, and care for our common home. The theme From Declaration to Collective Action: Defending Land, Life, and Self-Determination in Mindanao seeks collective action that is much needed.

This conference brings together Mindanao-based advocacy and education networks and communities, people from indigenous uplands and from Bangsamoro communities, and youth from Marawi and Cotabato facing many unresolved issues that need legal action and broader advocacy.

I was asked to share what happened at COP30, and I now call it COP Belém making it more personal and remembering the great contribution of local people.

COP-Belém takeaways

The following are the takeaways from the two weeks in Belém, from 10 to 21 November:

1. On the Global Mutirão: Uniting humanity in a global mobilization against climate change (as of 21 November 2025) which is the core agreement of COP Belém, the text is very weak, focuses on the money side of discussions, and does not mention fossil fuels. The power of a few won out in the wording. However, there was no mistaking the cry of over a hundred nations that are having to act while they suffer the calamities and injustices of the fossil fuel industries. Recent typhoons in Philippines and the central Caribbean (Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti) were often referenced during the COP discussions. There was never such united opposition to this power of the powerful few. We cannot expect mitigation or adaptation funds from UNFCCC to reach the people of Mindanao soon. (Mutirão is the traditional cultural practice of gathering and coming to decisions, like our own kaamulan in Bukidnon cultures).
2. The Indigenous Munduruku People protest called for climate justice and territorial protection at COP Belém. Their call: “Nothing about us without us.” For us in Malaybalay, this is the same key cry of the marginalized when advocating with the government offices: “Wala’y bahin kanamo kung wala kami.”
3. There were genuine people in the process and COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago listened to the protestations from indigenous representatives. He then brought the Munduruku to a hall for conversations that lasted for more than three hours. There was the inspiring defiance of Marina Silva, Brazil’s minister of the environment and climate change, at the closing plenary and how she “had dreamed of bigger results.”
4. Indigenous Peoples, civil society and faith-based organizations do influence the negotiations by creating another media context, disturbing the proforma bickering between party groups, and negotiators responsible. All are reminded of both the integrity and concerns of millions of people across the world while the focus is still the capitalist model of extraction of profits. Imelda Soidi and Eneriza Menaling spoke in events of the River Above Asia Oceania Ecclesial Network (RAOEN) and met many indigenous calling for greater recognition.
5. After Belém, life in the Amazon cannot be reduced to politics, economics, and power. Focus was given to the immorality of the debt, the staggering gap of loss due to disasters and war, and the trickle of relief. The destruction of biomes through mining, agribusiness, and climate events are all recognized as grave strains on an integral ecology in the Amazon and which are the same here in Mindanao.

The wars in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and other countries where terror, starvation, and ecocide are used as tools of coercion were on the walls and news during COP30 as the finances fueling these conflicts takes from the commitment to climate action. There is much acceptance that this is the way things are at the end of COP Bélem and is the hope of renewed effort in a preparatory COP31 meeting in April 2026.

The First International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels will be held at a major coal port, the city of Santa Marta in Colombia on 28 to 29 April 2026 with the governments of Colombia and The Netherlands co-hosting. Pacific nations committed to convene a follow-up meeting in the region to advance the conference outcomes.

At the same time, there is much to do at our national government level in lobbying for better policies and inclusion, guarding against corruption, and improving the process and duration of getting community rights and needs processed.

Where we are in our familiar place and time is inclusive of all that is happening. In indigenous contexts, time and presence are inclusive of all life and the daily landscape. This is where a certain peace can be established. But in trying to coexist and share the same peace, it is very difficult with the external influences and the multiple bureaucracies.

This workshop is needed to seek the changes called for at home, and in the light of COP Belém, we need to draw on the strength of action that the margins take.

Ms Victoria Nolasco, executive director of Mindanao Climate Justice (MCJ) shared the objectives of the conference: to deepen the understanding of what is happening; to unite all sectors; to build legal, psychosocial, pastoral capacities; to narrate human rights abuses; and to consolidate a clear action program.

Bishop Noel Pedregosa (Diocese of Malaybalay) welcomed the participants and said that the cry of the Earth can be seen in the floods and heavy rains and how people struggle to hold life together. The COP agreement is not failing, he said, though political will is lacking and encouraged all to continue to speak out about our problems to local government.

Non-Moro Indigenous Peoples (NMIPs) in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), notably the Teduray People, have suffered gravely in recent years with around 100 community leaders and members killed. Many of the deaths are linked to different land conflicts and lack of formal recognition of indigenous rights under the BARMM.

Ms Hanifah Pangcoga of Reclaiming Marawi Movement has the reoccurring terrible story of her communities in BARMM. Eight years after the Marawi siege in 2017, thousands of Maranaw families remain displaced, unable to return to their ancestral homes in ground zero, the most affected area in the city. Despite government declarations of liberation, survivors endure protracted displacement, stalled rebuilding, and erasure of cultural identity. The temporary shelters designed for three to five years are now on the eighth year. Internally displaced peoples (IDPs) pay the rental fees themselves because government leases expired. This is a national disgrace that needs broader advocacy.

There are three areas also in Bukidnon where the process of resolution needs comprehensive action by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), and the military, both local and national:

• In Barangays Kiantig Butong and San Jose in Quezon, the Manobo-Pulangiyēn community have an ancestral domain claim for 1,111 hectares seemingly in dispute with the LGU.
• In Sitio Kibaritan, Barangay Malinao in Kalilangan, the Kibaritan Tenant Farmers Association, a people’s organization of about 120 small farmers, is being driven off of their 120 hectares that they farmed since 1950. The land is being claimed as part of a military reserve, but the farmers are from families of an earlier generation of the military.
• In Talakag, the four barangays of  Miarayon, Lapok, Lirongan, and Sitio Tinaytayan of Barangay San Miguel are part of the ancestral domain of the Miarayon Lapok Lirongan Tinaytayan Talaandig Tribal Association (MILALITTRA) and for which they have been granted a Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title. The Talaandig are also a farming community and their land is being claimed as part of a massive military reservation.

These are cases that need to be transparently and fully processed in doing justice to our farmers in Bukidnon.

There are many conflicts with land issues for Indigenous Peoples in Bukidnon and the obstructions and delays found with the DENR and the NCIP are taking years to resolve. A special gathering is now planned in the coming week involving some of the government offices, and the local church is called to support these initiatives and to convene the necessary dialogues.

Bishop Raul Dael (Diocese of Tandag) declared that the first protector of the land is not DENR but the Indigenous Peoples. He recalled seven mining applications and activities were stopped through Church community action. “If we are strong, we can better defend our lands,” he said.

Father Rey Raluto, parish priest of Jesus Nazareno Parish in Libona, Bukidnon, talked about “who are the poor” and the many faces of poverty and the state of Mindanao forests vis-à-vis poverty incidence. He emphasized the role of Mindanawon as stakeholders of the watershed.

While the legal challenges and the need for advocacy were central, there was much time given to group discussions of the youth and on education.

Mercy Pakiwag, a Pulangiyēn teacher at the Apu Palamguwan Cultural Education Center (APC) indigenous school, was concerned about: 1) the need for greater reflective capacity and spaces of the youth today who have little faith context; 2) the transformative education of the youth and the importance of integral ecology; (3) the availability of youth programs and whether the government or the church is able to guide them in the right direction, to ask global questions, and be empowered; and 4) the need for greater involvement in basic ecclesial communities (BECs) as only a few are involved, considering that BECs are the spaces for communal reflection and action.

Jeno Almahan and Rhealyn Berdesola, APC senior high school students and Pulangiyēn youth, shared their thoughts on tree planting as a possible requirement for graduation in public school and for baptism in the Catholic Church. If natural resource management (NRM) and the role of trees in the forest ecosystem are not actually learned and understood, everything is just on paper and poor governance is promoted. One speaker admitted obtaining the barangay captain’s signature due to her mother’s connections. Rhealyn wishes that tree planting is undertaken not as a requirement but as part of a person’s vision.

Eneriza Menaling, another Pulangiyēn youth from Bendum, came back from participating in COP Belém and focused on the youth and the attention that they need. In her experience, she would not be here today if she was not given the chance to be listened to and for her story to be heard. During the panel discussion, she wondered if the youth were to be invited to speak instead of the elders. She also noted that while there is no disaster risk reduction and management office in Bendum, there is a system that is not dependent on government but on cultural ways. In the uplands, people experience disaster differently from those living in the city, and the responses need to adapt.

There was no bottled water distributed during the conference and people brought their own containers. Bukidnon is a major coffee producer and there was brewed coffee and washable mugs.

As we settle back home after COP Belém, the local call for climate justice and the timely call of the first week of Advent are that we cannot be complacent. We must seek collective action where we can and look for occasions where we can strengthen the collective will to make a difference.

Mindanao Week of Peace 2025 takeaways:

1. Agribusiness, mining, land grabbing, climate disasters, and conflicts are pulling apart the lives of local people in many parts of the world.
2. It is not global or national economics that will solve climate and social disasters as the economic-political system maintains a priority for profit.
3. We are called to go deep in life to sustain the hope and action for change. Starting with the indigenous bond with the land and all life given by the Creator and recognizing the goodness of God, we can recognize too what we receive.
4. The peace we are given within and the hope we must share with our youth challenge us to know each other’s difficulties across Mindanao and the world so that we can support each other and work together for a just world. Collaboration in broader advocacy can help government do a better job.
5. Each generation must do this in their time and their context.

May this give us food for thought in this season of Advent, a sense of anticipation, self-preparation, participation, and mission.

All photos are from the FB post of Fr Rey Raluto, except for the first one.

Related article from Mindanao Climate Justice: From Crisis to Collective Action: MCJSC 2025 Part 2