By Victoria Verdesoto Phothirath and Florentia Loizides
Brazil’s COP30 Presidency has designed an Action Agenda to mobilise all actors (beyond governments), and align outcomes across six thematic axes including energy, nature, food systems, resilience, and human and social development. The latter axis spotlights resilient health systems, equitable access to jobs and education, the eradication of hunger and poverty, cultural heritage protection, and a just transition across all objectives. With COP 30 being hosted inside the Amazon region for the first time, this axis is particularly apt as the location of the COP foregrounds the lived realities of people at the nexus of climate, biodiversity and development and helps to centralise health and equity within negotiations.
This article explores why this centralisation is not only important for Brazil but also the world. It will also explore how inclusive platforms such as the Global Mutirão, the Global Ethical Stocktake (GES), and youth engagement can help close the ‘climate reality gap’ between escalating impacts and the pace of response. Additionally, we review health burdens, food and water insecurity, climate shocks to livelihoods, and the role of social protection to safeguard people today while enabling just transitions tomorrow. Finally, we outline how COP30 engages non-state actors, including NGOs and constituencies, so that communities, workers, women and youth can shape outcomes alongside Parties.
The Global Mutirão and the global ethical stocktake
As our colleague Juliana Escobar Castro highlighted, Brazil’s Presidency has launched the Global Mutirão, a large-scale mobilisation designed to connect negotiations with people’s daily realities and accelerate Paris delivery. The Mutirão invites governments, civil society organisations, youth, Indigenous peoples, and faith actors to organise dialogues and initiatives demonstrating human-centred climate solutions. Anchoring the Mutirão signals governance must move beyond diplomacy to solidarity and justice.
Meanwhile, the GES, complementing the Global Stocktake (GST), emphasises ethics, justice, and lived experiences. It gathers inputs from grassroots organisations, Indigenous leaders, artists, and faith communities to shape guidance for negotiators. Through regional dialogues across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, it has synthesised priorities such as food sovereignty, human rights, health equity, and intergenerational justice. These priorities are often overlooked in technical talks.
Together, the Mutirão and the GES bridge international negotiations and societal demands for climate justice, reducing the ‘climate reality gap’ between ambition and community needs.
Although this is a very welcome approach, it is also necessary to understand the challenges that this solution seeks to address. The following sections will provide an overview of some of these challenges as well as highlighting some of the ways E Co. is already working to address them.
Public health
Climate change is already one of the greatest public health threats, spanning infectious disease, non-communicable illness, malnutrition, and mental health. Extreme heat events increase mortality and hospitalisations, especially among vulnerable groups. Changing rainfall and warming accelerate diseases malaria and dengue, straining fragile health systems. To address this, the Global Climate and Health Alliance stresses that decarbonisation not only reduces emissions but improves air quality for public health as well as overall life expectancy.
Additionally, climate-resilient health systems prevent deaths and keep essential services running during shocks. E Co. has contributed to building such health systems, for example, through GCF SAP051 in Micronesia, we assisted to enhance preparedness against climate-related health threats. Some of the measures in this project included, climate-proofing facilities, strengthening surveillance, and training health workers. E Co. also supported a concept note in Togo, embedding climate risk analysis into national health strategies and ensuring services during floods and heatwaves.
By framing climate change as a health crisis, COP30 can link emission pathways to wellbeing outcomes, showing that climate action is inseparable from protecting lives.
Food and water security
Climate change drives food insecurity, threatening to reverse decades of progress. Climate extremes cut yields and undermine smallholder livelihoods. In Latin America and the Caribbean, 74% of countries are highly exposed to extreme weather that threatens agriculture and food access. Globally, hunger has risen eight years in a row, with 735 million undernourished in 2022. Water insecurity is also accelerating as disrupted rainfall and glacier melt intensify droughts and floods, and undermine drinking water, sanitation, and irrigation.
E Co. has helped address this global challenge through projects such as the GEF-funded initiative in the DRC. The project promotes sustainable land and water management, linking food production with forest and catchment restoration, deforestation-free value chains, and sustainable river management. By strengthening food systems, water access, and community resilience, such projects show how climate finance can improve livelihoods while safeguarding ecosystems.
At COP30, Brazil has emphasised that sustainable development cannot be achieved without resilient food and water systems.
Social protection
Climate change is both environmental and economic, making social protection, such as, cash transfers, subsidies, public works, and insurance, vital. Governments are making systems ‘shock-responsive’ to expand rapidly after climate shocks. For example, climate-resilient programmes can provide cash transfers after floods or droughts, helping families buy food, access healthcare, and avoid extreme poverty.
As extremes intensify, social protection will become a cornerstone of just transition policies, ensuring the poorest do not bear disproportionate costs.
Migration
Climate change acts as a ‘threat multiplier’, intensifying weather extremes, undermining livelihoods, and interacting with conflict and poverty to drive migration. Disasters now trigger tens of millions of displacements annually, with 45.8 million in 2024—the highest on record. By the end 2023, 75.9 million people were displaced worldwide, including 7.7 million by disasters, showing how shocks compound risks.
The World Migration Report highlights links between climate change, food insecurity and mobility, while UNHCR notes exposure to ‘climate hotspots’ increases risks for refugees and internally displaced people. Policy responses span anticipatory action, climate-informed urban planning, adaptive social protection, and, in some cases, planned relocation, all requiring human rights safeguards and local participation.
By centring safety, livelihoods and dignity, COP30’s agenda connects climate action to mobility realities, protecting those on the move while addressing root drivers.
Conclusion: A human-centred approach
COP30 marks a decisive shift toward a human-centred agenda, framing action around dignity, justice, and equity as well as emissions and finance. Brazil has broadened participation, embedding platforms like the Mutirão and GES to ensure voices of civil society, Indigenous peoples, faith leaders, and communities shape outcomes. A key innovation is the Youth Climate Champion, ensuring young people shape COP30 outcomes which reflects the trend toward intergenerational equity.
Non-state actors also play a central role: over 3,000 NGOs spanning constituencies contribute expertise and accountability to negotiations.
For E Co., which has long advocated inclusive, gender-sensitive, and socially just climate solutions, this people-first framing reinforces the importance of embedding health, food security, livelihoods, and social protection into climate finance. The outcome of COP30 will be judged not only by the strength of pledges but by how far it empowers communities, protects lives, and delivers a just transition that leaves no one behind.
Explore the rest of our road to Belém series to gain deeper insights into global climate action ahead of COP30.
- Why COP30 in Brazil could be a turning point for global climate action
- High stakes: NDCs and the global stocktake
- The Belém mandate: Why collaborative networks will define the success of COP30
- Reframing climate multilateralism: The Mutirão and the power of Indigenous collaboration
- From ambition to action: COP30 and accelerating the agriculture and food systems transformation