It’s easy to feel powerless about climate chaos. Here’s what gives me hope | Nina Lakhani

It has been another year of climate chaos and inadequate political action. And it’s hard not to feel discouraged and helpless.

I joined the Guardian full-time in 2019, as the paper’s first environmental justice correspondent, and have reported across the US and region for the past six years. It is painful to see so many families – and entire communities – devastated by fires, floods, extreme heat, rising sea levels and food shortages. But what has given me hope in six years of reporting as an environmental and climate justice journalist are the people fighting to save our planet from catastrophe – in their communities, in the streets, and in courtrooms around the world.

I have always tried to use a justice and equity lens in my journalism on the causes, impacts and solutions related to the climate crisis. For me, that meant telling the stories of people who are often ignored or sidelined despite their lived experience and expertise – particularly indigenous people, protesters, activists, and local communities fighting back. I’ve also tried to examine how the climate crisis intersects with – and often exacerbates – other forms of inequity, such as economic inequality, racism, misogyny, struggles over land, and unequal access to housing and health care. The uncomfortable truth is that we are not all this together. We have not all contributed to the climate crisis in the same way, we do not all feel its impacts in the same way, and we do not all have equal access to the resources that could help us confront it, or even solve it.

In my latest article for the Guardian, I salute grassroots organizers, scientists, health workers, indigenous people, students and youth activists, farmers, human rights experts and journalists who are taking on governments and corporations. The climate justice movement won major victories in 2025, and it showed us that the power of ordinary people can – and is – dismantling the status quo.

People power is reshaping the climate fight

“As the majority of states and businesses attempt to continue business as usual, we are starting to see cracks in this inertia, as people power has helped shine a light on what is not working – and identify the concrete actions we need,” said Astrid Puentes Riaño, UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.

Although the UN climate talks in Belém once again failed to agree on the phase-out of fossil fuels, Cop30 established the first-ever Just Transition Mechanism (JTM), a plan to ensure that the transition to a green energy-based economy is fair and inclusive and protects the rights of all, including workers, frontline communities, women and indigenous peoples.

Although far from perfect, the JTM was only adopted after years of civil society organizing, including impossible-to-ignore protests at Cop30. This mechanism represents an important step in putting citizens at the center of climate policy after decades of technocratic solutions, according to Puentes.

There have also been encouraging signs that a growing number of states – South and North – are fed up with the inertia and obstruction that block meaningful action and are prepared to stand with affected communities and go their own way.

Colombia and the Netherlands, supported by 22 countries, will independently develop a roadmap for phasing out fossil fuels, starting with a conference in April 2026 in the coal port city of Santa Marta, Colombia. The plan aims to enable states, cities, affected communities, and health, science, human rights, and other experts to share experiences and best practices, and implement policy ideas outside of the fast-paced, consensus-based COP process.

This parallel fossil fuel roadmap initiative could establish regional solutions and a trade bloc with the power to sanction nations – and financial institutions – that continue to support fossil fuels.

Elisa Morgera, the UN special rapporteur on climate change and human rights, said the new alliance could be a game-changer. “We now have a significant group of states from all regions that want to engage in good faith and make progress on phasing out fossil fuels and can no longer wait for the COP process,” she said.

“It’s so important that people around the world see that there is political will and power to move this forward, and see what it looks like, because there is a great lack of imagination. We have been so bombarded by climate misinformation from fossil fuel companies that it’s hard to imagine what our lives would be like without them, but there are examples of cities, towns and communities doing this.”

Colombia and the Netherlands were strongly pushed by ordinary people to make the right decisions.

In 2023, Colombia, a major fossil fuel producer with fierce and well-organized climate and social justice movements, signed the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty which now brings together 18 countries, 140 cities and subnational governments, the World Health Organization, more than 4,000 civil society organizations, and more than 3,000 scientists and academics.

It was this civil society-led initiative that first created a plan to end new fossil fuel projects and manage an equitable phase-out of coal, oil and gas.

“Many political leaders are captured by fossil fuel interests or lack the courage to challenge them, while developing countries are held back by the rich world’s inability to provide finance and technology close to a fair share,” said Harjeet Singh, a veteran climate activist and strategic adviser to the non-proliferation treaty. “That’s why movements are essential watchdogs – naming polluters, speaking out against greenwashing, and demanding the funds, deadlines, and protections workers and communities need to transition with rights and dignity.” »

And change can be contagious. After mounting protests and litigation from indigenous communities and environmental groups against the expansion of Brazil’s oil and gas projects in the Amazon, Cop30 President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced the first step toward a national roadmap for phasing out fossil fuels. Yet dizzying contradictory policies are all too common among states seen as climate leaders — and Brazil also recently passed the so-called “devastation bill,” which critics say would accelerate deforestation in the Amazon.

Courts become a frontline for climate justice

The failure to abandon fossil fuels constitutes a violation of international law, according to a July 2025 ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), alongside several other international courts and tribunals.

The ICJ’s advisory opinion, initiated by Pacific Island law students, confirmed what communities have been arguing in courts around the world for a decade. Governments have a range of legal obligations arising from the climate crisis, including phasing out fossil fuels and regulating polluting businesses.

The landmark ruling by the world’s highest court dates back to a 2015 trial when the Netherlands became the first state to take stricter climate measures, in a case brought by 900 Dutch citizens and the Urgenda Foundation, an environmental group.

“In just 10 years, climate litigation has grown from a handful of complaints in national courts to a global system of accountability recognized by the highest international courts and tribunals,” said Dennis Van Berkel, legal counsel at the Urgenda Foundation, in a recent Climate Litigation Network report. “This transformation was built on a case by case, country by country basis. Some judgments failed, but everyone contributed by refining arguments, strengthening alliances, raising public awareness and laying the foundations for those that followed.”

A recent ruling in South Africa halted a major internationally funded offshore oil and gas project opposed by coastal communities and environmental groups. The government has suspended all other new oil and gas proposals, pending an appeal.

“Access to justice and litigation is the most peaceful way to move forward and help states and businesses correct their mistakes, make the right decision and advance climate action. It’s not that litigation solves everything, but it is a very important part of advancing the systemic changes we need,” the UN’s Puentes said.

Indigenous knowledge shows the way forward

For thousands of years, indigenous peoples have lived in respectful harmony with the planet – using, not exploiting, the natural resources of our forests, seas, rivers and lands. In addition to this vast ancient knowledge, we have 21st century tools and technologies, as well as innovative local and regional solutions, which together should be at the heart of global efforts to combat the climate crisis.

Next year, as every year, it will be up to ordinary citizens to harness their immense power through the courts, protests, multilateral spaces and the ballot box to ensure that communities affected by climate and human rights become the center of climate negotiations and action.

“If we wait for Cop31 to save us, we have already surrendered,” said Raj Patel, a research professor at the University of Texas and author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the Global Food System.

“The test is not whether diplomats can develop better language in Antalya. [in Turkey] next year, but whether agricultural movements, indigenous movements and climate movements can generate enough political pressure that governments fear inaction more than confronting corporate power.