The Conference of the Parties (COP) is an annual international meeting created to deliver climate action for the whole world. In 2015, countries pledged to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius.

At last year’s COP27, parties agreed on creating a “loss and damage fund” to aid developing nations. But fossil fuel emissions are still rising, and many of us are wondering if COP can truly facilitate a just energy transition.

As someone who took part in the climate change process as a local youth delegate in 2021, I sigh whenever it’s brought up.

Sandrine Dixson-Declève, who has attended 10 conferences, calls COP a circus. Fossil fuel executives, business leaders and politicians perform their virtue through carefully crafted speeches and discussions with activists while host nations spend exorbitant amounts of money each year for the venue. It’s a stage decorated with green plants instead of red paint.

I find myself craving authentic voices during COP28, for people who acknowledge the madness of the process but offer moral clarity, inspiring us to continue our fight for climate action in new ways.

Here, I look to indigenous communities and stewards of Earth, to artists and writers like Robin Wall Kimmerer. Kimmerer is a botanist and author of “Braiding Sweetgrass.”

She offers us a new pronoun to refer to other living beings. Inspired by the indigenous Potawatomi word “bimaadiziaki,” instead of referring to beings as “it,” we can use the simple “ki.” Ki is flying, soaring. Ki is fresh water. Ki is shedding leaves.

Filipinos have such a word in Tagalog, “siya,” a gender-neutral term used to refer to any living being, human or more than. These words invite us to consider a relationship where other beings are equally important as humans. In English, we call this kinship or making kin. 

Kinship, as understood by many indigenous communities, teaches us to first and foremost value nature as if it were a person, as if it were a brother or sister.

In the Philippines, this means rejecting any notion of land ownership and instead asking permission from the land to partake from its food and water. This idea is best conveyed by the martyred Kalinga chieftain Macli’ing Dulag: “How can you own that which outlives you?” 

Kinship is also an active word that needs sustained interaction among the parties within the bounds of kin. This can look different depending on the place and dominant tradition, but making kin must be founded on the value of shared responsibility among equals. People defining what the rest looks like for themselves—what does good relating mean, how can I sustain this, how do I defend this—is the beginning of genuine climate action. 

I don’t believe that COP28 will achieve what needs to be done even if parties agree to a fossil fuel treaty. It’s unlikely that the industry will relinquish its exploitation of vulnerable communities.

That doesn’t mean the rest of us need to simply watch. We can practice kinship on our own terms, following the lead of indigenous peoples who have sustained the land for far longer than the fossil fuel industry has existed to destroy it.