Going to COP28 was both an honor and a moral dilemma. As I embarked on the journey to attend the conference in Dubai, I was acutely aware of the paradoxical nature of the conference: the urgency to address the climate crisis and the carbon footprint generated by thousands of individuals traveling to and from a city rooted in oil production. That paradox raised internal questions about complicity – was I really supporting global climate action by going, or was I helping greenwash on an international scale?

In general, COP conferences are grand spectacles. Thousands of delegates, policymakers, activists, and observers from around the world converge in a flurry of discussions, negotiations, presentations, and emissions. In particular, Dubai, with its towering skyscrapers and opulent lifestyle, epitomizes the clash between economic prosperity and environmental responsibility. The city’s economy is deeply intertwined with the oil industry, a fact that casts a shadow over the discussions about transitioning to a greener, more sustainable future. The juxtaposition of holding a climate conference in a city emblematic of conspicuous consumption [DG1] fueled by fossil fuels was not lost on me or the attendees. (I say this recognizing that Americans’ average carbon footprint of 13 metric tons is abysmal despite it being meaningfully lower than that of the average Emirati (20.3 metric tons).)

While many of the broader trends and themes of the COP often felt out of my control, I found myself continuously inspired by the local representatives at the conference – city officials, indigenous peoples, and local experts – who shared their successes and challenges, advocated for their communities, and exemplified the power of communities to reverse climate change. One event, in particular, that highlighted this power was a meeting focused on the importance of mountain and high-latitude regions in the face of climate change. It was by happenstance that I attended this event as I, alongside fellow University of Michigan delegates Ananyo Bhattacharya and Carmen Wagner, volunteered as note-takers for UNFCCC.

At the meeting, there were representatives from all over – an Indigenous community in Alaska, a remote village in Sweden, Chile, Peru, Russia, Armenia, Greenland, Bhutan, the list goes on. While the conversation was rich with local insights and perspectives as everyone shared how their communities struggle through and adapt to climate change, I was most struck by the common threads highlighted from communities thousands of miles from one another. Everyone agreed on the need to collect and share data (quantitative and qualitative) from local communities, the need for inclusion of local and indigenous stakeholders when designing broader policy, and the importance of sharing effective climate adaptation practices globally so that solutions developed in one region can be adapted and implemented in others facing similar challenges. For example, after a Swedish delegate expressed her community’s challenges herding the local reindeer population in the face of melting permafrost, delegates from Greenland, Alaska, and Chile each affirmed their similar challenges and shared strategies they have developed for managing livestock and adapting infrastructure. Seeing these critical connections and shared locally-led adaptation efforts firsthand provided an empowering counterpoint to the often-contentious macropolitical negotiations.

Learning about the problems faced by local communities and the similarities between disparate communities from across the globe made climate change feel more real and highlighted our collective and individual opportunities to act. Global climate policy and community empowerment are both necessary if we are to reverse climate change – international climate policy helps provide the resources and opportunity for developing local initiatives; communities and individuals ultimately implement those initiatives to drive change. I can only hope the collaboration that I witnessed between local communities at the COP will translate to meaningful policy solutions from our global leaders.

More community-led climate action at COP28: