The Creature We Created: Reflections on COP 30, Knowledge, and Climate Transformation

Two weeks after the conclusion of COP30 in Belém, the distance allows for deeper reflection. As a performative cinephile who also happens to work in the climate arena, it felt almost inevitable that my COP30 reflections would wander through the shadowed corridors of Guillermo del Toro’s latest sensational adaptation.

Illustration by The Geostrata

del Toro's reimagining of Frankenstein continues to resonate: a Creature seeking understanding and connection, whose tragedy stems from abandonment rather than inherent monstrosity. This metaphor sheds light on what unfolded in Brazil and what remains ahead.

BELÉM'S PEDAGOGICAL MOMENT

Hosting COP30 in the Amazon carried profound symbolism, yet perhaps more significant was hosting it in the homeland of Paulo Freire. His best-known work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, argues that genuine education requires dialogue between teacher and student, oppressor and oppressed, where both parties transform through the encounter. Traditional education, Freire warned, treats learners as empty vessels to be filled with knowledge, perpetuating existing power structures.

COP30's attempt at “climate action with spirit and social equity”, as Marina Silva, Minister of the Environment and Climate Change of Brazil, termed it, embodied Freirean principles in some ways while falling short in others. The unprecedented inclusion of Indigenous voices in formal negotiations moved beyond tokenism toward genuine dialogue.

Indigenous leaders shared knowledge systems that Western science has only recently begun to validate regarding forest management and climate resilience. Yet the conference structure still privileged technical expertise and diplomatic protocol over lived experience.

The parallel People's Summit, drawing 50,000 participants, created space for what Freire called "conscientização" or critical consciousness. Communities experiencing climate impacts directly confronted the abstractions of carbon accounting with stories of floods, droughts, and displacement. These encounters occasionally penetrated the official negotiations, though structural barriers remained.

THE DISCIPLINARY POWER OF CLIMATE GOVERNANCE

Michel Foucault's analysis of educational institutions as sites of normalisation offers another lens for understanding COP30. The UNFCCC process, despite inclusive procedures, creates particular forms of acceptable knowledge and legitimate speakers. Technical language, economic modelling, and scientific metrics dominate, while other ways of knowing face translation or exclusion.

Consider the 2035 NDCs submitted during COP30. Each country's commitment follows prescribed formats, uses standardised metrics, and undergoes technical review. This standardization enables comparison and accountability, yet Foucault would note how it also disciplines nations into specific modes of climate action. Alternative visions that cannot be captured in tonnes of CO2 equivalent struggle for recognition.

Korea's range-based target of 53-61% reduction exemplifies this tension. The flexibility acknowledges uncertainty, yet the range itself becomes a disciplinary mechanism, creating boundaries of acceptable ambition. The extensive technical justification required for such targets reinforces particular forms of expertise while potentially excluding community-based knowledge about transition pathways.

ARTICLE 6 AND THE CREATION OF CLIMATE SUBJECTS

The operationalisation of Article 6 carbon markets, building on COP29's breakthrough, demonstrates Foucault's concept of subjectification. Countries, companies, and communities become constituted as particular types of climate actors through market mechanisms.

A forest transforms from an ecosystem to a carbon sink. A rural community becomes an offset provider. These transformations carry both opportunities and constraints.

Brazil's insistence on "measurable community benefits" attempts to resist pure commodification, yet the measurement itself creates new forms of surveillance and evaluation. Communities must prove their carbon management capabilities through documentation and monitoring that may conflict with traditional practices. The market creates "climate subjects" who must perform according to its logic.

THE PERSISTENCE OF EXCLUSION THROUGH INCLUSION

Foucault's insight that inclusion efforts can reinforce exclusion proved prescient at COP30. The conference celebrated record participation from Global South nations and civil society, yet many reported feeling more observed than heard. Youth delegates gained access to technical working groups and naturally found their contributions filtered through existing frameworks.

Women's organisations achieved gender-responsive language in several decisions while structural barriers to meaningful participation persisted.

The Enhanced Transparency Framework, now entering full implementation, exemplifies this dynamic. While promoting accountability, it also establishes hierarchies of capability. Countries with sophisticated monitoring systems set standards that others struggle to meet. Technical assistance programs, though helpful, risk creating dependencies rather than genuine capacity.

FREIRE'S BANKING CONCEPT IN CLIMATE FINANCE

The climate finance discussions at COP30 revealed what Freire called the "banking concept" of education, where knowledge (or resources) flows unidirectionally from those who have to those deemed lacking. Developed nations' pledge of mobilising at least $300 billion annually by 2035 (in public climate finance for developing nations as part of the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on climate finance) maintained this dynamic, with elaborate conditions and reporting requirements attached.

Several developing country negotiators explicitly challenged this model, calling for finance as reparation rather than aid, as justice rather than charity. Yet institutional structures perpetuate donor-recipient relationships that Freire would recognise as maintaining oppression through apparent generosity.

The Loss and Damage Fund's operationalisation, despite representing progress, still operates through traditional development finance channels that preserve existing hierarchies.

ACTION FOR CLIMATE EMPOWERMENT: TRANSFORMATION OR DOMESTICATION?

ACE emerged as a central theme at COP30, with numerous countries enhancing commitments to climate education and public participation. Yet Freire would question whether these initiatives promote genuine critical consciousness or merely adapt populations to predetermined transitions.

Many ACE programs focus on building public acceptance for policies already decided rather than enabling communities to shape those policies. Climate education often emphasises individual behaviour change while obscuring systemic drivers. Public consultations frequently occur after key decisions, seeking validation rather than direction.

The exceptions proved instructive. Colombia's presentation of community-designed adaptation strategies showed possibilities for inverting traditional knowledge flows. Pacific Island nations' storytelling sessions challenged Western framings of climate impacts. These moments of genuine dialogue remained peripheral to core negotiations, highlighting the potential for NDC processes to evolve by incorporating diverse knowledge forms, offering glimpses of more inclusive climate governance.

UNIVERSITIES AT THE INTERSECTION

Cambridge Zero’s Stephen Davison's framework of "five tracks of university influence at COP" gained new relevance in Belém.

Universities occupied ambiguous positions as both reproducers of dominant knowledge systems and potential sites of transformation. Academic research legitimised certain climate solutions while marginalising others. University partnerships facilitated technology transfer while potentially perpetuating intellectual dependencies.

My own position, transitioning from government delegation member to academic observer, embodied these contradictions. The analytical distance of scholarship offers a critical perspective yet risks abstraction from lived realities. Academic freedom enables uncomfortable questions, yet operates within institutional constraints that shape what questions get asked.

Writing for The Geostrata while observing COP30 revealed how knowledge production itself becomes contextual. Which data matters? Whose expertise counts? How do we validate different ways of knowing? These questions, central to both Freire and Foucault, permeated COP30's struggles over implementation pathways.

INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE AND THE LIMITS OF INTEGRATION

COP30's location in the Amazon elevated Indigenous knowledge systems, yet their integration into formal processes revealed deep epistemological conflicts. Indigenous representatives spoke of reciprocal relationships with nature that resist quantification. Their climate observations, accumulated over generations, challenge Western scientific temporalities.

The conference's attempts at inclusion often required translation into dominant frameworks. Traditional ecological knowledge became "nature-based solutions."

Spiritual relationships with land became "ecosystem services." These translations enabled dialogue but potentially evacuated deeper challenges to anthropocentric and extractive worldviews.

Foucault's "regimes of truth" concept illuminates how certain knowledge becomes legitimate while other knowledge faces scepticism. Indigenous warnings about ecological tipping points, dismissed for decades, now find scientific validation. Yet validation still requires Western scientific confirmation rather than recognition of Indigenous knowledge as independently legitimate.

THE FRANKENSTEIN PARALLEL REVISITED

Del Toro's Creature sought education to understand his place in the world, only to discover that knowledge without acceptance brings suffering. Similarly, developing nations have mastered the technical language of climate governance yet find their voices still marginalised. They perform according to UNFCCC protocols yet face continued exclusion from meaningful decision-making.

The creation metaphor extends beyond the climate crisis itself to encompass the governance systems we've built in response. The Paris Agreement, the NDCs, and the transparency frameworks, these creations now shape possibilities for climate action. Like Victor Frankenstein, we risk abandoning our creations when they reveal uncomfortable truths about power and responsibility.

LOOKING BEYOND BELÉM

COP30's conclusion leaves critical questions unresolved. Can climate governance transcend its disciplinary tendencies toward genuine transformation? How do we move from inclusion that domesticates to participation that liberates? What would climate action look like if genuinely shaped by those most affected?

Freire argued that liberation requires both the oppressed and oppressor to recognise their mutual dehumanisation under oppressive systems. Applied to climate governance, this suggests that developed nations' insistence on maintaining control ultimately constrains their own transformation possibilities.

Real implementation might require surrendering authority rather than extending assistance.

Foucault would remind us that resistance emerges within systems of power, not outside them. The moments of genuine dialogue at COP30, however fleeting, demonstrate possibilities for subversion within existing structures. The challenge becomes nurturing these possibilities while recognising how institutional frameworks constrain transformation.

THE PEDAGOGY OF CLIMATE IMPLEMENTATION

Reflecting on COP30 from this temporal distance, its significance lies less in specific outcomes than in exposing contradictions within climate governance. The conference revealed both possibilities and limitations of current approaches to implementation.

Brazil's hosting offered glimpses of alternative pedagogies for climate action, where learning flows multi-directionally, and wisdom emerges through encounter rather than instruction.

Yet institutional structures largely contained these alternatives within existing frameworks.

Moving forward requires examining how our climate governance systems create particular types of knowledge, subjects, and possibilities while foreclosing others. This examination must occur within institutions while maintaining critical distance from their normalising tendencies.

Del Toro's Creature ultimately wanted recognition as a being capable of love and contribution. Developing nations, Indigenous peoples, youth movements, and frontline communities seek similar recognition within climate governance.

Until we transform the systems that constitute them as objects of intervention rather than subjects of transformation, implementation will remain incomplete.

The work ahead involves continuous questioning of whose knowledge counts, whose voices shape decisions, and whose futures get imagined in our collective response to the climate crisis. COP30 opened these questions without resolving them. Perhaps that opening itself represents progress, creating space for the deeper transformations that genuine implementation requires.

CONCLUSION

Reflecting on COP30 from this temporal distance, its significance lies less in specific outcomes than in exposing contradictions within climate governance. The conference revealed both possibilities and limitations of current approaches to implementation. Brazil's hosting offered glimpses of alternative pedagogies for climate action, where learning flows multidirectionally, and wisdom emerges through encounter rather than instruction.

Yet institutional structures largely contained these alternatives within existing frameworks. The Creature's lament echoes across COP30's aftermath: "Believe me, Frankenstein, I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity, but am I not alone, miserably alone?"

These words could belong to any Pacific Island nation offering ancestral wisdom while facing submersion, any Indigenous community protecting forests while excluded from decision-making, any Global South negotiator mastering technical protocols while remaining systematically marginalised.

Their benevolence and humanity persist despite abandonment by systems that should embrace their knowledge. The question COP30 leaves us with is whether we will continue to make creatures of those who seek only recognition as creators themselves.

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BY EMELINE YEHYUN LEE

FOR THE GEOSTRATA

info@thegeostrata.com