The hardest month to keep showing up
This season represents one of the toughest times of the year for changemakers, climate leaders, and everyone working toward a climate-safe future. To write about COP is to acknowledge the discord, dissonance, and inner struggle that come with watching the gaps grow and the timelines compress.
On one hand, we want to communicate hope; to inspire others to engage, innovate, and believe in the possibility of a better future. On the other hand, it is painful to witness the institutional failings of the world’s most crucial climate forum repeat themselves year after year, as the impacts of climate change hit ever closer to home.
The fragile promise of cooperation
A decade ago, after COP21, I sat down and read the Paris Agreement. Anyone who did the same would have recognised its duality: groundbreaking in vision, yet fragile in accountability.
The document itself relied on two simple assumptions: that governments would recommit to climate action each year, setting progressively stronger targets, and that every participant would take action to meet them.
Every year since, I have looked for these two simple measures of success. I’ve scanned the negotiation room for people whose purpose in being there aligns with the aims of the original agreement. I’ve tried to interpret the outcomes in a way that empowers and supports others in understanding the progress being made.
Ten years on, I glance up from my laptop and catch the eye of my eight-year-old, with the realisation that everything has changed.
It’s time to shift.
The shift we now need
Instead, let’s name the weight of this work.
Let us acknowledge the disconnectedness, the structural failings, the complexity of emotions, and the pressure that builds in every human being who engages with this crisis. The stress that this discord places on those who lead, advocate, and show up.
A healthy approach is not about maintaining optimism while filtering out the rest. It is built on the ability to process the internal struggle of an externally failing system and to allow ourselves to crumble, to feel, and then to rebuild, again and again.
“COP30 can be the moment resilience is reframed, not as failure to prevent but as readiness to lead.”
- The World Economic Forum
Resilience is the work now, which, for changemakers, starts with the self.
Quiet resilience
Wales is culturally well prepared for resilient leadership. Britain talks Climate and Nature 2025 analysed public attitudes to climate action in Wales, declaring that we “care more deeply than people realise”.
Our culture embodies a sense of place, groundedness and spirit that radiates beyond borders. The climate crisis asks us to cultivate that same strength within ourselves.
This year, instead of looking for the positive spin on global negotiations, I’ll be allowing a more sustainable form of action to emerge from our community of resilient changemakers.
It’s only when we are able to ground our own nervous systems, that we are able to think holistically and clearly, for the creative, inspired solutions that the world now craves.
Guest reflection by Helen Draper, Trustee of Cynnal Cymru and Founder of Climate Calm™.
About the author:
Helen Draper is the Founder of Climate Calm™ and a Trustee of Cynnal Cymru. Drawing on her background in climate leadership and neuroscience-informed wellbeing, she helps changemakers align personal and planetary resilience. For further support, her free eBook Focus: Reclaiming Clarity, Calm and Climate Impact is available now.
