Arriving at COP30 honestly felt like stepping into another dimension. One second, I was outside in the Belém heat, and the next, my badge scanned green, and suddenly I was inside the Hangar – where the temperature drops, the noise rises, and everyone looks like they know exactly where they’re going (spoiler: they don’t).
I thought I was prepared. I had read every document, checked every map, colour-coded my agenda… and five minutes inside the venue, all of that meant nothing. COP rules apply, and rule number one is: nothing goes as planned.
Something I didn’t expect was how emotional it would feel to attend a COP in my own country. There’s a very specific kind of pride in watching thousands of people from all over the world gather in Brazil – in the Amazon – to negotiate the future. Every day, while running between rooms, I’d have these moments of: “Wow… this is happening here, this is happening at home.”
And because it was Brazil, everything felt familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. The way people laughed loudly in the corridors, the smell of food from the Pará stands, the warmth (literal and emotional). It made the whole experience feel special in a way I wasn’t expecting. I wasn’t just attending COP30 – I was welcoming people into my country.
My days followed the same rhythm: running between Gender negotiations and Just Transition sessions, trying not to get lost in the maze of hallways, interviewing people in any quiet corner I could find, and sending messages like “Where are you?? I swear I was just in that room” every ten minutes.
Of course, there were the classic COP moments:
- forgetting to eat until 5pm
- carrying two water bottles but still somehow dehydrated
- sitting on the floor because every chair was taken
- getting lost even while looking at the map
- trying to concentrate while someone in a mascot costume walked by
But there were also incredibly grounding moments – quick conversations with delegates who were just as exhausted, the quiet tension in the Gender Action Plan rooms, spontaneous exchanges with other youth observers, and the many times I felt genuinely inspired by activists and Indigenous women speaking with so much clarity and strength.
At the end of each day, when the venue finally emptied and everything got quiet again, I’d realise how much had happened in a single day. It’s impossible to explain what being inside a COP feels like fully – it’s political, chaotic, emotional, overwhelming, hilarious, intense, and somehow still motivating.
What I learned is that youth observers don’t just follow the COP. We feel every part of it. Our feet hurt, our brains overload, our hearts stay full. And every morning, no matter how tired I was, I woke up excited to go back – because being here mattered. And being here in Brazil made it all even more meaningful.
