By Annika Zamboni
Translation from Italian by Giorgia Zappa
This morning I was on the bus headed to the COP30, in Belém. The blue zone, where negotiations take place, is 30 minutes away from our camp, so I always try to find someone to talk to during the journey. Today, I travelled with my mind to Angola.
My eyes crossed with a Black woman, with brightly coloured clothes, who was sitting not far from me. From her badge I saw that she is registered as “Party”, a negotiator representing Angola. She seemed nice, so I approached her. Unfortunately, she said that she doesn’t speak English, just Portuguese. This didn’t stop us: we started talking through gestures and then with Google Translate, since the conversation on the table wasn’t easy.
A Country filled with natural resources, gas and oil
I’ve asked her about her expectations for negotiations, what are her hopes. She told me she came here to find investors since her Country is filled with natural resources, gas and oil. I was taken aback. I hardly understood how a Country can let a citizen go to a Global Conference on climate in search of investments in the fossil fuel industry.
I then asked her if gas and oil are the only resources they rely on. She tells me how Angola would like to invest in tourism and agriculture, but at the moment, the main goal keeps on being tied with fossil fuel. She continued by saying how poor the population is: new investments could create new workplaces and relieve, at least in part, the local economy.
I wanted to get to the bottom of the question, so I asked her, if for a country like Angola, it’s convenient to come to Brasil, at COP, for her goal. She answered me, typing the telephone confidently, by saying “it’s a highly topical issue, linked to a human factor and interconnected with every activity”. She also added how, for this reason, it’s important to share and learn from countries with a good knowledge of the subject. Since I wanted to investigate more, I asked what her country was doing concretely in relation to the energetic transition. She said “The oil industry is following the global trends, now we are exploiting the mining sector while taking environmental impact into account ”
I then asked her if in Angola there is a place of discussion for these themes and if the transition is a priority to the government and the population. Smiling, she typed “I think that it is not a sufficiently discussed topic, even though the transition is already happening”
One of the youngest in the world
I remained silently watching the words on the screen. It seemed to me that a more deep message was hiding between the lines: a growing, but still fragile awareness. I got off the bus, saying goodbye to the woman. Today, I had to enter COP with the mind already full of thoughts, doubts that maybe don’t even have real answers.
I thought about all the problems that the Southern Hemisphere must face. I thought about the opportunities that a Country, such as Angola, has in a global conference to make her voice heard, to make everybody understand their needs. Needs that are clearly different from the one on the negotiation tables; needs of a country in which richness is in the hands of few and in which the population is among the youngest in the world, with an average age of 16.
While I was walking towards the pavilions I thought that maybe not everyone comes year to talk about climate, and maybe not everyone wants and considers this theme in the same way I do. Today I learned that there is someone who comes here in search of a space and to be listened to, so as to face other problems or maybe, for simply keeping up with this changing world.