Striking the right note to advance climate change action

In the early hours of Nov 15, before her departure from Brazil's industrial center of Sao Paulo to its port city Belem, where she was scheduled to speak at three COP30 events later that day, Yang Yuntong learned on a WeChat group about the trouble other Chinese attendees were facing due to airline overbooking.

Yang never imagined that she would be at the receiving end of this chaos. But she was. She was denied boarding at the gate, and her frantic efforts to reach Belem resulted in a barely acceptable alternative — a flight departing much later from Sao Paulo's other airport.

What should have been a little over three hours in the air turned into a 10-hour ordeal, and Yang missed all three of her scheduled events. Undeterred, the senior official of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, a Chinese automaker based in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, found another way to participate in the events: she recorded three video messages while waiting for her new flight.

Yang was not the only Chinese attendee to the 30th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to have had such a "dramatic" experience. Many others encountered unexpected travel disruptions and some even faced an evacuation after a fire broke out at the conference venue.

The challenges notwithstanding, the attendees showcased diverse and creative approaches to engaging with the UN climate conference — from games to songs and traditional painting. These unconventional mediums not only helped forge stronger connections between China and the global climate community, but also encouraged further climate action in China and abroad.

Yang's journey from Hangzhou to Sao Paulo took her almost two days. She first traveled to Shanghai by high-speed train, and then changed flights in Frankfurt, Germany, and Belo Horizonte, the third largest city in Brazil, to reach her penultimate destination before Belem.

Despite all the troubles, Yang, senior director of sustainability, ESG (environmental, social and governance) management and sustainable development of the group, said that representing Chinese automakers at the highest-level annual gathering on climate was "profoundly meaningful" for her company.

"From our perspective as a company, whether we want to promote ESG goals or sustainable development, the issue at the core is always about fighting climate change and reducing carbon emissions. So participation at a COP summit is not an option; it is a necessity," she said.

Diverse participation

Yang Peidan, executive director of C Team, an NGO based in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, said that although not many Chinese attendees experienced travel difficulties as severe as Yang Yuntong's, she has heard of disruptions caused by flight cancellations due to mechanical problems in the aircraft and by flight delays due to various reasons.

A regular participant in the UN climate summit since 2018, the senior NGO official administers a dedicated WeChat group for attendees almost every year and is, therefore, familiar with the common circumstances Chinese participants face.

She noted that most Chinese attendees had to take at least three flights to reach Belem, so any disruption to even one leg of the trip turned the entire journey into a logistical nightmare. Nevertheless, the turnout of Chinese participants at COP30 exceeded her expectations, she said.

The WeChat group Yang Peidan co-launched with her friends in August reached its 500-member cap surprisingly fast. She said she was also impressed by the diverse Chinese participation at this year's summit, and the crucial role these participants played in amplifying the call for climate action.

One standout example was the Boke Foundation, which showcased its SDG Hero board game. This innovative game, designed to educate users about sustainable development goals through gamified learning, became a hit at the conference, attracting attention from global educators and delegates, according to Yang Peidan.

Breaking barriers

Launched by the Boke Foundation in 2021, the SDG Hero program uses fun, game-based learning to teach children and young people the UN's 17 sustainable development goals. The game turns complex global issues such as poverty, climate change and health challenges into engaging problems for players to design solutions.

The game's multilingual interface, including English and Spanish, makes it a prime example of China's cultural output on the global stage, Yang Peidan said.

Her memories of a song especially composed for COP30 by Plant Technology Alliance, a Chinese-initiated global community dedicated to promoting sustainable development transformation through education and innovation, remain fresh.

The song was presented at the conference in video format featuring collaborative relay-style performance by 123 children from around the world, and was also performed in two events participated by children of a local school and delegations outside the summit venue.

The lyrics of the song say it all:"Love never ends. Hand in hand, we'll plant the seed. One world, one family we need. Finish meals, waste no more. Share your toys, value what's stored. Turn off taps, save the water. Turn off lights, save the power. Little hands can do so much. Heal the world with gentle touch."

Cheng Dan, co-founder and director of Plant Technology Alliance, who wrote the song, said the idea was sparked by climate-themed music she heard from African attendees at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, last year.

Drafted by March, the song was finalized in May, before being shared publicly to invite participation, she said, adding that the response was enthusiastic, with video submissions from more than 100 countries, which were then curated into a collaborative performance.

The song became instrumental in mobilizing people from across the globe for collective climate action, Cheng noted.

Featuring children from Asia, Africa, Europe and other regions, the music video boasted six languages including Chinese, she said, recalling that many visitors to their booth, where the song played on a loop, asked which country they were from, as the video didn't particularly focus only on Chinese elements.

Cheng said they printed the lyrics of the song, along with a QR code link to the music video, on the back of stickers. Many people who took the stickers later expressed their enthusiasm to learn the song.

"I believe the song's reach extends beyond borders, because music has no boundaries," she said. "It brings together people from different countries and of different skin colors, connecting them and moving them."

Songs serve as an excellent tool for breaking barriers, Cheng said, adding that although many people around her initially showed little interest in climate change, she managed to engage them on the issue with the help of her music.

Jiang Xinyu, who is majoring in English at Tsinghua University and is a representative of the Global Alliance of Universities on Climate, also turned to art to advocate for climate action at the summit, choosing traditional Chinese painting as a bridge to build connections.

The alliance was launched in 2019, with Tsinghua as its inaugural chair.

Despite attending an exchange program in Canada, Jiang's journey to Belem was no less demanding than that of her peers at Tsinghua. She flew from Toronto to Bogota in Colombia, and then to Sao Paulo before arriving in the host city for COP30.

The significant time difference between China and Canada made it extremely challenging for her to coordinate with other representatives of the alliance. As a result, by the time she arrived in Belem, her peers had already planned their events.

Understanding nature

Initially, Jiang planned to only exhibit her traditional Chinese painting skills at the China pavilion. But later she decided to also hold a side event themed on the art to promote Chinese culture among a wider audience.

"The attendance surpassed my expectations," she said, adding that their pavilion was packed to capacity, and many attendees who did not find a seat preferred to stand rather than miss the event.

In her lecture, Jiang introduced Travelers Among Mountains and Streams, a painting by Fan Kuan of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127). When viewed from a distance, the painting appears to feature only lofty mountains, but upon closer inspection, one can see a line of tiny travelers making their way.

"The painter's focus was primarily on nature itself, with humans representing only a small, humble part of the natural world,"Jiang said. "Such a depiction reflects the philosophy of 'inhabitable and traversable' nature, offering a meaningful reference for how modern people should understand the relationship between humanity and the natural environment."

During the lecture, Jiang posed a question to which she didn't hope to get a reply, and yet she did. "What kind of truth do you think this traditional Chinese painting seeks to reflect?" she asked.

A foreign attendee replied that the sense of freedom conveyed in the painting expresses the artist's in-depth understanding of nature. She also noted that the painting is not merely a straightforward depiction of what the artist saw, but rather an integration of his own thoughts and perspective.

"I realized that art truly transcends borders. It is something that can be appreciated equally by all," Jiang said.

It took Liu Shuo, climate and energy director of Onewo Space-Tech Service Co, more than 40 hours to reach Belem from Shenzhen, where her company is headquartered. She first traveled to Hong Kong, next boarded a flight to Doha, Qatar, and then another to Sao Paulo, from where she went to Belem.

"All of us who made it to COP30 are among the world's true climate advocates, precisely because getting to Belem is so difficult," she said, noting that this shared predicament of Chinese attendees allowed them to bond deeply, laying the groundwork for future cooperation.

In July, Liu's company launched the Zero-Carbon Partner Initiative, which has drawn participation from leading companies in the new energy and energy storage sectors. She said she expects the number of participants to expand further based on the contacts she made at the summit.

"At COP30, I managed to connect with some companies. We plan to arrange exchange visits to better understand each other's products and programs, and to explore potential opportunities for collaboration," Liu added.