08/11/2025
Statement for COP30
As we conclude the “Climate Finance Knowledge Event Ethiopia – Power in Partnership” training sessions that was held from 6-7 November 2025, we the participants and collaborating partners put forward the following statement for COP30.
Excellencies, Colleagues and Partners,
We speak today from the lived reality of Ethiopia’s pastoral communities. These are communities who have contributed the least to the climate crisis yet stand on at the forefront of its impact. Where drought is no longer a cyclical challenge, but a constant condition. Where rangelands & water sources are shrinking, livestock are dying, and young people are being pushed into displacement, instability, and despair.
Pastoralists need to be more distinct in the negotiation processes. When we generalize them, we make them invisible. And when we make them invisible, they become unprotected.
We need Climate Finance to reach pastoralist communities directly. Not through trickle-down promises, not through long chains of intermediaries, but through mechanisms that recognize the specific needs and adaptive capacities of the pastoral community.
And this Climate Finance must be gender-responsive. Women in pastoral communities carry the weight of scarcity. They walk further for water, feed families in drought, and hold communities together when systems collapse. Yet they are the least consulted, the least funded, the least resourced. Gender mainstreaming is not enough. We need gender-transformative Climate Finance that shifts power, voice, and decision-making.
We also need meaningful youth engagement and leadership, not symbolic inclusions. Young pastoralists are already innovating climate smart agriculture, early warning networks, mobility strategies, and peacebuilding efforts across borders. Invest in them, and you invest in resilience that lasts.
As we move forward in the negotiations at COP30, let us be clear:
Climate solutions that leave pastoralists behind are incomplete. Adaptation frameworks that do not recognize critical needs of the pastoral community are inadequate. Climate finance that does not shift power is insufficient.
At COP30, let us commit to:
1. Direct financing windows for pastoral communities, embedded in local community leadership and good governance.
2. Gender-transformative Climate Finance
3. Youth leadership and representation that goes beyond tokenism
4. Distinct platform and policy recognition for the pastoralist community that can address their unique challenges,
If pastoralist voices continue to be sidelined, our climate response will remain structurally unjust. If they are centered, our climate response becomes wiser, fairer, and more resilient.
We believe there is Power in Partnership, let us stand together to translate resources, decisions, and solutions into real, concrete change on the ground.
Thank you!
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