BELÉM, BRAZIL | 10-21 November 2025 – As COP30 which stands for the 30th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), concluded in Belém, Brazil, Jesuit priest Fr. Toussaint Kafarhire Mohula, S.J.,from the Centre Arrupe pour la Recherche et la Formation in Lubumbashi (Democratic Republic of Congo), shared a compelling reflection on what he witnessed and what he hoped global leaders had finally heard.

Fr. Kafarhire works closely with communities living in the heart of the DRC’s mining region, where cobalt and other rare minerals are extracted in conditions that mirror both the promise and the paradox of the global green transition. These minerals vital for batteries, electric vehicles, and renewable technologies have become essential to the world’s climate ambitions. Yet the people who extract them often remain invisible in global conversations.

“I came to the COP,” he explained, “to bring the voice and the experiences of these local communities to the global level.”

Participating in his first UN climate conference was, for Fr. Kafarhire, an intense learning experience. But beyond the technical discussions, what struck him most was the human dimension the wave of voices arriving from every corner of the planet.

“It was a wave that said we are a community, a common humanity with a common destiny,” he reflected. “We must work together to confront the problems before us. Climate change is real, and it affects everyone.”

Conversations with participants from Fiji, the Solomon Islands, and other frontline nations revealed something transformative: their struggles, rising seas, displacement, loss of land might have appeared distant, yet they were deeply connected to global extractive systems that also shape life in the DRC. “Their problems were also ours,” he insisted. “And their solutions were ours too.”

During the conference, Fr. Kafarhire noted a clear contrast between the blue zone, where official negotiators focused heavily on markets, finance, and carbon mechanisms, and the green zone, where civil society gathered.

“In the blue zone, the logic was traditional, capitalist carbon markets, funding, the financing of this and that. Funding was needed,” he acknowledged. “But in the green zone, people spoke from the heart.”

There, he heard a call for a different kind of transformation a change of paradigm, rooted not only in policy but in spirituality and worldview. Participants invoked ancestral wisdom traditions such as Pachamama in Latin America or Ubuntu in Africa, reminding the world that climate action must be grounded in care for the Earth and one another.

“How do we take these practical and spiritual knowledges,” he asked, “and put them in direct contact with the Earth, so that we do not sink into the annihilation toward which we are going?”

For Fr. Kafarhire, one message remained paramount: listen. The communities he represented those who dug cobalt and other minerals with their bare hands were often absent from the very tables where decisions about the transition were made. These communities faced polluted lands, destroyed schools, displacement, and the gradual erasure of their history and identity.

“At the same time that we spoke of a ‘just transition,’ we had to ask whether it was becoming an oxymoron,” he warned. “Could we speak of justice when our lands were taken, our history was disappearing, and people were relocated without memory or dignity?”

Fr. Kafarhire insisted that decision-makers needed to broaden their vision: “They had to see not only the funding, but also what constitutes human dignity.”

As COP30 came to a close, Fr. Kafarhire expressed hope that the negotiations in the blue zone had truly heard what was being said outside it. He reminded leaders that the most important voices were often the quietest the ones coming from mining pits, from sinking islands, from traditional communities, from people whose stories rarely reached global platforms.

“I was only a messenger,” he said. “The message came from the base.”

If global leaders listened truly listened Fr. Kafarhire believed that collaborative, humane, and dignified solutions remained within reach.