Samoan activist Tunaimati’a Jacob Netzler took three flights and a bus ride over 24 hours to get to the big climate conference. The plan was to join nearly 200 other activists from around 40 countries to discuss the fate of the planet.

But Netzler isn’t traveling to Baku, Azerbaijan, for COP29. Instead, he headed to Oaxaca, Mexico, for the Global Climate and Life Meeting, which organizers called the “anti-COP.” The assembly would have a very different tone from its more formal United Nations counterpart. Luxury hotels and private jets gave way to dormitories and composting toilets, which reflected the activists’ aim to create a more egalitarian space.

“It really brought together people who normally wouldn’t be involved in the formal COP process,” said Netzler, the Pacific campaign associate for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative. “It brought people from the frontline communities.”

Last week’s event was a byproduct of the feeling that, after nearly 30 years, COPs are doing too little to address greenhouse gas emissions. Even the former head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which governs the annual meeting, called the whirlwind events – which attract everyone from heads of state to oil industry lobbyists – “distraction.”

Activists gathered in Oaxaca also rallied around a shared sense of exclusion from international collusion and concerns that solutions emerging from it harm communities. Anti-COP aimed to provide “a space to articulate our struggles and propose concrete alternatives (to the status quo)”. The five-day meeting ended with a final statement which outlined the movement’s next steps – including plans for increased coordination among participants and a proposal to send caravans of activists to next year’s COP in Brazil.

One of the main goals of the event was to foster understanding between the climate and earth movements that have historically operated in relatively separate spheres.

“There is a lot of reluctance on the part of indigenous groups to work with environmentalists because they are seen as white movements or movements coming from the Global North,” explained Dianx Cantarey, global coordinator for Climate Debt, one of the grassroots organizations that helped anti-COP hosting.

In addition, the meeting addressed four major themes: the impact of clean energy megaprojects on the communities around them, the global water crisis, the “commodification of life” and the forced displacement of indigenous peoples. He also explicitly rejected what activists see as government inaction on the climate crisis. Participants describe the gathering as both a response and an antidote to COP gatherings, which they say prioritize money, energy and fossil fuels over human life — a point underscored by the fact that Elnur Soltanov, the head of this year’s event, it was filmed with the help of the summit to do oil business.

“When you sit in your tenth opening statement (at the COP) and it’s the same, it’s frustrating to think that no other world is possible,” said Xiye Bastida, executive director of the Re-Earth Initiative, a youth-led of young people. nonprofit focused on making the climate movement more accessible and inclusive. She went to Oaxaca because “for us, it’s not about the parts per million in the atmosphere, it’s about how our societies have transformed.”

Bastida, Netzler and others from the anti-COP felt marginalized by the COP. She described the cockroach-infested youth hotels at the conference a year ago, and another attendee recalled once being turned away from the indigenous pavilion. It wasn’t always like that. In their early days, in the 1980s and 1990s, climate negotiations were among the most welcoming and inclusive intergovernmental processes.

“Initially, the climate regime was extremely open, permeable and transparent,” said Dana Fischer, director of American University’s Center for Environment, Community and Equity, who did not participate in the anti-COP. But, she said, that began to change around 2009, when Dutch police clashed with and arrested hundreds of climate change protesters at COP15 in Copenhagen. Since then, civil society has been increasingly marginalized; a phenomenon that was particularly exposed at the last three COPS, which took place in authoritarian states: Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and now Azerbaijan.

“Opportunities for NGO observers and members of civil society to participate have been reduced,” Fischer said. “When we got to Egypt … they couldn’t go into the actual hall.”

As they were excluded, supporters lost faith in the COP, creating what Fischer calls an “interaction effect” that led to a deep mistrust that spawned initiatives such as the anti-COP. Although this was the group’s second gathering, this year’s was much larger and the first to produce a roadmap for future action.

Anti-COP participants have called for everything from mapping the financial interests behind clean energy megaprojects that impact Indigenous communities to building a database of land defense and success best practices. denouncing the election of Donald Trump. There were also more direct statements, including a declaration that “All COPs are bastards!”

However, the anti-COP took place a week before the official COP for a reason: some of those who gathered in Oaxaca planned to be in Baku.

“For me, the COP space is to read the negotiating texts and make sure it includes and defends as many people as possible,” Bastida said, acknowledging that it will certainly be an exhausting experience. But, she added, “If I didn’t go to the anti-COP, I couldn’t go to a COP knowing that I was doing my part to include voices that were missing.”