Laurence Tubiana is the CEO of the European Climate Foundation, France’s climate change ambassador, and COP30 special envoy for Europe. Manuel Pulgar-Vidal the World Wildlife Fund’s global climate and energy lead and was COP20 president. Anne Hidalgo is the mayor of Paris. Eduardo Paes is the mayor of Rio de Janeiro.

In April, former U.K. prime minister Tony Blair wrote that our net zero policies are “doomed to fail.” This narrative — that the world is losing faith in climate action — has gained a lot of traction. But it is simply not true.

Across the world, strong and stable majorities continue to back ambitious climate policies. In most countries, more than 80 percent of citizens support action, and according to research published in “Nature Climate Change,” 69 percent of people globally say they’re willing to contribute 1 percent of their income to help tackle the climate crisis.

The problem isn’t a collapse in public support — it is the growing disconnect between people and politics, which is being fueled by powerful interests, misinformation and the manipulation of legitimate anxieties. Fossil fuel lobbies are working overtime to delay the green transition by sowing confusion and polarization.

But this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference COP30, taking place in Belém, Brazil, is our chance to change this. It is an opportunity to be remembered not just for new pledges or targets but for rebooting the relationship between citizens and the climate regime, a chance to truly be the “People’s COP.”

To that end, a new proposal, supported by the Brazilian Presidency and detailed in a policy paper sets out a vision for embedding citizen participation directly into the U.N. process — a Citizens’ Track. It calls for a dedicated space where ordinary people can be heard, where they can share how they’re organizing, what solutions they’re building to address the climate crisis, and what a sustainable future means to them.

There are a number of reasons why this must happen: First, citizens are crucial for implementation. They provide the political mandate as well as the practical muscle. Communities have the power to accelerate or obstruct new renewable projects, support or resist the mining of transition minerals, object to or defend policy options, and make daily choices that determine whether the transition succeeds.

But framing citizens as critical partners isn’t just pragmatic, it also defines the kind of transition we want to build — one of economic empowerment and social justice. A people-led approach cultivates a vision of more democracy not less, more agency not less, more protection not less.

This kind of participation can be a deliberate counterweight to the forces of homogenization and alienation, which have hollowed out trust in globalization, and ground the transition in diversity, creativity and shared responsibility. This is not an anti-business agenda — it’s one that balances relationships between citizens, governments and finance, ensuring decisions are made with people and not for them.

Second, participation builds fairness and resilience. A space at the multilateral level dedicated to advancing the peoples’ agenda offers a structured way to confront the questions that often fuel the political backlash against climate and environmental regulations: Who pays? Who benefits? Who’s left behind? More importantly, what can be done to resolve these trade-offs?

When such concerns are ignored, resentment grows. The farmers’ protests across Europe, for instance, have been targeting the perceived unfairness of climate policies — not their goals. Elsewhere, communities are worried about the everyday realities of employment, growing costs and cultural change. A Citizens’ Track would allow these anxieties to surface, be heard and then addressed through dialogue and cooperation rather than division.

Finally, participation also restores connection and hope. For too long, the climate movement has warned of catastrophe without offering a compelling vision of the future. A Citizens’ Track could fill that void, offering a modern, technology-enabled framework for deliberation and for reconnecting politics and people in an age of polarization.

In an era dominated by algorithms that amplify outrage, a citizens’ process could invite reflection, reason and shared imagination. Everyone wants to know the truth. Everyone wants to live in a world of stronger communities. No one wants to inhabit a reality defined by manipulation, cynicism and emotional violence. A Citizens’ Track points to a different future, where disagreement is met with respect, rather than hostility.

This is a vision that builds on a quiet revolution that’s already underway. More than 11,000 participatory budgeting initiatives have been implemented worldwide in the last three decades, allowing communities to decide how public resources are spent. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has tracked over 700 citizens’ assemblies and mini-publics, and found that participation has accelerated sharply in the last decade, with digital platforms enabling tens of millions of people to deliberate key issues.

From Kerala, India’s People’s Plan of decentralized government to participatory ward committees in South Africa and Paris’ permanent citizens assembly, citizen’s voices are being institutionalized in local, regional or national governance all over the world. And now is the time to elevate this approach to the multilateral level.

Initiatives like these form already a distributed movement, an informal ecosystem of participation shaping the future one action at a time — but they remain disconnected. By opening a dedicated space that aggregates these discreet citizen and community efforts, COP30 could inject renewed energy into the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

A decade ago, the Lima–Paris Action Agenda opened the door for cities, businesses and civil society to contribute to global progress. Today, the next step is clear. We cannot let governments off the hook on climate. Nor can we wait for them.

This is the future a Citizens’ Track can deliver — and the legacy Belém must leave behind.