Who Gets a Seat on the Struggle Bus? – Climate Generation

It was 8am in Baku, Azerbaijan when I woke up for the first day of COP29 still feeling the 10 hour time difference of my homelands in my bones.

The sun shone so beautifully through the kitchen window while I prepared myself some breakfast and it was the first time I really appreciated the cityscape view that I have come to love greeting every morning. I even enjoyed the gentle hum of the many parked and idling COP29 branded shuttle buses that wait outside of the hotel to bring COP29 participants to the Baku Olympic Stadium, where the event is being hosted.

After breakfast I took the elevator down to the lobby, exited the building, and hopped onto the first bus in line after showing the driver my COP29 badge. I sat down on the empty bus and then the driver began their route through the city. The bus made 2 additional stops at official COP29 transit hubs, filling the shuttle with eager COP29 participants, before heading straight for our destination.

Growing up in Minneapolis, my mother and I took the bus everywhere. We did not have access to a car until I was in middle school so taking the bus was not a choice but a necessity derived from poverty. This necessity continued through most of my 20s, as a single mother on welfare myself, while I was working towards a degree in chemistry. Now, as a financially stable adult who owns 2 vehicles and has the privilege of choice, I still tend to prefer public transit whenever possible as it is a sunk-cost in terms of carbon and VOC emissions. My point is — I am familiar with the bus and general bus etiquette.

As I sat on the bus, watching the bustle of Baku from my window seat, I was excited to feel surrounded by like-minded professionals and activists engaged in the climate change mitigation space and was looking forward to the sessions I planned to attend that day. However, I was removed from my daydreaming when I felt the pain of a hair being plucked from my head. The man sitting behind me kept putting his hands on the back of my seat with no consideration for my hair, which was simply existing. I tried shifting and moving my hair, but over the course of the bus ride his hands painfully removed at least five hairs from my head before I had had enough and switched seats. 

At some point, the bus gave a slight jolt and a man near me gave a shout of frustration. He had hurt his knees on the seat in front of him when the bus jolted forwards and back again. The man mumbled under his breath and gave a long stern stare at the driver while shaking his head, visually communicating his upset with the driver’s performance. While I felt badly for the hurt the man complained about, I felt he was being overly rude to the driver who drove in a very expected and safe way.

Shortly after the jolt incident, another man began complaining very loudly about the temperature on the bus which, like the jolt, was not unusual or extreme. He told the other passengers near him that ‘somebody ought to tell the driver that we are too hot!â€. To no oneâ€s surprise, no one took up his cause. After about 10 minutes of complaints he finally took matters into his own hands and told the driver, in Russian, that the bus was too hot. The driver did not understand him and I thought how odd it was that he assumed the Azerbaijani driver spoke Russian. While some people do, it still seemed a bizarre assumption to make. Once the man was back to his seat, defeated in his task, he told his seatmate that he studied Russian in school and was excited to use it. While I will not say which school he went to, I assure that it has a reputation for educating some of the world’s wealthiest children. It is of note that the man at no point chose to remove the coat he was wearing.

It was at that moment that I realized: I do not think many of the people on this shuttle have much experience in utilizing public transportation in an urban setting. I was on the struggle bus with folks who seemed unaware of how obvious their lack of lived experience was in this context. 

The struggle bus did not let me off when I walked off of the COP29 shuttle. Almost every session, negotiation and presentation I attended that day was a harsh reminder that those in positions of power, with the authority to make lasting impacts on international climate policy, do not live the realities of the climate crisis. 

They do not ride the bus to work and therefore do not recognize the needs of the folks who do.

I attended over six sessions on my first day with topics ranging from Article 6, international cooperation, blue carbon, integrating science and nature, responsible mineral mining, etc. All of the speakers and presenters spent considerable time advocating for the inclusion of Indigenous peoples voices, traditional, land-based pedagogy and representation, but none of them included Indigenous people themselves or a methodology to meaningfully incorporate us in the future. At one such discussion a representative from the United States made claims that the U.S. strives to include Indigenous folks at the decision making table but gave no details, tribal names or method descriptions as to how that work was being done. Are we to simply trust the words and promises of those who represent power structures that have subjected Native folks to forced poverty, genocide and cultural persecution for centuries?

On my second day at COP29 I heard teachings from Indigenous women representatives from Tuvalu, Torres Strait, and Aotearoa. Tiana Jakevich of Aotearoa shared some words from their elders which translated from their language to mean: 

Indigenous people are of the land. We are of the rivers. Indigenous people are the physical manifestation of the Earth trying to protect itself.

Grace Malie of Tuvalu tearfully recalled visiting places from her childhood to find they are no longer there due to rising waters caused by climate change. She is just 25 years old. The climate crisis is occurring on a tangible timescale which is now altering how Indigenous peoples are able to pass down their teachings. Teachings which career climate change professionals claim they need. But if decision makers do not feel the urgent impacts themselves, can we trust them to act urgently? If they do not ride the struggle bus with us, or at least listen to us, can their vision of sustainability truly support and represent us?

Antavia is a Climate Generation Window Into COP delegate for COP29. To learn more, we encourage you to meet the full delegation, support our delegates, and subscribe to the Window Into COP digest.