From a place of privilege, she speaks the truth about climate to power

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Maria Laura Rojas, a climate activist from Bogota, at the outskirts of the city.

Erika Piñeros for NPR

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Erika Piñeros for NPR

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Bogota, Colombia’s capital, is set among forested mountainsides. The country’s forests have become more vulnerable to wildfire as the climate warms.

Erika Piñeros for NPR

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Erika Piñeros for NPR

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Maria Laura Rojas served as a climate diplomat for the government of Colombia. She recalls: «Going into the negotiations, what I was told was, ‘Speak with the confidence that you are speaking on behalf of 40 million Colombians.’ And I was like, ‘Am I? Really?’ »

Erika Piñeros for NPR

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Erika Piñeros for NPR

Maria Laura Rojas served as a climate diplomat for the government of Colombia. She recalls: «Going into the negotiations, what I was told was, ‘Speak with the confidence that you are speaking on behalf of 40 million Colombians.’ And I was like, ‘Am I? Really?’ «

Erika Piñeros for NPR

She’s been on official trips to La Guajira, and on similar trips to communities in Africa that were set up to demonstrate how these countries are vulnerable to climate change. «You go there in proper buses, and you can see people really struggling,» Rojas says. And yet, after the buses leave, the communities often receive little help. «It’s always shocking when you visit. And it’s always impactful when you see that these places are used to showcase vulnerability, but they are not correspondingly supported to do anything about it,» she says.

Rojas realized that the fight against climate change is actually a fight on behalf of everyone who’s powerless or left behind. «To me, climate is about justice,» she says. «The injustice of it is what has always kept me moving and involved. It touches on everything that’s important to me.»

Rojas left Colombia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs about five years ago. It felt like the right time. The Paris Agreement, in which the nations promised to cut global greenhouse gas emissions, had been signed in 2015. She was tired of the long hours and travel.

She co-founded a group in Colombia called Transforma, focused on climate advocacy. They’ve developed proposals for protecting Colombia’s forests and produced reports on whether foreign investments are helping to make the country more climate-resilient. Now she’s back at this latest climate summit in Glasgow, but this time she’s standing outside the negotiating rooms. She’ll be pushing countries to provide more aid to communities that need help adapting to climate change, and releasing a podcast from the negotiations that’s aimed at people in Latin America.

She believes that these U.N.-sponsored meetings can actually help promote change back in Colombia, in communities like La Guajira. «You can draw a line between what happens [at international meetings] and impacts for specific communities,» she says. «When you get countries to commit at the international level to take action, you have at least a hook from which you can also make demands at the domestic level.»

For instance, at U.N meetings, Colombia’s president has agreed that aid should flow to those whom climate change is hitting the hardest. He’ll be reminded of those words back in Bogota, Rojas says. «Like, you said that! You, the president, said that!» — and maybe he’ll be forced to pay more attention to people suffering from climate change in his own country.

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