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“As you know, the most vulnerable people around the world are Indigenous groups,” she said, underscoring the vital importance of their presence at the current climate talks.
She has been attending caucuses and meetings, bringing concerns and wisdom from her own community and others. “There are Indigenous people around the world meeting during COP27,” she explained. “We listen to what’s happening in these days, and we have an agenda as well.”
Their faith underscores that agenda. “We believe in God, and how God created the world, and one of the theological points for Christians is that God has created the world,” she said. “We need to continue to read the Bible.”
Not only are people at COP27 connected as Christians, they are connected by simply living on the same earth together, reflected Solano.
“We are part of the society, we are part of the continent, we are part of the world,” said Solano. “As Christians, we need to work together with civil society to promote advocacy, and how we can live together, not only as Christians but together as human beings, as living beings, together in the world.”
She urges Christians to continue to have this kind of advocacy beyond COP27. “How can we share the life of Christ in our contexts?” she asked. “If we stop advocating as Christians we don’t understand our call.”
Christians have much to say, she added, “because we believe in peace, reconciliation, and justice.”
To put it simply, people need to return home from COP27—and push. “We need to push our countries to follow what they are saying, and press them to say that—and do that—in real contexts,” she said.
Churches can continue to press governments in their respective countries as they stand up together with civil society, she said, adding that she values the role of the World Council of Churches as a convening body for many different countries. “The due process is not here—the due process is in the countries,” she said.
She also believes in the power of hope. “We believe in hope and we embrace the hope,” she said. “As Indigenous people, as part of the Indigenous communities, I believe in a world without evil.”
That hope is grounded in the belief that we are part of the Mother Earth.
“We are part of the many people doing something very well, because we believe in reconciliation—we believe in hope,” she said. “We are dancing and we have our feet together with the land.”
