Environmentalism.

There were war tanks on the streets — that’s my first memory of an international climate conference. The Earth Summit, also known as Rio 92 or Eco 92, brought the military to the streets of Rio de Janeiro in 1992, just two months after I had moved to the city.

As a child, I watched in disbelief at what seemed like extreme measures, with weapons pointed toward communities. But the impression stayed with me. If it was somehow justifiable for the Army to take over the city to protect those discussing the planet’s future, then the subject must be important. A seed was planted in my subconscious.

Fast forward twenty years: the summit was back in town. I was no longer a child. I had become a journalist, driven by the ideal of helping to write history, giving voice to the underprivileged, and having a positive impact on people’s lives — always with social, environmental, and political awareness. I didn’t yet know that what had led me to journalism had a name: ESG.

I covered Rio+20 closely. At the time, working for an economic newspaper, I remember the growing focus on finance, private-sector participation, and an idealized carbon market.

The rhetoric fascinated me, though I didn’t yet grasp the complexity of implementing international multilateral agreements. Even so, the emotion of seeing a packed conference center applaud as the final document was unveiled gave me chills — and watered that seed inside me.

The idealistic plant kept growing. Months later, I moved to New York. I studied international relations, focusing on energy and environmental policy. I went to Tanzania to see the impact environmental priorities could have on social projects. I traveled to China to research the geopolitics of energy. I toured Latin America to understand how international financing shapes infrastructure projects.

I traveled the world and arrived at COP26 in Glasgow, nearly ten years after those applause filled Rio’s conference center — and almost thirty years after arriving in a city taken over by the army.

By then, I had built a career that, as I once dreamed, sought to give voice to the underprivileged; aimed to explain national and international political contexts; and hoped, through reporting, education, and analysis, to have a positive impact on the climate.

And that’s what I did at COP26. Fulfilling the many roles of a journalist, I covered the details of political negotiations but also focused on the broader environmental movement — which extends far beyond negotiation rooms. Private companies were discussing accountability. The financial sector was trying to adapt.

But Indigenous peoples and civil society were the true stars. Disillusioned, they had long stopped waiting for someone else to solve the problem for them. They took to the streets, social media, and the COP’s hallways — and yet remained excluded from the negotiation tables.

Amid all this tension, it was thrilling to see more than 100,000 people take to the streets of a city with only about 600,000 inhabitants.

It was moving to hear stories of people who walked, cycled, or sailed for weeks to bring hope to Glasgow’s streets. To hear young people who learned early that their future is at risk. To hear Indigenous representatives speak of their daily fight to protect the forest — and the violence they face.

COP26 may not have delivered the results the world needs just yet. But it certainly watered thousands of seeds — and already-grown plants — that, with a little more short-term effort from world leaders, could grow, take root, form forests, and absorb the carbon we need so our children won’t have to fear for their future.

In their own way, the past two weeks in Glasgow gave those children space to dream.

A version of this text was originally published in Portuguese :