The Power of Protest: How COP30 Perfectly Exemplifies the Importance of Listening to Your Stakeholders
- eleanorcrowther
- 7 days ago
- 3 min read
At Polecat, we’ve been sending out our daily briefing on COP30, covering and highlighting the most impactful news events from the past 24 hours of the news cycle. When we began the briefings, our only subsection was “Business and Industry,” but as COP30 continued, it became clear that we had to add a subsection for protests and activism. When it comes to understanding how these protests fit into the larger COP30 context, PolecatX allows us to do just that.
Tracking Social Controversies in Real-Time
November 12, 2025, 4:03 am GMT: Despite record turnout, only 14% of indigenous Brazilians are expected to access decision-making spaces at COP30.
November 12, 2025, 7:15 am GMT: Indigenous people begin protesting at COP30 in Brazil, stating “Our land is not for sale.”
November 17, 2025, 12:06pm GMT: UN is accused of cracking down on Indigenous people’s protests at COP30 – as it happened.
November 18, 2025, 10:13 am GMT: Brazil creates new indigenous territories following COP30 protests.
As we’ve been writing these daily COP30 briefings, I’ve been struck by the juxtaposition between the immense success of the indigenous people’s protests with the historically large presence of fossil fuel lobbyists attending COP30 this year. To paint a picture with numbers, fossil fuel lobbyists outnumber all COP30 delegations, except Brazil, with more than 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists attending the conference. This juxtaposition between a grass-roots organised movement by indigenous Brazilians and fossil fuel lobbyists reveals, particularly, how Polecat shines in identifying the sentiment and impact around engaged stakeholders.
In order to explore the difference in sentiment between these, arguably, different types of protests and activism, I was able to change the themes within PolecatX in order to highlight different forms of protest.
In the AI radar above, the blue signifies positive engagement. There is evident positive engagement with grassroots mobilisation and, naturally, overlapping positive and negative engagement (green) when it comes to host country dynamics. What’s particularly striking is the amount of negative and challenging sentiment (orange) associated with fossil fuel influence and lobbying.
What this chart reveals is that influence and impact is always much deeper than sheer volume. While we often talk about volume in regard to the number of media mentions, the lobbying and protesting at COP30 bring our guiding principle to light in a different way. Although fossil fuel lobbyists outnumbered almost all COP30 delegates, and even though Indigenous protesters were being barricaded out of the convention just a few days ago, Brazil actually created 10 new indigenous territories in Brazil. Moreover, momentum continues to build from countries and companies alike to build a roadmap that weans economies off of a reliance on fossil fuels.
COP30 reveals what Polecat has known all along – that it’s not only important to listen to your stakeholders, but that sometimes your stakeholders are not always the most obvious. Despite big industrial agriculture lobbyists and fossil fuel lobbyists dominating COP30 attendance, the sentiment towards them has been overwhelmingly negative in the context of COP30. On the other hand, while Indigenous protests were initially barred and barricaded from the conference and only made up a few dots on our COP30 sentiment chart, these protesters were able to make substantial and long-lasting change. At Polecat, we listen, analyse, and examine a curated data lake of premium media alongside major social media channels, so no event or stakeholder is ever overlooked.
We believe that every dot and headline is worth weighing, and no dot nor stakeholder is ever too small.
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