The climate crisis is also a crisis of stories

When we talk about the climate crisis, we often reach for numbers: rising sea levels, extreme heat records, tons of carbon emissions. But behind these numbers are people, and behind these people are stories.

The crisis is environmental, but it is also profoundly narrative. It is about who defines the crisis, whose voices shape the conversation and whose experiences are considered worth hearing.

Working for a non-profit organization and studying development communication have shown me that all communication, including the stories we tell about climate change, is political.

Narratives do not exist in a vacuum. They reflect the power structures that shape our world. Historically, these structures have favored certain voices: the Global North, governments and large institutions. Meanwhile, the lived experiences of those at the margins – indigenous peoples, women, people with disabilities and LGBTQIA+ individuals – are often reduced to footnotes or framed only as vulnerable.

Yet these communities, whose vulnerability is made worse by these dominant systems, are not simply victims. Many are leaders. They organize communities, safeguard indigenous knowledge, lead local conservation and create solutions grounded in lived experience.

In the Philippines, I’ve met queer environmental advocates who play vital roles in climate action. They are not token participants. They lead. Still, their stories rarely appear in headlines or policy conversations. Unlike their cisgender, male or institutional counterparts, their leadership often goes unseen. Publications like the recent issue of “Origins” by Greenpeace Philippines, which features grassroots voices often missing from mainstream climate discourse, remind us how courage and leadership exist among those long pushed to the margins. These stories deserve to be placed at the center, not only as footnotes of resilience or vulnerability.

This lack of representation is not random; it is systemic. Postcolonial scholars call it the colonization of knowledge: certain ways of knowing and certain storytellers are consistently prioritized over others.

Including more diverse voices in climate discussions is not enough – we need to rethink the very structures that determine which knowledge is valued and who gets to shape policy and solutions.

And the consequences of exclusion are real. Disaster response systems, for example, often rely on rigid, binary categories. LGBTQIA+ individuals, whose identities don’t fit into the traditional male-female mold or whose legal documents don’t reflect their lived names, are frequently left out. People living with HIV struggle to access medications in evacuation centers that rarely account for their needs. These oversights are not mere gaps but rather, failures rooted in a refusal to see certain lives as fully human within the framework of crisis response.

At the same time, these erasures intersect with larger questions of global accountability. While frontline communities fight to survive, corporations and governments most responsible for the planet’s destruction continue to profit. Demanding that polluters pay for the loss and damage they’ve caused is not just a legal or financial issue. It challenges the narrative that blames marginalized communities for their “lack of preparedness” and instead places responsibility where it belongs.

This is why communication matters in climate action. As climate impacts worsen, inequalities grow wider. The crisis does not level the playing field; it exposes long-standing injustices. Global policies and financing frameworks are important. But if they remain disconnected from the lived realities of marginalized communities, they risk becoming hollow.

Stories shape perception. Perception shapes policy. And policy shapes lives.

In climate conversations, representation often feels like a box to tick. Genuine inclusion asks for more. It asks us to recognize marginalized communities as knowledge-holders and decision-makers. It asks whether we are listening and whether we are prepared to let their perspectives guide where climate action needs to go.

Addressing the climate crisis requires more than technology. It forces us to confront the hierarchies that run through our institutions, policies, and stories. Likewise, it forces us to ask difficult questions about whose voices have long controlled the narrative and who remains unheard.

Justice begins with listening, after all.

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Eunille Santos is a queer advocate and a digital campaigner at Greenpeace Philippines.