As the world gathered for COP30 in Belém this November, Meeting of Waters returned once again to the frontlines of climate diplomacy — not to add another voice to the noise, but to insist that water carries its own intelligence. Our contribution spanned four dimensions: gender, digital innovation, artistic expression, and interregional dialogue.
From a session on young women's health on a warning planet, to Noéa's hydro-affective visualisations shown at Swissnex Brazil's Planetary Embassy, to a reciprocal sonic performance on the banks of the Guamá, to a cross-sector dialogue hosted in the Korea Pavilion — four very different rooms, each returning to the same water.
Together with Gender Hub Azerbaijan and Arrow Women (the Asian-Pacific Resource & Research Centre for Women), we convened panelists from Pakistan, Brazil and the World Health Organization to ask what young women's health looks like on a warning planet — bringing a women-and-water lens to a conversation usually held in purely clinical terms: emotional literacy, embodied experience, and vulnerability itself as a form of climate leadership. At the Digital Innovation Pavilion, Noéa's hydro-affective visualisations were presented alongside a live-painted, reciprocal performance — The Pulse of Guamá — created with hydrologist Dr. Stefan Uhlenbrook and musicians Rico Manzano and Bruno Gari, its textures drawn from sonic duo BioSample's field recordings of water and forest along the Guamá, one of the Amazon's arteries. The same visualisations travelled to Swissnex Brazil's Planetary Embassy at Belém's Emílio Goeldi Museum. And in the Korea Pavilion, hosted by K-Water and the Asia Water Council, we shared four years of Meeting of Waters' journey from a youth-led initiative to a registered NGO, in a dialogue on water economy, wetland restoration, technology and culture.
Healing begins not in separation, but in confluence.
Charlotte Qin Founding Director, Meeting of Waters
