An intimate alternative to COP30

Imagine gathering in a space that feels like someone’s cozy living room. Sitting on couches and silk throw pillows on banig mats. Where speakers are not on a stage but right between participants, seated in a circle so that each person’s presence is valued. Imagine being in a nature setting with fresh air, where you begin the morning with meditation and intention setting. Where you enjoy organic food and drinks. Where you learn to prepare nourishing meals together, with freshly harvested ingredients from a permaculture garden and a food forest right behind you.

Imagine being among young change-makers from across the Philippines, intermingled with seasoned leaders, artists, farmers, cooks, sustainability leaders, designers and architects who are already doing good, gathered together to share local solutions that can be replicated across our islands.

This was Daloy: The Green UnConference 2025. Held at Kai Farms, a permaculture farm and a center for culture and climate in the hills of Silang, Cavite, on November 14-15. An immersive, experiential experience that included community dialogue and community kitchen, and creative workshops like wild flower arranging, and painting to the rhythms of nature. Tours of the regenerative farm took place in batches, with a seed and seedling exchange for biodiversity happening on both days.

“The Green Unconference is about mindfulness, heartfulness, and soulfulness,” said co-convenors Amena Bal and Karla Delgado, celebrating 10 years of The Green UnConference, which is held every two years. “The themes for the Green UnConference 2025 and our way forward with fellow change makers are through five impact areas: Health & Nutrition, Regenerative Food Systems, Creativity & Culture, Reconnecting with Nature, and Climate Solutions.”

As extreme weather events like super typhoons, flash floods and wildfires become normalized, people are seeking connection as well as collective action that is immediate. Intimate, interactive, small-scale but happening simultaneously around the country and the world—gatherings like these are gaining popularity as a way to address the climate stress and distress we live with today.

They are an alternative to big conferences like the recently concluded COP30 in Brazil, where it was widely reported by solid news sources that fossil fuel lobbyists outnumbered country delegates.

“What seeds would you like to plant today?” The UnConference organizing team prepared questions for both speakers and audience with the intention of making the dialogue personal as well as a call to action. “What would it take for everyone in our community to contribute, matter, belong?”

Raf Dionisio of MAD Travel unveiled the brilliant idea of bringing climate math into the public school system—the better for youth to see how and which personal actions make the biggest difference. Amalia Morante shared her story of partnering with farmers in District 6 of Bulacan and sourcing equipment from the Department of Agriculture to produce certified organic rice, and a delicious pancake mix made with gluten-free flours using local, affordable ingredients such as saba banana, sweet potato, squash and mung bean.

The Green UnConference had youth leaders like Bella Tanjutco of Kids for Kids, which has been helping communities with disaster relief for 10 years now, talking about finding climate solutions in our own indigenous culture. She and her sister Natasha Tanjutco co-founded Tayo House of Culture & Creativity to offer design as a pathway to systems transformation. Renee Perrine of Hineleban Foundation shared about working with, and empowering, indigenous peoples in Mindanao with livelihood opportunities through a multitude of high-value products like organic coffee, while planting endemic trees for climate resilience.

Rina Papio inspired the group to transform their food waste into healthy soil to grow community edible gardens. The compost bins and pick up service of Soilmate Collective offers consumers a chance to prevent their household and business food scraps from ending up in landfills where they decompose and release methane—a greenhouse gas linked to the warming of the planet and extreme weather events.

Nicolo Aberasturi, practicing biodynamic farming for 30 years now, spoke on regenerative agriculture and agro-forestry as a true pathway to food security. His Banhaw Agriculture offers consultancy services for idle land and offers the option to incorporate animals in a closed-loop system.

Ronnie Yumang divulged his personal guilt as an architect building with aggregates like river rocks and sand that takes millions of years to form. His Balika rammed earth technology offers regenerative architecture as a more sustainable solution.

Jill Alvarez, head of sustainability of Manila Doctors Hospital, pointed to the responsibility of businesses that consume a lot of power and water to offset with climate action and social impact programs. Their doctors offer free surgery to under-served communities in the provinces. They practice circular economy by working with industrial partners like Bayo and Green Trident to repurpose old doctors’ coats into welcome kits, and to turn plastic waste into sustainable materials for communities displaced by flooding to rebuild their homes and livelihoods. Manila Doctors is the first hospital to serve organic food to cancer patients.

As a break during the community dialogue, chef Sabrina Artadi of Sabrina’s Kitchen did a demo and tasting of an easy and affordable wellness drink anyone can make using affordable sweet potato leaves and pineapple. We all felt refreshed after.

Amena Bal, trustee and current president of the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN), spoke about creating intentional communities with like-minded individuals and families for year-round collective impact. Celebrating 30 years, GEN is a global network of thousands of communities living sustainably, and sharing information on replicable models and best practices.

As co-founder of Kai Farms and as a sustainability leader for TDG, a group engaged in logistics, tech, renewable energy, and electric vehicle distribution and charging, I spoke about the transformative power of business to be part of the solution. Celebrating its fiftieth year in business, TDG has been working as a force for good without much fanfare, funding educational opportunities and providing shelter to the most vulnerable for decades, doing river and ocean clean-ups, and incorporating climate solutions into their operations.

Asha Peri, a chef and nutritionist trained in Western, Ayurvedic and Traditional Chinese Medicine practices, spoke on food as a source of life force—meaning food that is grown and prepared in a way that is alive and healing for the body. This is what she and her mother Ludy teach at their regenerative farm, Subli, in Batangas. Asha did an interactive food demo on making mung bean rice pancakes with a filling of ubod, slow cooked till tender, and a peanut sauce that everyone came back for.

Kai Farms creative chef, Sydney Enriquez, led the community kitchen showcasing wild leaves most people never ate before to make an unforgettable salad with flavors and freshness and a dressing that everyone loved. Ben Francia shared how his permaculture quest began during the COVID pandemic and how he now provides curious folks with an outdoor classroom in his Habilin Farms in Quezon.

Hal Atienza of Global Seed Savers talked about why every community needs to be seed saving for food sovereignty—which means having control over our food system. Sarah Sabado of Global Seed Savers taught a seed saving workshop, with the most engaged learner being seven years old.

The women of Roots of Wisdom, Francesca Regala and Lee Grane, focused on the essential work of supporting women and earth care through creating safe spaces and sacred circles. “Each one of us carries the energy of Mother Earth inside us,” said Lee Grane, reminding us that we are all one family of humanity. She played the guitar and sang Om Gaia Om Panchamama—a song she wrote about how the Earth is our Mother, and we must take care of her—moving many in the audience to tears.

With the first Green UnConference held at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) in 2015, it felt only right to have AIM Professor Manuel de Vera attend with youth leaders from all parts of the Philippines from Mindanao to Luzon. Aged between 18 to 35, the Future Bridging Leadership Program fellows were chosen from a pool of 800 applicants, with only 60 change-makers being selected for every cohort. Now in its twentieth year at AIM, the Bridging Leaders program has a network of alumni doing good in government, military, police, private sector and civil society. It’s about finding the good people in these sectors and working with them.

As Jason Apolonio, who spoke on wildlife and healthy ecosystems, shared: “It’s never too late to heal what we’ve broken. Regeneration begins when we no longer see nature as a resource, but as a home deserving our care and protection.”

Weaving culture into the UnConference, Anima Tierra played soul-stirring live rhythms with a mix of instruments from the Philippines and around the world like kulintang, djembe, kubing, seed rattles and horns, getting almost everyone off their feet and dancing to their heart’s content. Singers Maia Dapul and Bogs Castro gave us goosebumps with songs about freedom. We danced and recharged our bodies, minds and spirits, feeling free and empowered as a collective, as one family of humanity doing good—a little bit closer to creating a world where everyone in our community contributes, matters and belongs.