Landlocked nations, often sidelined in climate talks, have formed a new bloc under the UNFCCC to advocate for climate equity.
This move aims to address their unique vulnerabilities, such as trade disruptions and food insecurity, exacerbated by climate change.
The bloc seeks tailored support, including adaptation financing and technology transfer, to ensure their voices are heard in global climate negotiations.
The first thing Maria Mchenga remembers is the sound — a low, animal howl that rose from the trees and split into screams as wind shattered the tin roof of her home in southern Malawi.
She and her two daughters, aged 7 and 10, had just enough time to grab a bag of clothes before Cyclone Freddy swallowed the hillside village of Phalombe, turning homes into mud-crushed tombs and dreams into waterlogged despair. Her husband, George, was swept away by a landslide while trying to rescue their goats. His body was found two days later, 12 kilometres downstream.
“We lost everything,” Maria tells Down To Earth (DTE) in an interview from Malawi, her voice trembling. “Not just my husband. Not just our house. We lost our way of life.”
Cyclone Freddy, which tore through southern Africa in 2023, became a haunting symbol of the climate emergency—a phenomenon growing more violent with each passing year. For Malawi, a country with no access to the sea, Freddy brought devastation not just in flooding and landslides but in food insecurity, trade disruption, and a humanitarian crisis that unraveled lives from the inside out.
It is stories like Mchenga’s that echoed through the marble halls of the Awaza Sports Centre in Turkmenistan this August, where leaders of 32 landlocked developing countries (LLDCs) gathered to chart a new course amid rising tides.
Inside the cooled plenary halls nestled in the windswept Kara-Kum desert—just steps from the Caspian Sea where luxury hotels line the shore—leaders confronted the same insidious crisis that devastated Mchenga’s home: climate change.
At the third UN Conference on LLDCs, something historic happened. These nations—so often on the periphery of climate negotiations—announced the formation of their own formal negotiating bloc under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The move marked a seismic shift in the fight for climate equity.
“For too long, the global climate apparatus has spoken of vulnerability but failed to operationalise fairness,” said UN Under-Secretary-General and Secretary-General of the LLDC3 Conference, Rabaab Fatima. “This group will bring the needed equity into climate diplomacy.”
Fatima called the formation of the LLDC Group “a critical step” toward ensuring that their specific vulnerabilities are reflected in global climate decision-making. “This achievement reflects the power of unity, leadership and resilience. It sends a clear signal that LLDCs will play a greater role in global climate negotiations.”
Despite representing only seven per cent of the global population, LLDCs accounted for 18 per cent of people affected by droughts and landslides between 2012 and 2023. Nearly 55 per cent of their populations rely on agriculture—double the global average—yet they remain marginalised in the international mechanisms meant to support those on the climate front lines.
Between 2012 and 2023, LLDCs bore the brunt of over 20 per cent of all global droughts and landslides despite occupying just 12 per cent of the world’s land surface. In 2023 alone, more than half of their population faced food insecurity. When disasters strike coastal countries, the world watches. But when they hit the dry heartlands of LLDCs, the suffering is slower, quieter.
“That ends now,” said Padilla Pacheco, Chair of the LLDC Group. “We’re not asking for more than what’s fair. We’re asking for relevance.”
The geography of isolation has always plagued these nations. Deprived of sea access, they depend on fragile corridors for trade and are boxed in by economic systems vulnerable to shocks. Their energy systems—largely hydropower—suffer from erratic rainfall, while their infrastructure remains brittle and underdeveloped.
Back in Malawi, the memories are fresh for Vice President Michael Bizwick Usi. Speaking in Awaza, he offered a moral indictment of the international climate dialogue.
“Many times, we go as a bloc and ask for general assistance. Some of the packages are not really relevant to the causes in those specific areas,” he said. “The term ‘negotiation’ must be understood in an ethical context… When an arsonist comes and burns down my house and then asks me to negotiate so I can rebuild it—that becomes the paradox.”
In an interview with DTE, Usi pressed the issue further. “Do Bhutan and Malawi have the same issues, problems? Are we negotiating on a fair platform?”
His words landed heavily in a room of policy makers already grappling with the lopsided nature of climate impacts. LLDCs are hit hard by disasters they did not cause and lack the resources to respond.
The sentiment was echoed by Dina Nath Dhungyel, Bhutan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and External Trade. “If you really want to fight climate change, each and every country must take responsibility.” Bhutan, which has over 70 per cent of its land under forest cover and is constitutionally mandated to maintain at least 60 per cent, has long been held up as a model for environmental stewardship.
Even in Bhutan, however, leaders like Tandi Dorji speak with urgency. “We are doing everything right,” Dorji said. “But the world must recognise that our efforts alone cannot offset the emissions of the largest polluters. LLDCs cannot be penalised for geography.”
A recent UN-OHRLLS report underscores their point: LLDCs face layered barriers in adapting to climate threats, from limited trade access to constrained fiscal space and weak governance structures. Most are net importers of cereals and remain vulnerable to global supply shocks. And yet, their access to climate financing remains woefully insufficient.
The Awaza declaration—at the heart of the Awaza Programme of Action—seeks to change that. It solidifies the LLDC Group’s formal status in climate talks and demands tailored support: minimum allocations of adaptation financing, streamlined access to technology transfer, and robust investment in climate-resilient infrastructure.
Fatima stressed the urgency: “You cannot adapt to a crisis with empty hands.”
Critics have questioned whether forming yet another group will lead to fragmentation within the UNFCCC process, especially since many LLDCs also belong to other blocs such as G77+China, the African Group of Negotiators, and the LDC Group. But supporters argue that the unique structural vulnerabilities of LLDCs demand focused advocacy.
“In a crowded negotiation arena, clarity is power,” said Pacheco. “This is not about competing voices. It’s about finally being heard.”
In the lead-up to COP30, the LLDC Group plans to publish a series of reports—data-backed, story-driven—detailing their distinct vulnerabilities. These will include satellite imagery, climate modeling, and human testimonies like Mchenga’s.
Her voice, humble and steady, carries across borders and bureaucracies. Her daughters now walk two miles to a temporary school. They sleep on mats inside a church-turned-shelter. A photo of George hangs above their makeshift bed—smiling beneath the jacaranda tree that once shaded their yard.
“They told us it was the worst storm in years,” Mchenga says. “But who will tell the storms to stop coming?”
She’s building again—bamboo walls, a corrugated iron roof. Aid workers promised solar lights and a water tank. Still, aid is slow. Roads are washed out. Supplies move through Mozambique. An elderly neighbour bled to death after falling from a collapsed roof—no ambulance could reach him.
“He could have lived,” Mchenga says. “If only help came faster.”
That delay is what the LLDC Group hopes to erase. By pressing for emergency logistics corridors and disaster-resilient infrastructure, they aim to ensure that suffering like Maria’s is neither prolonged nor forgotten.
“This is not just a diplomatic milestone,” Usi said. “This is a lifeline for our people. We are here because we can no longer afford to be invisible.”
Whether the world listens may depend on what the LLDC Group can accomplish with its newfound voice—one sharpened by loss, but poised, finally, to speak.