FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Thursday, November 21, 2024
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Credit: Bianka Csenki / The Artivist Network
Baku, Azerbaijan—Today, hundreds of climate activists took over COP29’s plenary hall and hallways to hold a People’s Plenary.
Photos available to download here.
QUOTES:
Tasneem Essop, executive director of Climate Action Network International: “The People’s Plenary at COP29 is a powerful reminder that the true power in the climate crisis lies not with the diplomats in their VIP rooms, but with the people. While governments continue to stall and manipulate, it is the voices of communities on the frontlines, grassroots activists, and youth leaders that are driving the conversation. This plenary is a declaration that people have always held the power to change the course of history.“
Lidy Nacpil, coordinator of the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development: “As we reach the finish line of COP29, we are escalating our demands for climate justice and reaffirming our unwavering solidarity with oppressed peoples around the world. We are calling on Global South governments at COP29 to stand firm, hold fast, and fight for our right to climate reparations. The people of the Global South are owed nothing less than $5 trillion a year in public, grant-based climate finance. While the governments of the Global North delay and deflect, the people of the Global South are dying. The Global North must acknowledge its historical responsibility for the climate catastrophe and pay up.”
Asad Rehman, executive director of War on Want: “As COP29 draws to a close, the very future of humanity and our planet hangs in the balance. Arsonists who burn down people’s homes cannot simply walk away from the flames and leave the victims to rebuild on their own. It’s time for an end to the hollow words from the USA, UK and European countries about keeping 1.5C alive, respecting human rights and standing with the most vulnerable countries. They must stop burning down the planet, cut their own carbon pollution, and pay up for the damage they have caused. Claiming empty coffers whilst funding the bombs dropping on Gaza and giving hand outs to fossil fuel giants to expand their own oil and gas whilst pointing the finger at others fools no one. Taxing the rich and making big business pay their taxes would raise trillions in public finance. When rich countries burn down the international rules-based system to give impunity to Israel’s genocide, when they refuse to stop funding and fuelling genocide, they are sending a very clear message to countries in the Global South, that in their eyes the lives of black and brown people have less value than others.”
Harjeet Singh, global engagement director of Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, said: “We approached this COP with the expectation that developed nations would acknowledge their historical responsibility for the climate crisis and show the political will to address it by committing substantial sums under the new climate finance goal. Instead, what we are witnessing are diversionary tactics and a glaring lack of commitment to mobilize the finance needed to confront the scale of this crisis. For many of us from climate-vulnerable developing nations, this COP is make-or-break. Its failure to deliver will starkly reveal the world’s true stance on our plight.
“We must stand united, unwavering in the people’s demand for climate finance, because we hold the power to drive change. As momentum grows around the calls for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, we urge more nations to join those championing this treaty and commit to a legally binding mechanism to ensure an equitable global transition away from fossil fuels.”
Eduardo Giesen, regional coordinator of the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice: “COP29 is proving once again that the UNFCCC is not a space to achieve climate justice. On the one hand, the governments of rich countries defend their status as global political and economic power and the interests of large corporations, while financing the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza. And a large part of the governments of the Global South cling to the model of political and economic dependence, promoting false solutions such as carbon markets. The peoples of the Global South, especially those of Latin America, must build our own agenda and political projects to overcome dependence and the climate crisis. The People’s Summit in Belem will be a milestone on that path.”
Carolina Muturi, coordinator of IBON Africa: “Africa has long been the exploited engine of global wealth–its lands, resources, and peoples drained to fuel the prosperity of rich countries in the global North, leaving us vulnerable to the worsening impacts of climate change. At COP29, we were promised financing to address this crisis. Yet, we are met with hollow promises and false ‘solutions’ like carbon markets that perpetuate the cycles of colonial plunder of Africa. Carbon finance is not climate finance; what the global North needs to do is pay the climate debt they owe to the African peoples and to all Southern peoples. COP29 must not be another stage for empty rhetoric. It must deliver on our demand for reparations. We deserve nothing less.”
Nada Elbohi of the Women and Gender Constituency: As leaders in climate action, women and girls in all their diversity are not inherently vulnerable, but made so through intentional structural barriers and systems of oppression that disenable us. Unless COP29 holds accountable the perpetrators and polluters who cultivate and benefit from inequalities, we will keep spinning the wheel of patriarchy, capitalism, militarization, extractivism, and colonialism. These are the same interconnected systems of injustices that have driven and continue to perpetuate the climate crisis. System change with gender rights at the heart must be the way forward.
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Photos available to download here. Free to use with attribution to Bianka Csenki / The Artivist Network
Media contacts:
Attila Kulcsar | Climate Action Network | [email protected]
Esthappen | Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice | estha.dcj@gmail.com | +306941437285
Isabel Rodrigo | Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development | [email protected] | +63 926 734 5712