Tag Archives: #Equity

Statement on COP25

Big Polluters and Northern countries are throwing gasoline on the fire of the climate crisis, knowingly paving the way for even more fossil fuels

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Before COP25 even began, it was clear that Big Polluters — including the fossil fuel, agriculture, forestry, and carbon market industries — plan to lock the world into catastrophic warming in the next few years.  Intended fossil fuel expansion by 2030 is at least 50% beyond a 2C target and 120% beyond what may be compatible with the global commitment to limit heating to 1.5C. The vast majority of this expansion is projected to come from the U.S. and Canada.  

Big Polluters brought their agenda straight to the halls of the U.N. at COP25. With the help of governments like the U.S., EU, Australia, Canada, and others historically most responsible for the climate crisis, these polluters are strategically advancing rather than protecting against this deadly agenda:

  • They want to use carbon markets to “offset” rather than cut emissions, by commodifying nature and shifting burdens through carbon trading to the South — burdens that will be disproportionately forced onto and violate the rights of women, youth, indigenous peoples, and frontline communities. 
  • Polluting countries and corporations are pushing so-called “nature-based solutions,” which could be a euphemism for large scale biomass burning, carbon storage technologies, the commodification of the ocean, and carbon trading and offsets, that will displace food production and force continued deforestation.
  • Seemingly innocuous language on metrics could open the door to the most dangerous geo-engineering technologies by spraying sulfur into the Earth’s atmosphere to block some sunlight from reaching the planet. 

The result of all of this is that food security and the integrity of biodiverse ecosystems would simultaneously be threatened by climate change, by carbon trading projects, and by large-scale geo-engineered disruption of the planet. All this so that Big Polluters can continue digging up, burning, and profiting from fossil fuels.

These polluters know they are wreaking havoc on the planet but seek to extract as much profit as possible in the near term with the vain idea that their wealth will protect them from the impacts of planetary breakdown.

That’s why, in addition to all the above, they are seeking to avoid any liability for this deliberate destruction by attempting to expand a waiver against liability and block compensation and finance in discussions that are designed to protect the communities on the frontlines from harmful impacts: loss and damage.

If these proposals – being rammed through by polluting governments and the corporate interests they are serving – are packaged into a “deal” at the close of this COP, it will surely be a deal only for the corporate elites, while damning people and the planet. Such a deal would completely disregard best agreed science, including that presented by the IPCC.  It would condemn those on the frontlines of the climate crisis, while hiding the crimes of polluters. And it would lead to increased inequality with no increase in ambition, no real emissions reductions, and no pathway to 1.5. 

Experts have now assessed that the existential threat of climate change impacts surpasses that of weapons of mass destruction. We need bold, transformative and immediate action: We must prevent the proliferation of fossil fuels. We must fast track a just and peaceful transition to a safe, healthy and sustainable future for all. We must make Big Polluters pay for the damage they’ve caused.

It is not too late for governments to change the outcomes of COP25. In these final hours, it is not too late for developing countries to stand strong, to resolutely refuse the agenda of polluters. The need is clear: Advance real solutions, not carbon markets. Ensure developed countries provide funds and technology to help avert and minimize the worst impacts of climate change. Respect gender, youth and human rights, including the rights of Indigenous Peoples. And, recognizing that these polluters have known full well the harms they’ve caused, protect the right of sovereign nations to hold them liable. 

From the Amazon to the Arctic, our world is on fire. Allowing expansion of coal, oil and gas production at this moment of history is throwing gasoline on the fire. 

ActionAid International
Aksi! Indonesia
Alliance for Future Generations – Fiji
ALTSEAN
Les Amis de la Terre Togo
Arctic Youth Sweden
Articulación de Movimientos Sociales de Nicaragua
Artivist Network
ASEED Europe
Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development
Asociación Cubana de las Naciones Unidas
Asociación Cubana de Producción Animal
Asociación Cubana de Técnicos Agrícolas y Forestales
Asociación filosófica de artes marciales songahm, Uruguay 
Asociación Nacional de Economistas y Contadores de Cuba
Athens County Fracking Action Network
BankTrack
Center for Biological Diversity
Centre for Environmental Justice, Sri Lanka
Centro Ecosocial Latinoamericano 
Centro Félix Varela
CIET-Uruguay
CLEAN (Coastal Livelihood and Environmental Action Network)
CLEAN Kulna Bangladesh
Climate Justice Edmonton
Climate Justice Programme
The Climate Reality Project América Latina
Climate Watch Thailand
CliMates
Coalición México Salud-Hable
Colectivo Pro Derechos Humanos, PRODH-Ecuador
Colectivo Viento Sur
Collectif Breakfree – Switzerland
Collectif Senegalais des Africaines pour la Promotion de l’Education Relative a l’Environnement (COSAPERE)
Comisión Nacional Permanente de Lucha Antitabáquica – COLAT
Consejo de Iglesias de Cuba
Corporate Accountability
Corporate Europe Observatory
CUBASOLAR
Dakota Water Walk and Ride
Diko Bigas Institute Nepal
Earth in Brackets
EarthWorks
Eco Justice Valandovo
Ecologistas en Acción
Educar Consumidores
Energy and Climate Policy Institute for Just Transition
ENLACES por la Sustentabilidad
Environmental Rights Action, Nigeria
ETC Group
FIC Argentina
FESAR-Ecuador
Fiji Youth Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights Alliance (FYSA)
Foro de Salud Pública, Ecuador
Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland
Friends of the Earth Europe
Friends of the Earth International
Friends of the Earth Scotland
Frontera Water Protection Alliance
Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (Argentina)
Fundación Ellen Riegner de Casas
Fundación para Estudio e Investigación de la Mujer 
Fundación Salud Ambiente y Desarrollo, FUNSAD, Ecuador
Fundeps-Argentina
Gastivists
GenderCC-Women for Climate Justice
The Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice
Global Forest Coalition
Global Justice Ecology Project
Grassroots Global Justice Alliance 
Green Course
Health of Mother Earth Foundation
Indian Social Action Forum
Indigenous Environmental Network – International
International Centre for Climate Change and Development
International Economic OrganizationWorld Distribution Federation
Karavali Karnataka Janabhivridhi Vedike
Krisoker Sor Farmers’ Voice
Landesa (Rural Development Institute)
LEDARS Bangladesh 
March for Science
Mesa Colombiana de Incidencia por las Enfermedades Crónicas (MECIEC)
MOCICC-Peru
Mom Loves Taiwan Association
National Association of Professional Environmentalists
National Hawkers Federation India
NGO Defensoría Ambiental
Oil Change International
Organización Boricuá de Agricultura Ecológica de Puerto Rico, (CLOC – LVC, Caribe)
People’s Coalition on the Right to Water Indonesia (KRuHA)
Planète Amazone
Plataforma Boliviana frente al Cambio Climático
El Poder del Consumidor, México
Proyectando un Ambiente y Sociedad Verde A.C.
Redhawk Native American Arts Council
Red Uruguaya ONGs Ambientalistas
Redrum Motorcycle Club
RENATA-Costa Rica
Sacred Stone
Salud Justa Mx- México
Schaghticoke First Nations
Seeding Sovereignty
Semilla Warunkwa
SERUNI Indonesia
Servicios Ecuménicos para Reconciliación y Reconstrucción
Sierra Club BC
Sociedad Amigos del Viento (Uruguay)
Sociedad Cubana para la Promoción de las fuentes renovables de energía y respeto ambiental
Society of Catholic Medical Missionaries
Südwind
Sukaar welfare organization Pakistan
SustainUS
Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services
UKYCC
United Confederation of Taíno People
La Via Campesina
War on Want
What Next Forum
Women Engage for a Common Future
Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN)
Women’s March Global
World March of Women – Switzerland
World Peace and Prayer Day
Young European Greens
Young Friends of the Earth Macedonia
Youth Volunteers for the Environment
350.org

Declaración conjunta de la sociedad civil sobre la COP25

Los grandes contaminadores y los países del norte están arrojando gasolina al fuego de la crisis climática, abriendo deliberadamente el camino para aún más combustibles fósiles.

Incluso antes de que comenzara la COP25, estaba claro que los grandes contaminadores, incluidas las industrias de combustibles fósiles, agricultura, silvicultura y mercados de carbono, planean condenar al mundo a un calentamiento catastrófico en los próximos años. Los planes de expansión de la industria de combustibles fósiles para el 2030 nos llevaría al menos a 50% por encima del objetivo de 2˚C y a 120% más de lo compatible con el compromiso global de limitar el calentamiento en 1.5˚C. Se prevé que la gran mayoría de esta expansión provenga de los EE.UU. Y Canadá.

Los grandes contaminadores trajeron su agenda directamente a los pasillos de la ONU en la COP25. Con la ayuda de gobiernos como Estados Unidos, la Unión Europea, Australia, Canadá y otros históricamente responsables de la crisis climática. Estos contaminadores en lugar de proteger, están avanzando estratégicamente esta agenda mortal :

  • Quieren utilizar los mercados de carbono para “compensar” en lugar de reducir las emisiones, mediante la mercantilización de la naturaleza y através del comercio de carbono hacia el Sur, mecanismos que se traducirán en violaciones desproporcionadas de los derechos de las mujeres, los jóvenes, los pueblos indígenas y las comunidades en primera línea.
  • Los países y corporaciones contaminantes están impulsando las llamadas “soluciones basadas en la naturaleza”, que puede ser un eufemismo para la quema de biomasa a gran escala, las tecnologías de almacenamiento de carbono y las compensaciones para el comercio de carbono, que competirán con la producción de alimentos y fomentarán la deforestación.
  • Quieren ir aún más lejos y abrir la puerta a las peligrosas tecnologías de geoingeniería para rociar azufre en la atmósfera de la Tierra para evitar que el calor del sol llegue al planeta.

Como resultado, la seguridad de alimentos y la integridad de los ecosistemas biodiversos se verán amenazados simultáneamente por el cambio climático, por los proyectos de comercio de carbono y por la disrupción de la geoingeniería a escala planetaria. Todo esto para que los grandes contaminadores puedan continuar extrayendo, quemando y haciendo lucro de los combustibles fósiles.

Estos contaminadores saben que están causando estragos en el planeta, pero buscan extraer la mayor cantidad de ganancias posibles a corto plazo con la vana idea de que su riqueza los protegerá de los impactos del colapso planetario.

Es por eso que, además de todo lo anterior, buscan evitar cualquier responsabilidad por esta destrucción deliberada al fomentar una exención contra la responsabilidad y bloquear la idea de compensación y financiamiento en las discusiones de Daños y Perdidas, que están diseñadas para proteger a las comunidades en la primera línea de los impactos destructivos.

Si estas propuestas, producto de la captura corporativa de los gobiernos, se materializan en un “acuerdo” al finalizar esta COP, será, sin lugar a duda, un acuerdo solo para las élites corporativas, mientras que condenará a los pueblos y al planeta. Tal acuerdo ignoraría por completo las recomendaciones de la ciencia, incluida la presentada por el IPCC. Condenaría a los que están en la primera línea de la crisis climática, mientras oculta los crímenes de los contaminadores. Y conduciría a un aumento de la desigualdad y no a un aumento de la ambición climática, sin reducciones de emisiones reales y sin un camino hacia 1.5˚C.

Los expertos han aseverado que la amenaza existencial que el cambio climático representa, supera la de las armas de destrucción masiva. Necesitamos medidas audaces, transformadoras e inmediatas: debemos evitar la proliferación de los combustibles fósiles. Debemos acelerar una transición justa y pacífica hacia un futuro seguro, saludable y sostenible para todos. Debemos hacer que los grandes contaminadores paguen por el daño que han causado.

No es demasiado tarde para que los gobiernos cambien los resultados de la COP25. En estas últimas horas, no es demasiado tarde para que los países en desarrollo se mantengan firmes y rechacen decididamente la agenda de los contaminadores. La necesidad es clara: avanzar en soluciones reales, no en mercados de carbono. Asegurar que los países desarrollados proporcionen recursos financieros y tecnología para ayudar a evitar y minimizar los peores impactos del cambio climático. Respetar los derechos de género, jóvenes y humanos, incluyendo los derechos de los pueblos inígenos. Y, reconociendo que estos contaminadores conocen bien los daños que han causado, proteger el derecho soberano de las naciones a responsabilizarlos.

Desde el Amazonas hasta el Ártico, nuestro mundo está en llamas. Permitir la expansión de la producción de carbón, petróleo y gas en este momento de la historia es arrojar gasolina al fuego.

Lost and Damaged

Rich countries have utterly failed to limit their pollution despite knowing for decades the negative effects it causes. They have also failed to support poor countries in developing cleanly instead of with fossil fuels.

As a result, we live in a world that is already 1C warmer than a couple of hundred years ago. That might not seem like a lot, but all the climate change disasters we are witnessing show that even 1 degree warming represents unsafe territory for many millions of people. 

Hurricane Maria Damages Dominica's Main Hospital, Leaves ...
Dominica in the wake of Hurricane Maria

Because rich countries have also failed to help countries and people on the frontline of climate change to adapt, we must now face up to the economic, social and cultural impacts from climate change to which we can’t adapt. This is what policy-makers and experts refer to as “loss and damage”. Small island nations first raised the alarm back in 1992, but were fobbed off with insurance schemes. Nowadays, though, insurance providers won’t cover for many of the effects of climate change as they have become too common.

Warsaw International Mechanism

At COP19 in Warsaw, poor countries won their fight to create an international mechanism for loss and damage. At the time Filipino negotiator Yeb Saño was on hunger strike as Supertyphoon Haiyan battered his country, killing over 5000 people

COP19: NGO delegates walk out of Warsaw climate talks in ...
Yeb Saño supported by climate justice groups

This year Parties are due to review the loss and damage mechanism, so COP25 has become the moment to make it fit for purpose. Since being set up, the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) has made decent progress in terms of knowledge generation and coordination on loss and damage, particularly on climate-induced displacement. 

However, it has made zero progress on the critical and issue of facilitating financial support to poor countries so that they can avert, minimise, and address loss and damage. 

Fear of finance

Rich countries are very reluctant to even talk about this topic. The United States made sure to insert a “liability clause” at COP21 to absolve themselves from any responsibility for climate damages. Even though they are the biggest polluters of all time

Frontline communities around the world need resources to be able to cope with a rapidly warming world. In the negotiations, developing countries want to set up a comprehensive finance facility. This facility would funnel large sums of mostly public funds towards dealing with loss and damage. They also hope to set up an expert group on action and support for loss and damage, and to conduct a needs assessment for loss and damage in developing countries.

Poor countries like Dominica, Mozambique, and the Philippines are already facing huge amounts of loss and damage. In the case of Dominica, the country suffered damages worth 224% of its GDP in one hurricane. Therefore, they argue, the finance must be up to scratch. 

Rich countries could contribute directly from their national budgets. Supplementary funds can come from new and innovative sources such as air and maritime levies, a Climate Damages Tax on oil, gas and coal extraction, and a “Robin Hood” Financial Transaction Tax. Together these sources can generate badly needed additional funds. 

Though it is hard to estimate the total costs, a coalition of civil society groups have called for at least USD $50 billion per year by 2022, rising to USD$150 billion by 2025 and USD$300 billion by 2030. The coalition have calculated that the fair share of the US alone is 30-40% of the global effort to address loss and damage. 

COP25 should recommend other measures such as immediate relief on all debt due to be paid by developing countries who face the current climate emergency. This could take the form of an interest-free moratorium on debt payments, which would open up resources currently earmarked for debt repayments to immediate emergency relief and reconstruction.

A question of governance

The Warsaw International Mechanism was set up under the COP, but loss and damage is also an issue in the 2015 Paris Agreement (Article 8) which has its own governing body known as the CMA. (Shorthand for the absurd “Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement”). 

The “scope” of Article 8 of the Paris Agreement is narrower than how loss and damage has been defined under the COP. Because of this, developed countries are keen for the review to conclude that the Warsaw Mechanism should be governed exclusively by the CMA. Developing countries insist that the COP and CMA jointly govern the WIM. What seems like a technical quibble is actually a highly political battle.

Many observers have touted COP25 as the loss and damage COP. But with the Chilean Presidency and many developed countries’ attention focused more on the market mechanisms of Article 6, and with rich countries refusal to accept their responsibility, vulnerable countries will have to fight tooth and nail to make sure COP adopts decisions that take loss and damage seriously.

https://twitter.com/pragmactivist/status/1202206833844338688?s=20

The Group of 77 + China (a negotiating bloc of 134 developing countries) have submitted a proposal to the COP. In it, they outline their ideas for what COP25 should decide regarding loss and damage. With the moral high ground, they should be successful. But the vested interests against them are strong. Keep checking our coverage to see how to debate unfolds.

Another lost decade

Extinction Rebellion, the climate protesters disrupting ...

Even a cursory glance at the latest climate science makes it abundantly clear that the commitments to the Paris Agreement (“Nationally Determined Contributions” or NDCs for short) are simply not good enough. But rich countries are wriggling around to escape from any attempt to revise those plans in light of science and equity before they take effect in January 2021. 

There is a pattern here: in 2012, countries agreed the Doha Amendment of the Kyoto Protocol. This decision contained binding targets for rich countries to cut pollution from 2013 – 2020. Seven years later and the Amendment has still not been ratified. For comparison, the Paris Agreement was ratified in under a year. 

Several rich countries (Canada, Russia, and Japan) actually said they would no longer participate in agreements to reduce aggregate emissions by 18% below 1990 levels and revise this target in 2014. 

Bizarre Taiwan News Animation Mocks Canada's Pullout of ...

The so-called “pre-2020 action” has been shown by civil society to be wholly inadequate and unjust as it transfers the burden of tackling climate change from rich to poor. What should be a case of “why put off to tomorrow what you can do today” has become a case of kicking the can further and further down the road. A review of this pre-2020 action, or lack thereof, is scheduled to take place in two stages in Madrid. The first stage on December 4th will be technical followed by a high-level segment on December 10th.  

However, the EU, Canada, Japan, Australia, Russia and the US are unwilling to let the review be more than just a talk shop, as was the case with previous reviews. This is hardly surprising given that ten years of UNEP Emissions Gap reports have basically stated that these countries have spent the last decade doing the exact opposite of what they should have done. 

“Emissions Gap Report 2019”
Graphic from the 2019 Emission Gap Report

Not only have we lost a decade to inaction, according to a new report our governments’ current plans for the coming decade involves the production of a whopping 120% more fossil fuels than we have the ability to produce without blowing past 1.5C warming. 

some men just want to watch the world burn on Tumblr
Let that sink in. 

As we hurtle towards, perhaps beyond, planetary tipping points, there are people in positions of power making a conscious decision to risk the basis for human civilisation — all in the pursuit of profit. 

Of course, we cannot now get back the time we’ve lost. But the next critical decade does not have to be the same as the past. The future is not yet written. We know that global emissions must decrease by 7.6% annually starting now if we are to have any chance of averting a 1.5C warmer world. This would still be a world of incredible climate violence such as we have witnessed this year with forest fires ravaging California and Australia, flooding inundating Venice, and cyclones battering Mozambique, the Bahamas, and China. 

So we need a plan for rapid decarbonisation in every country. But as author Naomi Klein and scientist Sivan Kartha explained in a recent article in the Boston Globe

at a time of tremendous economic inequality and injustice, only a plan firmly rooted in both fairness and boldness has a hope of building the support necessary to take on the big polluters and win transformative climate action.

This is plainly obvious and evidenced in recent protests in Ecuador as well as the Gilet Jaunes protests across France – both sparked by a regressive fuel tax. But the same idea of fairness must also apply at the global level, for the same reasons. As the IPCC put it in their landmark report on 1.5C warming:

Public acceptability can enable or inhibit the implementation of policies and measures to limit global warming and adapt to the consequences. Public acceptability depends on the individual’s evaluation of expected policy consequences, the perceived fairness of the distribution of these consequences and perceived fairness of decision procedures.”

No country can stop climate change on its own. If one, even a large polluter like the US, managed to enact a just transition to zero carbon overnight, it would still experience climate change alongside the rest of the world unless all other countries vastly reduced their emissions too. The irrefutable need for an international approach is the basis for these negotiations. And that requires trust – something which has been severely undermined by decades of broken promises like we have seen with the failure to ratify the Doha Amendment and the failure to deliver the $100 billion per year of desperately needed climate finance.