Hi John,
I want to send a heartfelt thank you to you as a Global Justice Now supporter for everything you have done to support our work at COP26.
As you will no doubt have seen in the media, the summit concluded late on Saturday with an agreement that leaves the 1.5 degree target for limiting global temperature rise on life support. There are some small steps forward in some areas, but the deal itself is no cause for celebration.
You can read our media reaction to the summit, and our Twitter summary of the outcomes, but for today I want to share three of our most important takeaways from the last fortnight.
1) The rich world has tried to divert attention from its failure to tackle a climate crisis which they created.
All fossil fuels need phasing out as soon as possible to deal with climate change – indeed, working out a plan to keep fossil fuels in the ground should be the main aim of COP. Yet the agreement drafted by the UK presidency made no mention of phasing out oil and gas, only coal. This failure to confront the fossil fuel industry and expose only those countries still dependent on coal was divisive and caused the final argument that overshadowed the signing of the deal.
Of course, the world needs to phase out coal as quickly as possible everywhere, but the transition away from fossil fuels needs to be a just one and that means giving the finance for countries in the global south to make that transition, as well as recognising the differing starting points of different countries in terms of historical emissions (the UK, for example, has 18 times the historical emissions per person of India). The deflection tactics employed over this one line of the agreement are the story of the whole COP process in miniature.
You can watch our head of policy Dorothy Guerrero making this point on BBC News yesterday.
2) The rich world has once again failed to pay up for the consequences of its historic emissions.
It was 1992 when rich industrialised countries originally pledged to cut their emissions first and fastest, and pay money to the global south to help it transition to clean energy without sacrificing its people. Yet for more than two decades they have been trying to wriggle out of this, delaying action on cutting emissions and not paying up on climate finance, in order that western fossil fuel corporations can continue profiting.
The pledge to meet the flawed and inadequate $100 billion per year target by 2023 is thin gruel for communities on the frontline of climate change. An increased climate finance target post-2025 and a new fund to compensate countries for the irreversible ‘loss and damage’ caused by climate change were the two main global south demands at COP26. Yet there was no new target on climate finance, and while the Glasgow agreement acknowledges the concept of loss and damage for the first time, it stops there.
Given what the rich world has spent dealing with Covid-19, or indeed what a small handful of countries spend on their carbon-intensive militaries, the demands of island and coastal communities for adequate finance is perfectly reasonable. But as their communities are drowning – the rich world has simply averted its eyes.
3) The climate justice movement has changed politics since Paris. Now we need to force countries like our own to act.
The climate justice movement that came out in force in Glasgow and around the world has begun to dominate the debate on climate change. We contributed to that through dozens of media appearances, through our activists who were out in force on the streets of Glasgow, and through the people’s summit we organised with our allies in the COP26 Coalition. We put forward the arguments that you can’t tackle climate change without a radical transformation of the global economy or without paying reparations to those facing the worst impacts of a crisis they did nothing to create.
But while world leaders paid lip service to the need for big change, their final hollowed-out agreement shows that they didn’t really listen. That’s not surprising. After all, we’re confronting some very powerful vested interests and, although the clock is ticking, the big change we need will not happen overnight.
I am optimistic. The growth of the climate justice movement in recent months and years is incredible. It is the future, and in the years ahead we will continue to build it, ensuring not only that the next climate conferences make better decisions, but that we also transform a trade system which is protecting the climate criminals, and a financial system which continues to funnel billions of pounds to the polluters.
I’m so proud of everything our activists have done this last fortnight, and the movement we’re part of. The progress we’ve made has been won by you. So don’t give up. Let’s bank the victories and let’s keep fighting for real climate justice.
Thank you again for all your support,
Nick Dearden
Director, Global Justice Now
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