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Nov. 20, 2022
Contact: [email protected], 301-613-4767

Adrien Salazar, 408-348-3941 (in Egypt, WhatsApp), [email protected]

Daisee Francour, 415-312-5958, [email protected] Frontline Leaders Decry
Lack of Progress for Real Climate Justice at COP27 and Call for Further
Action to Protect Millions of Lives

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SHARM EL-SHEIKH, EGYPT - As the UNFCCC 27th Conference of the Parties came
to its conclusion with the adoption of the Sharm El-Sheikh Implementation
Plan, climate-impacted peoples recognized critical progress while also
decrying countries failing to confront the root causes of climate crisis at
the scale required as the final decision maintained further openings for
fossil fuels and false climate solutions that will devastate communities on
the frontlines of extraction, climate crisis, and fossil-fueled violence.

Members of the 60-member It Takes Roots delegation, which includes Climate
Justice Alliance [3], Grassroots Global Justice Alliance [4], Indigenous
Environmental Network [5], Indigenous Climate Action [6], Just Transition
Alliance [7] and The Black Hive at Movement for Black Lives [8], came to
COP27 demanding climate reparations from Global North Countries to pay the
climate debt they owe to impacted communities, respect for human rights and
Indigenous rights, and an end to fossil fuels and false climate solutions.

After thirty years of movements and Global South leaders calling for
funding to address the escalating impacts of climate disaster, the
establishment of a loss and damage fund at this COP is a historic first
step. However, the scale and severity of global climate injustice requires
concrete commitments for funding and a full program of climate reparations
from Global North countries to vulnerable countries and impacted
communities. As the details of funding mechanisms for loss and damage
become further developed, PARTIES MUST ENSURE NO-STRINGS-ATTACHED DIRECT
PUBLIC FUNDING TO IMPACTED COMMUNITIES. It is unacceptable for any funding
mechanism to reproduce colonial finance mechanisms that aim to profit off
of peoples’ suffering. GLOBAL NORTH COUNTRIES, INCLUDING THE UNITED
STATES, MUST MAKE SUBSTANTIAL COMMITMENTS TO ADDRESS THE UNJUST LOSS AND
DAMAGE DRIVEN BY THE CLIMATE CRISIS IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH, AND FOR CURRENT
AND HISTORICALLY MOST-IMPACTED COMMUNITIES WITHIN THEIR OWN BORDERS.

The Sharm El-Sheikh Implementation Plan critically fails to confront the
vice-grip of the fossil fuel industry. Many countries named the root causes
of the climate crisis in coal, oil, and gas, but a handful of Parties shut
down needed progress. Parties have once again failed to explicitly name the
clear and present need for a full and equitable phase out of coal, oil, and
gas in the final decision of the climate talks. In fact, world leaders have
copy and pasted the weak language from the Glasgow Climate Pact calling for
“phasedown of unabated coal power and phase-out of inefficient fossil
fuel subsidies,” which leaves loopholes for dangerous false climate
solutions like carbon capture technology. Once more, the fast-tracking of
Article 6 implementation on carbon markets continues to lay the groundwork
for a global economy of false climate solutions that prolong the life of
the fossil fuel industry, and undermine any gains on loss and damage
because more fossil fuels means more climate devastation.

The UNFCCC has consistently marginalized grassroots civil society
participation, and at COP27 the political conditions in Egypt limited in
protest and freedom of expression, aggravated the opaque processes inside
the negotiation halls. The It Takes Roots delegation stood in solidarity
with political prisoners and all environmental defenders, calling for
release of prisoners of conscience including Alaa Abd El-Fattah. Given
these conditions, the limited human rights language in the final COP27
decision is no surprise. The COP27 outcome is a testimony to the UNFCCC’s
lack of democracy and interest in Indigenous and frontline priorities.

_“Parties must recognize all fossil fuels as the root cause of the
climate crisis. Anything less is climate denial. An absolute and
unqualified phase-out of fossil fuels is a minimum in beginning to reverse
the climate crisis and address the injustices that have resulted from the
historical harm long suffered by frontline communities.__ At this COP, we
saw the United States offer a massive carbon market scheme which will only
further condemn the African continent and Global South nations to a future
of pollution and environmental chaos, all for the benefit of the fossil
fuel industry and big business. While several states named the importance
of naming all fossil fuels, some countries obstructed the call for a
phaseout of all coal, oil, and gas in the final decision. This is not
climate leadership, it is a process captured by climate profiteering,”_
said BINESHI ALBERT, CO-EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE CLIMATE JUSTICE
ALLIANCE. 

_“This COP brought an opaque, undemocratic process that once again
focused on the interests of financial institutions and the fossil fuel
industry than in the communities who have real solutions to the climate
crisis. The conditions of Egypt and restrictions on democracy made this COP
in particular a blatant hypocrisy. We stood by Alaa Abd El-Fattah in his
fight for his freedom, and the freedom of all political prisoners, even as
our own actions as activists were surveilled and restricted. While a
historic loss and damage fund in this final decision is a result of decades
of movements advocating for the lives of our communities, more must be done
to make concrete the promise of this fund and ensure no finance mechanisms
exploit people and reproduce colonial relations between vulnerable
populations and financial institutions. As our delegations head home, we
know the real progress to confront the climate crisis continues outside of
the UNFCCC in the streets and in communities where people are organizing to
stop new fossil fuel projects and build real community-led and
people-centered solutions,”_ said ADRIEN SALAZAR, POLICY DIRECTOR OF
GRASSROOTS GLOBAL JUSTICE ALLIANCE.

_“This year at COP27, we witnessed the Paris Agreement shamefully become
a crime against humanity and Mother Earth. With big polluters and rich
governments like the U.S and E.U failing to take responsibility to actually
reduce emissions at source, they also have yet to provide direct funding to
Indigenous Peoples and local communities of the Global South impacted by
loss and damage from the escalating and compounding effects of climate
change. Countries in the Global North continue to perpetuate a
long-standing legacy of colonialism and inequality, and we see this in the
financialization of climate change through carbon markets and article 6 of
the Paris Agreement where text regarding Indigenous and Human Rights were
removed in the final days of COP. As Indigenous Peoples, we continue to
face violence through land grabs, and environmental, social, health and
cultural dispossession and genocide of climate change. New financing
facilities and climate finance, such as a Loss and Damage Finance Facility
do not offer new solutions or new ways of thinking, rather they have
rebranded extractive financing to funnel money into more of the same false
solutions that continue to create more harm to our communities, lands and
territories,”_ said TOM GOLDTOOTH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE INDIGENOUS
ENVIRONMENTAL NETWORK.

_“COP27, without a doubt, has made it clear that the US and Western
Europe are only interested in profiting from the climate crisis. That they
are only offering false market mechanisms as solutions, and trying to force
the nations of the global south to pay for their continued survival with
odious loans for climate mitigation, damages and loss, rather than grants
or reparations, clearly means that their fundamental priority is preserving
their power and privilege in the inequitable world their colonial and
imperial ventures created. This farce has to stop. Some real solutions have
to be posed and implemented immediately. The clock is ticking,”_ said
KALI AKUNO OF COOPERATION JACKSON AND THE GRASSROOTS GLOBAL JUSTICE
ALLIANCE.

_“The Black Hive of the Movement for Black Lives expresses deep feelings
of gratitude for the global coalition of BIPOC organizations that came
together to call for climate reparations, fossil fuel non proliferation and
demilitarization. Every victory we celebrate today is due to the deliberate
commitment to solidarity to one another from Black and Brown communities in
the US and communities in the global south. We welcome the strides being
made to secure quality funding for the loss and damage that our communities
continue to demand and deserve. While the results are mixed at best and do
not go far enough to reach climate justice for the most vulnerable, we will
continue to raise the voices of Black and Brown communities across the
world who deserve better than the bureaucratic political chaos that often
ensues at COP when our lives are at stake. We call on all parties including
the US to move from climate action to climate justice. Our lives depend on
it,”_ said PENIEL IBE, OF THE BLACK HIVE-MOVEMENT FOR BLACK LIVES. 

It Takes Roots will continue the struggle for climate justice centering
real climate solutions in Indigenous and human rights, an end to false
solutions like carbon markets in Article 6 and "Nature-based" solutions,
and uplifting a Just Transition that centers Black, Indigenous, People of
Color and frontline communities over profit.

# # #

_Climate Justice Alliance is a member-led organization of over 80 urban and
rural frontline communities, organizations and support networks in the
climate justice movement. We work to build real solutions to the climate
crisis through building local, living, regenerative economies while pushing
back against false promises from corporate controlled interests._

Climate Justice Alliance

1960A University Ave
Berkeley, CA, 94704
United States


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