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Youth Lead Global Strike Demanding ‘Climate Justice Now’

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Original article by OLIVIA ROSANE republished from Common Dreams  under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Climate strikers march in Stockholm, Sweden, on April 19, 2024.  (Photo: Albin Haglund via Greta Thunberg/X)

“We are many people and youths who want to express our frustration over what decision-makers are doing right now: They don’t care about our future and aren’t doing anything to stop the climate crisis,” one young activist said.

Ahead of Earth Day, young people around the world are participating in a global strike on Friday to demand “climate justice now.”

In Sweden, Greta Thunberg joined hundreds of other demonstrators for a march in Stockholm; in Kenya, participants demanded that their government join the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty; and in the U.S., youth activists are kicking off more than 200 Earth Day protests directed at pressing President Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency.

“We’re gathered here to fight, once again, for climate justice,” Thunberg told Agence France-Presse at the Stockholm protest, which drew around 500 people. “It’s now been more than five and a half years that we’ve been doing the same thing, organizing big global strikes for the climate and gathering people, youths from the entire world.”

“I lost my home to climate change. Now I’m fighting so that others don’t lose their homes.”

The first global youth climate strike, which grew out of Thunberg’s Fridays for Future school strikes, took place on March 15, 2019. Since then, both emissions and temperatures have continued to rise, with 2023 blowing past the record for hottest year. Yet, according to Climate Action Tracker, no country has policies in place that are compatible with limiting global heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.

“We are many people and youths who want to express our frustration over what decision-makers are doing right now: They don’t care about our future and aren’t doing anything to stop the climate crisis,” Karla Alfaro Gripe, an 18-year-old participant at the Stockholm march, told AFP.

The global strikes are taking place under the umbrella of Friday’s for Future, which has three main demands: 1. limit temperature rise to 1.5°C, 2. ensure climate justice and equity, and 3. listen to the most accurate, up-to-date science.

“Fight with us for a world worth living in,” the group wrote on their website, next to a link inviting visitors to find actions in their countries.

Participants shared videos and images of their actions on social media.

European strikers also gathered in London, Dublin, and Madrid.

In Asia, Save Future Bangladesh founder Nayon Sorkar posted a video from the Meghna River on Bangladesh’s Bola Island, where erosion destroyed his family’s home when he was three years old.

“I lost my home to climate change,” Sorkar wrote. “Now I’m fighting so that others don’t lose their homes.”

Also in Bangladesh, larger crowds rallied in Dhaka, Sylhet, Feni, and Bandarban for climate action.

“Young climate activists in Bandarban demand a shift to renewable energy and away from fossil fuels,” said Sajjad Hossain, the divisional coordinator for Youthnet for Climate Justice Bangladesh. “We voiced urgency for sustainable energy strategies and climate justice. Let’s hold governments accountable for a just transition!”

In Kenya, young people struck specifically to demand that the government sign on to the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.

“As a member of the Lake Victoria community, the importance of the treaty in our climate strikes cannot be overstated,” Rahmina Paullette, founder of Kisumu Environmental Champions and a coordinator for Fridays for Future Africa, said in a statement. “By advocating for its implementation, we address the triple threat of climate change, plastic pollution, and environmental injustice facing our nation.”

“Halting fossil fuel expansion not only safeguards crucial ecosystems but also combats the unjust impacts of environmental degradation, ensuring a more equitable and sustainable future for our community and the wider Kenyan society,” Paullette said.

In the U.S., Fridays for Future NYC planned for what they expected to be the largest New York City climate protest since September 2023’s March to End Fossil Fuels. The action will begin at Foley Square at 2:00 pm Eastern Time, at which point more than 1,000 students and organizers are expected to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to rally in front of Borough Hall.

The strike “is part of a national escalation of youth-led actions in more than 200 cities and college campuses around the country, all calling on President Biden to listen to our generation and young voters, stop expanding fossil fuels, and declare a climate emergency that meaningfully addresses fossil fuels, creating millions of good paying union jobs, and preparing us for climate disasters in the process,” Fridays for Future NYC said in a statement.

The coalition behind the climate emergency drive, which also includes the Sunrise Movement, Fridays for Future USA, and Campus Climate Network, got encouraging news on Wednesday when Bloomberg reported that the White House had reopened internal discussions into potentially declaring a climate emergency.

“We’re staring down another summer of floods, fires, hurricanes, and extreme heat,” Sunrise executive director Aru Shiney-Ajay said in a statement. “Biden must do what right Republicans in Congress are unwilling to do: Stand up to oil and gas CEOs, create green union jobs, and prepare us for climate disasters. Biden must declare a climate emergency and use every tool at his disposal to tackle the climate crisis and prepare our communities to weather the storm. If Biden wants to be taken seriously by young people, he needs to deliver on climate change.”

The coalition is planning events leading up to Monday including dozens of Earth Day teach-ins beginning Friday to encourage members of Congress to pressure Biden on a climate emergency and Reclaim Earth Day mobilizations on more than 100 college and university campuses to demand that schools divest from and cut ties with the fossil fuel industry.

Original article by OLIVIA ROSANE republished from Common Dreams  under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingYouth Lead Global Strike Demanding ‘Climate Justice Now’

Climate Coalition Says ‘Stop Carbon Offsetting Now!’

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Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Environment technicians gather on a sample plot at the Kasigau corridor in Kenya on August 9, 2023. (Photo: Tony Karumba/AFP via Getty Images)

“Carbon offset trading is reckless and irresponsible,” said one campaigner.

A coalition of climate groups had a message for world leaders on Monday, Finance Day at the United Nations Climate Change Conference: “Stop carbon offsetting now!”

The conference, COP28, is hosted in Dubai by the United Arab Emirates—which, as the coalition highlighted in a joint statement, is set to “hold numerous promotional thematic events,” despite two decades of negative impacts from carbon offset schemes.

“Carbon offset trading is reckless and irresponsible,” declared Jutta Kill of the World Rainforest Movement—part of the coalition that includes ETC Group, Focus on the Global South, GRAIN, Indigenous Environmental Network, Just Transition Alliance, and the Oakland Institute.

“Throughout 2023, academic research , media , and civil society investigations have exposed how these projects routinely generate phantom offsets and result in land grabbing and human and Indigenous rights violations,” the organizations noted, pointing to “the forced relocation of Ogiek Peoples in Kenya’s Mau Forest” and “extensive sexual abuse at a Kenyan offset project.”

“Over the past months, Kenya, along with Liberia, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, have signed deals with Dubai-based Blue Carbon covering a total of over 24 million hectares of community lands,” the coalition continued. “Carbon offset project developers, standards bodies, auditors, and credit providers have pocketed millions from churning out carbon credits that have failed to reduce emissions and exacerbated the climate crisis.”

One “damning” probe from September found that nearly 80% of the top carbon offset schemes be deemed “likely junk or worthless.” Another study from that month, focused on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) projects, similarly concluded that reductions were dramatically exaggerated.

“At COP28, world leaders and climate negotiators need to recognize once and for all that carbon markets are a failed source of climate finance. They are volatile and unstable, marked by fraud, incapable of reducing emissions, and actually harm communities,” Oakland Institute executive director Anuradha Mittal said Monday.

The coalition pointed out that in addition to impacts such as relocations and abuse, “these projects, many of which are repackaged as so-called ‘nature-based solutions’ or ‘natural climate solutions’ or, when done at coastal and marine areas, as ‘blue carbon,’ have also drawn peasant and Indigenous communities into costly and complicated legal battles in their effort to affirm their rights and reclaim community territories and in their fights to resist the projects.”

The Kichwa communities in the Peruvian Amazon, Dayak communities in Indonesia, and Aka Indigenous communities and Bantu farmers in the Republic of Congo’s Bateke Plateau are among those negatively affected by carbon offsetting schemes.

“Over 20 years of history with offsets have resulted in the rights of Indigenous peoples being violated, increased land grabbing, and disproportionate impacts on Indigenous environmental defenders,” stressed Indigenous Environmental Network executive director Tom Goldtooth. “The false solutions will become a crime against humanity and Mother Earth.”

GRAIN’s Devlin Kuyek said that “they prop up a system that has enabled corporate polluters and rich countries to delay action and profit from the crisis. Whether unregulated or with a U.N. seal of approval, carbon offsetting in all its shapes and forms, including REDD or so-called ‘nature-based solutions’ and ‘blue carbon,’ is a fraud that must be immediately scrapped.”

The coalition asserted that rather than carbon offsetting, “what is urgently needed is renewed focus on keeping fossil fuels in the ground and commitments to real climate action based on equity and justice.”

As Friends of the Earth International’s Kirtana Chandrasekaran put it: “What we need are real emissions reductions and real climate finance. Anything less is failure.”

The coalition’s demands contrasted sharply with Sunday comments from Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, COP28 president and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company CEO, who claimed there is “no science” behind the push to rapidly phase out planet-heating fossil fuels—which one leading expert said “dismisses decades of work” by global scientists.

Going into COP28, a U.N. analysis warned that countries’ currently implemented policies put the world on track for 3°C of warming by 2100, or double the Paris agreement’s 1.5°C target. Already, the planet has warmed about 1.1°C relative to preindustrial levels.

Even though the international community is way off track in terms of meeting its climate goals, Bronwen Tucker, global public finance lead at Oil Change International , pointed out Monday that “on Finance Day at COP28, instead of rich country governments committing to pay their fair share for a fossil fuel phaseout, they tried to shirk their responsibilities.”

The biggest historical contributor to planet-heating pollution, the United States, and foundation partners on Sunday announced the Energy Transition Alliance. Rachel Cleetus, the policy director and a lead economist for the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Climate and Energy Program, said the offset initiative “is still very much a work-in-progress, and the details shared thus far raise a fair degree of skepticism about its ability to meaningfully contribute to addressing the climate crisis.”

“Richer nations and large corporations should have no claim over monetizing the scarce remaining carbon budget and yet this program is premised on that unjust idea,” Cleetus added. “At COP28, the primary focus should be on securing an agreement among nations for a fast, fair fossil fuel phaseout and ramping up public finance.”

Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingClimate Coalition Says ‘Stop Carbon Offsetting Now!’

Rich Nations Have Delivered Mere ‘Pittance’ to Help East Africa Tackle Climate Crisis: Oxfam

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Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

“We have an abundance of clean, renewable energy,” said one African activist. “But to unlock it, Africa needs funding from countries that have got rich off our suffering.”

As the first-ever Africa Climate Summit kicked off in Nairobi, Kenya on Monday, an analysis by the humanitarian group Oxfam found that rich nations have delivered just a small fraction of the aid that East African nations say they need each year to meet their climate goals.

Unlike rich countries that account for a disproportionate share of planet-warming greenhouse gas pollution, East Africa has contributed “almost nothing” to global carbon emissions that are driving record-shattering heat worldwide, Oxfam’s new report notes. In 2021, according to one recent estimate, the average North American emitted 11 times more carbon dioxide than the average African.

The World Meteorological Organization pointed out Monday that Africa is responsible for less than 10% of global carbon emissions.

Yet “East Africa is one of the world’s worst-hit regions by climate change and is now experiencing its worst climate-induced extreme weather, fueling an alarming hunger crisis,” Oxfam’s report states. “Over 31.5 million people are currently facing acute hunger across Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and South Sudan.”

Those countries, which suffer billions of dollars worth of climate-related damage each year, have said they will need at least $53.3 billion annually to meet critical targets under the Paris Climate Agreement. According to Oxfam, wealthy countries provided just $2.4 billion in aid to East African nations in 2021.

More broadly, Oxfam noted, high-income countries pledged that they would provide $100 billion a year by 2020 to help lower-income countries fight climate chaos.

“Oxfam estimates that in 2020 the real value of financial support specifically aimed at climate action was only around $21 billion to $24.5 billion—much less than officially reported figures suggest,” the group’s report states.

Fati N’Zi-Hassane, Oxfam’s Africa director, said Monday that “even by their own generous accounts, polluting nations have delivered only pittance to help East Africa scale up their mitigation and adaptation efforts.”

“Nearly half the funds (45%) they did give were loans, plunging the region further into more debt,” N’Zi-Hassane added.

Climate finance is expected to be a major topic of discussion at the Nairobi summit, which comes after months of scorching heat on the continent.

“Africa is seen as a sunny and hot continent,” Amadou Thierno Gaye, a research scientist and professor at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, toldBloomberg in July. “People think we are used to heat, but we are having high temperatures for a longer duration. Nobody is used to this.”

The Associated Press reported Monday that “there is some frustration on the continent about being asked to develop in cleaner ways than the world’s richest countries—which have long produced most of the emissions that endanger climate—and to do it while much of the support that has been pledged hasn’t appeared.”

Mohamed Adow of Power Shift Africa told AP that “we have an abundance of clean, renewable energy and it’s vital that we use this to power our future prosperity. But to unlock it, Africa needs funding from countries that have got rich off our suffering.”

In addition to calling on rich nations to contribute the aid they’ve promised to support Africa’s renewable energy transition, African civil society groups are urging their leaders to reject fossil fuel expansion, specifically warning against the completion of TotalEnergies’ East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP).

A recent Human Rights Watch report warned that more than 100,000 people in Uganda and Tanzania are set to “permanently lose land to make way for the pipeline and Tilenga oilfield development.” One analysis indicates the pipeline could result in 379 million tonnes of planet-warming emissions over its lifespan—more than 25 times the combined annual emissions of Uganda and Tanzania.

Zaki Mamdoo, coordinator of the Stop EACOP Coalition, said Monday that “the African Climate Summit could provide the platform needed for the continent to dramatically shift its trajectory and future—from one that is set to bear the brunt of climate collapse, to one of energy security and prosperity driven by decentralized and people-centered renewables.”

“For this to happen,” said Mamdoo, “African leaders will need to rise to the occasion and make firm commitments to significantly upscale renewable energy developments while resisting and withdrawing any and all support for exploitative and destructive projects like the East African Crude Oil Pipeline.”

Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingRich Nations Have Delivered Mere ‘Pittance’ to Help East Africa Tackle Climate Crisis: Oxfam