Bonn Climate Change Talks: Climate Justice Speeches
The voice of good conscience speaks — will anyone in power listen?
As the name would suggest, the United Nations climate change negotiations are a conversation that takes place between States. But as members of global civil society we are given the minimal opportunity of a minute or two to share our views from the back of a plenary hall. It’s not much, but as you can see below, our groups do their best to take advantage of it.
Joint Opening Plenary — APA/SBSTA/SBI, Monday 30th April
My name is Claire Miranda and I speak on behalf of Asian People’s Movement on Debt and Development, a member of Climate Justice Now.
You ask us “where we are.” Let us tell you: we are living through unprecedented climate disasters, such as Supertyphoon Haiyan, which brought devastation to my home country, the Philippines.
You ask us, “how do we get where we need to go?” Let us tell you: to be successful in averting further climate catastrophes, Parties must begin to address fossil fuel supply.
While governments drag their feet, civil society organizations worldwide take the initiative. We are waging resistance on the ground against the destructive industries and their dirty energy projects, and over 500 groups have signed The Lofoten Declaration, which affirms that it is the urgent responsibility of wealthy fossil fuel producers to lead in putting an end to fossil fuel development and to manage the decline of existing production. People around the world have also brought this message here to the UNFCCC, calling on governments to ensure that this process is protected from fossil fuel industry interests seeking to thwart progress. Given all that’s at stake with the Paris Agreement work program, now is the time to address these conflicts of interest at the UNFCCC.
In these negotiations, we hear talk of climate leadership. But climate leaders do not expand or finance new fossil fuel projects and infrastructure. To be a climate leader, you must begin planning for a full just transition away from a fossil fuel-dependent economy, to one that works for people and the planet.
We know that many developing countries cannot afford the cost of such a transition. But in this critical period for climate action, developed countries are avoiding any discussion of their finance commitments. There is still no clear direction on the Green Climate Fund replenishment, no clear roadmap for delivering the $100 billion by 2020, nor a clear plan for scaled-up long-term finance.
Without clarity on finance, developing countries such as the Philippines will find it impossible to carry out its own mitigation and adaptation actions. We will struggle uncompensated for the losses and damages of a crisis we did not create.
This is the reality of historic inaction. We don’t want to see the reality of present-day inaction. While negotiations on the guidelines for implementing the Paris Agreement are ongoing, nothing, except a lack of political will, is stopping Parties from taking action already to end their fossil fuel addiction.
Opening Plenary of the Talanoa Dialogue — Wednesday 2nd May
My name is Daniel Dorado and I speak on behalf of Corporate Accountability International, a member of Climate Justice Now.
Science, rather than stories, clearly tells us that we are dangerously close to passing the threshold for extreme climate change because our current NDCs aren’t ambitious enough to keep warming below 1.5C or even 2C.
In an ideal world we’d expect countries to come together in the spirit of cooperation to spur each other on to greater action. We’d expect improved NDCs in the near future, quantifiable announcements about the financial support to realise them, and a step-up in pre-2020 efforts.
But we don’t live in an ideal world.
We know from our experience of the 2014 Facilitative Dialogue that rather than stepping up to greater ambition, some Parties would like to step away from their responsibilities altogether.
In Doha, annex 1 Parties agreed to revisit their weak commitments under the 2nd period of the Kyoto Protocol by 2014. It’s now 2018 and many of those countries have not even ratified the Doha Amendment. One country abandoned the Protocol, while another has even abandoned the Paris Agreement!
What kind of expectations can we have from a dialogue which has excluded critical parts of the story — such as the part about equity and fairness or the part about how we got into this mess in the first place?
Mr President, Parties, please do not allow the Talanoa Dialogue to sink to our low expectations but instead resemble our ideals.
Story during the Talanoa Dialogue Roundtable — Sunday 6th May
My name is Nathalie Rengifo, and I am a woman in a world where women disproportionately suffer the impacts of war, capitalism, racism, and climate change.
As a young girl I learnt that all stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. So I’d like to start in the beginning.
This story begins not in 2015 in Paris, nor in 1994, but hundreds of years ago. For hundreds of years the lives of some have been converted into currency for others. From our water getting bottled or polluted, to our rivers quenching the thirst of mega dams and mining projects; the wealth of the north was built on the poverty and pollution of the south.
The world is the way it is today because of what went before. We didn’t make the crisis of climate injustice; we inherited it.
If we want to honestly assess ambition to tackle climate change that assessment must start in the fires of colonisation and industrial revolution where the historical responsibility lies.
I am from South America. Ours is a history of expropriation and slavery achieved through confusion and deception. Galeano said “our prosperity nourished and still nourishes the prosperity of others.” Now it seems our suffering, like the suffering of our brothers and sisters in the Caribbean, Africa and Asia, will pay for the lifestyles of the elite 1% of this world.
It is said that “the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” Our inequitable present was born from our inequitable past. So while we move forward — reaching for a better world — we do so in the light of these injustices.
All stories have a hero and a villain. In the story of climate injustice there are too few heroes and too many villains. The villains offer empty pledges on top of broken promises — they forgo true cooperation in favour of narrow self-interest. These “pimps of misery” continue to pursue the same dangerous distractions that landed us in this mess in the first place.
The heroes resist and as a reward are forgotten by many. But we remember among many others Berta Caceres and Maria da Lourdes Fernandes Silva who with their lives have planted the seeds of resistance.
They are testimony to the power of people, which is the only thing that has ever changed the world for the better. For this reason we say that any solutions to the climate crisis must be rights-based and people-centred. Nothing about us without us!
Friends, this is a dialogue, not a monologue. So I ask: where is the plan to take us from this dark place of climate violence? Where are the revised targets and where is the finance to realise them? You owe us a debt. Where is the justice for which we yearn?
We cannot live in a world with 1.5C warming. It is that simple. If “a revolution is a struggle between the past and the future” then indeed we need an energy revolution to rapidly and justly transition away from the fossil fuels of the past to the clean, community-controlled renewable energy system of the future.
We find ourselves on the wrong side of a divide that grows between the haves and have-nots of this world. We hope you hear us as we shout across the gap of low ambition — climate justice now. If not now, it will be never.
Closing Plenary of the Talanoa Dialogue — Wednesday 9th May
My name is Tetet Lauron and I speak on behalf of IBON International, a member of Climate Justice Now.
We appreciate Fiji’s leadership in bringing a new approach to understanding where we are, where we need to go and how to get there.
While we did not expect the Talanoa Dialogue to bring us ‘beyond the reef’ immediately, we were hoping that through it, we would be able to go further on our voyage to restore the balance of Mother Earth — like Moana’s quest to save her islands and people to return the stolen heart of Te Fiti.
We know the seas are rough and there are many dangers. And, yes, there are bad guys too — in this case, the polluters who seek to drag us and our ambition down. The bullies who undermine our quest for a just and livable world by shutting down discussions about support.
The world is the way it is today because of what went before. We didn’t make the crisis of climate injustice; we inherited it. But we are not giving up on our beautiful planet, and so we need to change things.
The next step in the Talanoa process must take us closer to delivering the mandate of transforming stories into renewed national emission reduction plans before 2020.
Mr. President, listen to us as civil society representing the people of the world. We have no other interest than seeing justice delivered. We urge you to use the Talanoa Dialogue to create a significant political moment that will see heads of state put these revised plans on the table.
Everyone loves stories that have a happy ending. And the story of our planet and people certainly deserves one. We hope you will be one with us, islanders, in our voyage to climate justice.
Joint Closing Plenary of the SBSTA/SBI/APA — Thursday 10th May
My name is Nathalie Rengifo Alvarez, a member of Climate Justice Now.
For years we have clearly called for urgent actions to protect climate policy from the vested interests of industries that drive the climate crisis.
Despite requests from governments representing the majority of the world’s population, there is no such urgency reflected in the decision text adopted for arrangements for intergovernmental meetings.
There has also been refusal by some developed countries to engage productively on conversations around finance, in particular a process to define a new long-term goal, ex-ante finance, and finance for loss and damage.
We appreciated the attempt of the Talanoa Dialogue to invoke a spirit of cooperation but we are sad to say that there is still a trust deficit thanks to a long history of broken promises which continues today.
In Talanoa we heard first hand stories of the climate crisis. But we did not see countries come forward with revised plans to address the crisis. We need Fiji to fulfil the mandate of the Dialogue by setting out a political process for Parties to turn stories into improved national contributions.
The climate justice movement is clear that the way forward involves supply-side mitigation policies that add up to a phase out of fossil fuels. This means limiting fossil fuel exploration and extraction AND fossil fuel subsidy to redirect finance away from fossil fuels and towards a just transition for people.
