The COP26 Coalition Movement Assemblies
The COP26 Coalition Movement Assemblies ran for ninety minutes in the early evenings. The Coalition had been preparing for its Movement Assemblies, and People’s Summit, for two years, and two of our delegation had participated in that effort. Several of our workshops were conducted within the People’s Summit.
The Movement Assemblies began with a short report on the COP negotiations, from speakers who understood that market solutions cannot deliver the change that is needed. A passionate Sikh speaker explained that rich countries had agreed in Paris in 2015 to “address the issue” of compensation for countries that had already suffered “loss and damage” due to climate change. But year after year the rich nations, the countries with huge historical responsibility for climate change, had failed to agree on rules for deciding what is owed to whom.
We heard that many countries in the Global South carry an enormous burden of debt. The yearly interest they must pay makes it impossible for them to educate their citizens and look after [take care of] their people’s health. When climate disasters occur, they have no funds for cleaning up, rebuilding houses, or dealing with landslides. So they must borrow more, and become poorer and more trapped in debt.
People got to talk with each other about what they had heard and discuss possible responses and strategies. The room was full of grief, outrage, and anger. Our work was evident and appreciated!
We heard a lot of distressing information at the Movement Assemblies, but it is always better to know the truth. We learnt that many of the Green New Deals being put forward in the Global North involve new forms of colonialism. They sound progressive, but they aim to maintain the current way of life for people in the rich countries while people in poor countries (and poor people everywhere) continue to bear the main burden of climate change. We need to read, discharge, and think about these proposals.
There are grounds for hope. There has never been a time like this. There has never been a time when so many are telling the truth and refusing to accept climate injustice. There has never been a time with such public denunciation of new and old colonialism, and racism, on a global scale. There is now loud rejection of “extractivism,” the idea that we have the right to go on taking and taking from the earth for the comfort of some while those who work in the mines or oil fields and must live with the pollution pay the price.
Across the world people are mobilising. Organisations are springing up and refusing to continue with this unjust system. Climate and class injustice continue, environmentalists are still being murdered, and governments and corporations are still doing all they can to save the current system while pretending to reform it. However, their “greenwash” is being exposed. People who used to be quiet are shouting their anger. There are firm grounds for hope.
Lagos, NIgeria
Redcliffe, Bristol, England
Brooklyn, New York, USA
(Present Time 206, January 2022)