Global Climate Week: A clarion call to address an emergency
THIS month, from September 20 to 27, the world will observe Global Climate Week, with events taking place all over the world. Key events will take place in New York around the Global Climate
Action Summit called by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
A major focus of this year’s climate week is to change the narrative from simply talking about the
“climate change problem” to talking about “actions to tackle the climate emergency”.
The other change is the emphasis on the role of youth in tackling this emergency.
Hence the week will start on
Friday, September 20 with schoolchildren from the FridaysforFuture movement holding climate action strikes all around the world, including in Bangladesh.
The 16-year-old Swedish teenager who started this global movement of schoolchildren, Greta Thunberg, has travelled by sailboat (as she refuses to fly) from Sweden to New York and will lead the march there on September 20.
Then on September 21, following an invitation by the UN secretary-general, Greta and other young people will hold a day-long Youth Action Day at the UN in New York, which will be again mirrored around the world with similar youth-led action.
Then, on September 23, there will be the Climate Action Summit at the UN, which will be attended by world leaders including Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, mayors from different cities, NGOs and private-sector organisations.
The UN secretary-general has invited those taking action only, and he has asked everyone to come up with a “plan, not a speech”.
This will be the major event of the week and is aimed to redirect attention to taking climate action and not just talking about it.
On September 24, the secretary
general will receive the flagship report of the Global Commission on Adaptation (GCA), which is co-chaired by
Ban Ki-moon, Bill Gates and Kristalina Georgieva (from the World Bank).
One of the themes of the global climate action week is to enhance the reflect and highlight the outcomes of the entire week.
Newspapers as well as TV and radio stations around the world have signed up to cover these events both from New York and their own countries during the entire week. impacts has become an emergency that requires global action by everyone, not just the leaders of governments.
Another major change we are seeing is that certain groups are actively trying to undermine the efforts of those who wish to take actions.
Such groups, including the fossil fuel companies, are no longer just climate-change deniers, but have now become climate criminals who are committing crimes against humanity and will need to be confronted and no longer simply talked to.
This is the logic of the Extinction Rebellion groups in many countries that have been taking direct action on the streets of towns in the UK and other countries around the world.
It is therefore time for Bangladesh to call for treating the climate change issue as a climate emergency.
The British parliament has done so recently – perhaps Bangladesh could follow its lead.