‘Earth democracy’ needed to fight ‘colonial climate apartheid’
Plan for new assembly to meet twice annually and provide alternative platform at COP
South African human rights and climate activists are pushing humanity to support a new global climate justice bloc.
They want a people- and worker-led Earth assembly driven by a desire to create an “Earth democracy” to meet twice annually.
Led by SA Climate Justice Charter Movement (CJCM), activists are cleverly drawing on our apartheid past to accuse the seemingly unstoppable fossil fuel corporations and their rich governments of again fostering the reviled system of race and class oppression and exploitation, which they call “climate apartheid”.
Activists are also saying the UN’S COP27 process is compromised and that humanity is being forced into an unthinkable age of “ecocide”.
They say the “human-nature relationship” has been “colonised”.
SA global activist Kumi Naidoo, who is the former secretary-general of both Greenpeace and Amnesty International, and leading SA antipoverty and Climate Justice Charter Movement activist Prof Vishwas Satgar, were among 100 of the world’s front-line climate activists from organisations in 20 countries who attended the assembly of peoples.
Held in Durban over two weekends, the assembly had a festive air, with 21 “actions”, including movies, and a march which attracted 600 supporters.
But the core of the discussion, Satgar said in an interview on Tuesday, was how to punch through the frustrating political smog created by COP27 to create a climate justice movement which involved people from across the world.
The assembly had “supported a call for Earth assemblies to start convening conversations, for people to talk about our interconnected way of life with planet Earth.
“Everything we do is linked: our harmful ecological practices are harming Earth,” Satgar said.
The assembly included Pablo Solón Romero, the former Bolivian UN ambassador and director of Focus on the Global South, who is a leading proponent of the Earth assembly movement, and acclaimed Nigerian climate activist and civil rights leader Nnimmo Bassey.
Satgar said the goal was to “decentre power” away from the COP process, which had not worked for human and nonhuman life.
Science had shown that emissions were pushing the Earth to overheat by much more than 1.5°C amid a “lack of commitment from historical polluters to provide climate reparations for loss and damages.
“The multilateral process is just not working and we are nowhere near to reaching a solution to prevent a runaway 1.5°C overshoot.
“This means more climate apartheid for the world and more injustice for poorer countries — who did not cause the problem — for vulnerable island states facing extinction, and more suffering for human and non-human life.
“It is important to build an alternative platform to rally the power of vulnerable governments, island states, poor countries devastated by climate shocks, countries and regions heating at twice the global average like our own, people frustrated by the crisis of leadership, workers facing serious climate risks around the just transition, and movements.
“We need to rally to confront climate apartheid and a system that is ecocidal, which is bringing mass destruction to human and non-human life.”
He said the gathering was also committed to bringing about a new, just, world peace and a climate justice deal for Africa.
“The response was overwhelmingly positive, from indigenous people fighting the tar sands mining of Canada, the Indigenous People’s caucus, SA indigenous leaders, Earth Assembly leaders, representatives of progressive internationalists and international eco-socialists.
“Our call for a just world peace means the disarming of Nato, withdrawal of Russia from Ukraine, and the demilitarisation and denuclearisation of the world.
“Does humanity want to spend trillions on arms and bombs and nuclear weapons or use the money to to save humanity and deepen the just transition?
“We want military forces, including all African armies, to be converted to emergency climate public services, and for a halt to all arms sales to Africa.”
Satgar said the assembly believed that war and armies could not be separated from the climate emergency.
“They are major contributors to carbon emissions.”
He said it was agreed that the incoming Earth democracy would “at the start” learn from indigenous people “who are stewards and custodians of sensitive ecosystems” and for people to study indigenous ecology, and how to relate to Earth.
He said activists excluded SA from the call for a climate justice deal for Africa since it was a major polluter and was different to the rest of Africa which was an innocent victim of climate disasters. Satgar said major polluting nations should give Africa money, and not try further entrap poor African states in interest-bearing loans.
The polluters were the one’s carrying the climate debt, not Africa, he said.
He said 22 African countries were saddled with extreme debt to the IMF and SA was effectively telling the world these countries should stay in debt if they were to get more loans.
Africa was heating at twice the world average and 200-million people faced “climate apartheid” displacement.
The gathering was angered by the SA government’s “narrow, self-interested” position.
“They did not act with rest of the continent to secure a climate deal. They undermined the historical demands for climate justice.”