What is the most important thing you’ve done in your life? Be a good parent to your kids? Adopt an abused animal? Be a teacher?
One of the most important things I’ve done is to be a part of a movement working to make sure my 2-year-old grows up in a world where elephants still exist. Where communities of people are empowered to protect — and be protected by — their forests. And where St. Mary’s Glacier still glitters on the Front Range.
Last Saturday, Dec. 12, negotiators from nearly 200 countries inked an agreement in Paris to keep the rise in global temperatures “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, while pursuing a soft goal of 1.5 degrees.
In some ways, this is a giant step forward. The goals are ambitious, and every five years countries must show they are holding up their ends of the bargain. But those in the climate justice movement also see the agreement with clear eyes.
How can we possibly curb warming to 1.5 degrees when the emission-reduction targets countries submitted before the talks will warm Earth by 3 degrees? The agreement recognizes the urgency of the climate crisis. But it doesn’t make mention of the two words that brought us to this point in the first place: FOSSIL FUELS. How can the defining climate change document of our time fail to mention, specifically, that oil and gas and carbon need to stay in the ground? (“Renewable energy” is mentioned only once in the preamble.)
We are also enormously concerned that the deal glosses over the rights of people with the most to lose to climate chaos — indigenous people, local communities, women and young people.
The Paris deal is a political promise with no clear path for creating a just transition toward 100 percent renewable energy sources. So this is only a starting point.
The truth is that solutions to climate change exist. In solar. In wind. In ideas coming from people already dealing with the onslaught of changes to their livelihoods, cultures and homes.
People like Sopheak Phon. Her group in Cambodia patrols the astoundingly biodiverse Prey Lang forest for illegal logging and wildlife poaching. Thanks to their work, the Cambodian government made Prey Lang a protected forest, and this year, Sopheak’s group, the Prey Lang Community Network, won the prestigious Equator Prize for its work.
“We go inside the forest and find tree-harvesting equipment and remove it,” she says. “We bring it to the authorities. It’s dangerous work and I feel afraid. But I want to increase our work so people know what’s happening. We want them to teach their young children to love their environments and to remind older people that nature is our life.”
Or Knorke Leaf, a young artist from Bolivia. Knorke’s father was a climate negotiator for Bolivia 15 years ago. She grew up seeing his frustration and she saw the Kyoto Protocol fall apart. It was a perspective she couldn’t easily forget.
“It’s important to be on the inside but it’s important to have other ways,” she says. “In my art workshops, I talk about the environment. I talk about art. I have children who say, ‘Wow, that’s happening?’ It’s collective work and people feel like they’re a part of it.”
Or Alphaxard Gitau. Alpha, who is in his mid-twenties, farms dairy cows and poultry outside Nairobi, Kenya. During COP21, he was one of just 50 youth innovators from around the world selected to participate in a leadership workshop to address landscape challenges.
“As a young person, COP21 was a step in the right direction but still not enough to address the giant in the room,” he says. “The way to make climate change negotiations make sense is by putting the global policies into practice at the local level. This will have an impact on my grandmother in the village, as well as other people at the local level. I am hopeful that if we join hands and put aside differences and selfish interests. Then we can address the issue of climate change.”
Once this news cycle is over and the phrases “climate change” and “Paris agreement” no longer come up in casual conversation, it will be up to each of us to keep the pressure on and to throw our collective weight behind not just the talk, but also the solutions.
In other words, our real work began on Dec. 13. “It has taken mass mobilizations over the last few years to push our elected leaders into this agreement, and now it’s going to take even more mass mobilizations to push them to actually meet the terms of the agreement and then farther to address issues the agreement ignored,” said Terry Odendahl executive director of Boulder-based Global Greengrants Fund in her COP21-follow up column for EcoWatch.
We must hold our leaders accountable for shaping the world we live in and support solutions that can make a difference.
Global Greengrants partnered with 350.org to support and amplify youth voices in Paris. Last Saturday, we stood with tens of thousands of people in the streets of Paris, and communities around the world, to call for a just transition to sustainable, clean energy.
Coming up this spring, 350.org and others are already promising worldwide climate justice actions. And Global Greengrants — right in your backyard — will be here, supporting people on the front lines of the crisis, who are already tackling climate change and the activities that contribute to it.
Friends, the global climate justice movement is just getting cooking — and it’s accepting applications.
Katy Neusteter is the director of communications for Global Greengrants Fund.
Global Greengrants envisions a world in which all people live with dignity and in harmony with the environment. As the leading environmental fund that supports grassroots action on a global scale, we create opportunities for you to invest in local leaders working to strengthen their communities and create an environmentally sustainable future. www. greengrants.org
