Era of paying lip service to climate commitments is over – says PACJA

The Pan African climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) has again brought the world’s attention to Africa as thousands of movements from across the globe gathered in Montreal, Canada for the 2016 World Social Forum.

The goal of the WSF 2016 is to gather people from groups in civil society, organizations and social movements who want to build a sustainable and inclusive world, where every person and every people has its place and can make its voice heard.

The 2016 Forum is with an overarching theme: “Another World Is Possible”.

MithikaMwenda, Secretary-General of PACJA, in his submission at the Forum, called for global solidarity among civil society organizations to ensure that they hold governments accountable to their commitments in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Paris Agreement on Climate Change.

“The era of paying lip service to commitments governments signed up to is over, especially  in the light of Paris Agreement that have spelt out clear role for all Parties in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), everyone and all Parties now have a role to play,” said Mithika.

Besides joining the global march organized by the Forum, PACJA made a case for Africa on several burning issues at various events at the Forum.

These include Climate Justice and the Fight For Peoples’ Right to Food, Water and Land; Transforming the Energy Systems for People and Communities; Climate Justice, Land Rights and Food Security in Africa in the context of Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals; Implementation of SDGs, Accountability and the Role of Civil Society Organizations.

The Alliance called on world leaders to listen to the voices of the people and ACT NOW in the interest of the planet and save the world from further humanitarian and environmental crisis.

“To achieve the goal of keeping the global temperature rise to well below 2⁰C and pursuing efforts to keeping it below 1.5⁰C as enshrined in the Paris Agreement and to further achieve the objective of the SDGs, it will require a lot of sacrifices in the way we live,” said Samson Samuel Ogallah of PACJA. “The sacrifice will require switching from the current unsustainable production and consumption lifestyle especially by the industrialized countries as the business as usual scenario will lead the world to a 3⁰C and above scenario by 2030 thereby eroding any gain that may have been made from the implementation of SDGs by 2030”.

According to Savio Carvalho of the Amnesty International, “Civil society fought hard to get the human rights language into the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), they must now work even harder to ensure its operationalization beyond the adoption of the SDGs by governments across the world”.