International
and regional institutions and networks attending the climate change talks in
Lima jointly issued a statement at the end of the conference.
They include the Corporate
Europe Observatory, Friends
of the Earth International, Corporate Europe
Observatory,
LDC-Watch, Pan African Climate Justice Alliance and Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating
Committee
The
groups believe the Lima process failed to deliver climate justice.
Read
statement below:
The
world faces a planetary emergency: climate change, caused by a system that puts
the pursuit of profit above the needs of people and the limits of nature.
It
is already devastating millions of people across the planet.
Climate
science predicts we will soon breach critical tipping points and
could be locked in to 4-5°C of warming with catastrophic impacts for us all.
The
Lima Conference should have been a milestone that marked out how governments
will take urgent action to tackle climate change and to support vulnerable
people across the world to adapt to its locked in impacts.
The
concrete demand was to set out how we would increase emission reductions from
now until 2020, and set long term climate targets to make sure we limit
temperature increase to below 1.5°C.
Therefore,
climate targets need to keep us within the emissions budget, which should be
shared based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and
respective capabilities and honor climate debt.
What
we have seen in Lima is another in a series of yearly decisions that weaken
international climate rules, failing people and the planet.
The
pre-2020 mitigation pledges are unjust and weak and put us on track to breach 2°C
of warming by mid-century. The promised increases in pledges didn’t materialise
in 2014, nor was there a commitment to urgently revisit, revise, or review
them.
Lima
prepares us for an agreement in Paris that ignores the needs and rights of
impacted people across the world by precluding binding commitments on finance,
adaption, loss and damage and technology transfer.
This
outcome fails to link the actions of countries with the technology and finance
that is needed to enable people in the South to adapt and build resilience and
deal with the loss and damage from the impacts of climate change, as well as to
carry out mitigation actions without which the world will not reach the scale
of transformation and just transition needed to limit temperature rise below 1.5
C degrees.
What
was decided in Lima opens the possibility for every country to decide its own
climate action going forward, with no reference to what science, people, and
justice demand, and without a clear regulatory framework.
We
saw politicians, especially those from the US, the EU and their allies, acting
in the interest of big polluting corporations, determined to further
deregulate the international climate change regime, fundamentally
undermining the UN climate convention, by weakening the rules for developed
countries, shifting responsibility to the South, and ignoring their legal and
moral obligation to transfer finance and technology.
Leaving
Lima we see that again a backdoor has been opened for the further expansion of the failed experiment of carbon markets.
Including, possibly carbon credits from forests and soil, which undermines communities' land rights and
would be devastating to farmers and forest communities across the world whilst
preventing the transformation we need.
The
Peoples’ Summit and its march through the streets of Lima demanded the defence
of Mother Earth, and the guarantee of rights of all peoples, of all genders. It
presented a clear vision for solutions to the climate crisis, and for
alternatives to its causes.
People
across the world are taking up these alternatives and fighting to transform the
system. We are struggling for survival and for the safety and security of our
homes and livelihoods from climate disasters.
We
are fighting for a transformation of energy systems, away from fossil fuels,
towards access to decentralised, renewable, safe, community controlled energy
systems for all. We are defending our food sovereignty and expanding
agro-ecological solutions, whilst struggling to adapt to the devastating consequences
of locked in climate change. Just as community-based forestry programs work in
the interest of people, particularly indigenous peoples, instead of bankers and
financial capital in the North.
People
are building power - at local, national and global level. We continue
to put more people on the street, to block mines, ports, corporate
offices – and our strength is growing, as is our power.
We
will reclaim power from those who don't act in our interests. We
will resist the imposition of a ‘global climate deal’ that does nothing
for the climate and even less for people.
They
tried to bury us here in Lima, but we are seeds, and we will grow into a forest
of resistance.
