On Friday, Greenpeace Africa volunteers in Johannesburg and Durban participated in actions as a part of the worldwide #EndFossilFuels day of mobilisation. Over 650 comparable occasions are happening in additional than 60 international locations worldwide.
World leaders are gathering for the UN Basic Meeting and the UN Secretary Basic is convening a “no-nonsense” Local weather Ambition Summit in New York on Wednesday.
Following the Africa Local weather Summit in Nairobi at the beginning of the month, Greenpeace Africa marched in eight cities in Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, and South Africa.
In Durban, Greenpeace Africa activists will carry out a seashore clean-up at Blue Lagoon seashore, amassing plastic waste – a byproduct of the oil and fuel trade – and conducting a model audit.
“We’re becoming a member of hundreds of voices globally to name for an finish to the abusive fossil gasoline trade,” mentioned Desiree Laverne, Greenpeace Africa Volunteer.
“South Africa’s habit to fossil fuels is detrimental to all life on the planet. We want governments to fast-track a simply transition to renewable vitality,” ended Laverne.
In Johannesburg, Greenpeace Africa activists met at Emmarentia Dam and created a human banner with the phrases, “Finish Fossil Fuels” whereas participating with passersby on the impacts of the fossil gasoline trade.
“Fossil fuels aren’t the reply to in the present day’s crises – they’re a driver of our polycrisis,” mentioned Hulunn Choo, Greenpeace Africa Volunteer Coordinator.
“The hyperlinks between the plastic trade, the fossil gasoline trade, and local weather breakdown are well-known, and we now have an abundance of alternate options that gained’t kill the planet. We gained’t cease till each particular person has entry to scrub vitality,” ended Choo.
This 12 months introduced excessive warmth waves, wildfires and poisonous air air pollution to each continent. This altering local weather produces real-life emergencies. South Africa’s east coast has been ravaged by extreme flooding whereas oil giants like Shell have made makes an attempt to destroy pristine biodiverse areas such because the Wild Coast. Greece had simply had three toes of rain over 4 days, destroying a lot of its agricultural crops. Libya simply suffered a catastrophe on a biblical scale, with fears that 20 000 have died. This is the reason Greenpeace known as on its supporters to affix a world mobilisation to finish the fossil gasoline period.
Key calls for of the worldwide mobilisation embrace:
- No new fossil fuels: No new initiatives, finance – public or private- subsidies and no new approvals, licences, permits, or extensions. Provision of ample, consensual, predictable, public and grant-based local weather funding raised by means of simply taxation reform and different revolutionary public measures to understand this dedication all over the place. Debt cancellation throughout all collectors so international locations have the assets to transition and are now not pressured to use fossil fuels to generate income to repay debt.
- A speedy, simply and equitable phase-out of current infrastructure consistent with the 1.5C temperature restrict and a world plan to make sure that every nation is accountable for his or her function.
- New commitments for worldwide cooperation: Drastically scale up monetary and know-how transfers to make sure renewable vitality entry, financial diversification plans, and Simply Transition processes so that each nation and group can section out fossil fuels. In gentle of the local weather debt and reparations owed to communities and international locations experiencing the worst impacts of the local weather disaster, monetary and know-how transfers should be understood as reparations, not support.
- Cease greenwashing: Cease claiming that offsets, carbon seize and storage, nature primarily based options or geoengineering are options to the local weather disaster.
- Maintain polluters accountable for the harm they’ve induced: Make sure that it’s coal, oil, and fuel firms that pay reparations for local weather loss and harm and for native rehabilitation, remediation and transition by means of world company tax justice and accountability mechanisms.
- Finish fossil gasoline company seize: NO to firms writing the foundations of local weather motion, bankrolling or taking part in local weather talks, or undermining the worldwide response to local weather change.
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