Filipino environmental activists joined the call of civil society groups around the world for an inclusive climate summit amid the worsening Covid-19 pandemic.
The activists joined over 1,500 civil society groups from 130 countries and members of Climate Action Network (CAN) in the call for a postponement of the substantive negotiations of the Conference of Parties 26 (COP26) of the 26th United Nations Climate Change conference allegedly due to the COP26 presidency and the UK government’s failure to ensure a safe, equitable and inclusive summit, a Greenpeace news release said.
COP26 will be held in Glasgow, Scotland, in November. It is under the presidency of the UK.
Expressing concern that COP26 must be a platform where highly vulnerable communities and sectors are heard, Kyle Aboy, Filipino youth climate activist, supports the call to postpone COP26.
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] report released this year clearly demonstrates that climate change is a threat that needs transnational collaboration among countries. The Philippines, belonging to countries most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, must have inclusive representation, but the Covid-19 restrictions pose a great challenge in achieving this,” Aboy said.
Greenpeace Philippines Climate Justice Campaigner Virginia Benosa-Llorin said, “The climate summit needs to be inclusive. Voices from the most vulnerable countries need not only be heard; they must be prioritized.”
“Unfortunately, even while climate justice remains inadequately addressed in these talks, the crisis brought on by the pandemic has added another layer of injustice to their plight,” Benosa-Llorin added.
She said that people from poorer nations have always had a harder time representing their communities in the climate talks. Now, she added, with Covid-19 restrictions and quarantines, and inequitable access to vaccines, this has become even more difficult. The Philippines, for example, is in the UK’s Covid-19 red list, and additional measures mean prohibitive financial costs.
CAN’s statement outlines how the COP presidency has failed to provide safe and equitable access to COP26.
The UK government is yet to provide Covid-19 vaccines to participants that have applied for them, and has failed to provide clarity around support for logistics and quarantine costs for delegates coming from a country on the UK government’s red list.
Speaking from Amsterdam, Juan Pablo Osornio, senior political lead of Greenpeace International, said, “The COP presidency has failed to guarantee the safe and equitable participation of COP-26 delegates, especially people coming from countries that are disproportionately affected by Covid-19 and the climate crisis.”
He said COP26 needs to be fair and accessible to deliver global climate justice. “Expecting already disadvantaged people to attend without access to vaccines, healthcare and financial support to overcome the risks of participation is not only unfair but prohibitive.”
Greenpeace maintains that regardless of whether the COP goes ahead, ambitious action on climate is urgently needed. The longer governments delay to honor their Paris climate commitments, the harder it will be to achieve the 1.5°C target.
It added that every tenth of a degree of global heating is critical to human survival on this planet. The group is also calling for equitable access to vaccines globally, so that people can protect themselves from Covid-19 regardless of their social status or location.
