Two days before world leaders sign the Paris Agreement, an international alliance of frontline and indigenous communities has denounced it as a ‘dangerous distraction’
As world leaders prepare to sign the Paris Agreement later this week on Earth Day (April 22), an international alliance of grassroots and Indigenous leaders are calling the historic agreement “dangerous distraction.”
“The Paris Climate agreement doesn’t even mention fossil fuels, the clearest cause of climate change,” declared Cindy Wiesner of Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (USA) .
According to her, the agreement is a dangerous distraction that leaves common sense, science, human rights and the rights of communities on the frontlines of climate change on the negotiating table.
“While world leaders are finally taking action they are heading down the wrong path. Frontline communities and Indigenous Peoples have been calling for a clear path to solve our climate crisis. We can end the privatization of nature, we can stop the use of dirty fossil fuels and we can stop climate change. We know this because we are on the front lines of climate change, we see it, we know it, we live it. The world will not find solutions to climate change without us, Wiesner added”
To Tom Goldtooth, of the Indigenous Environmental Network (North America) who started attending the UN climate meetings in 1999 and has over the last 17 years witnessed corporate, Wall Street and other financial influence gut any real solutions coming out of the negotiations, the Paris Agreement goal of stopping global temperature rise by 1.5 degrees C is not real because the pledges each country is making will allow emission levels that will increase global temperature 3 – 4 degrees.
Goldtooth believes that this will be catastrophic to the ecosystem of the world, including the ice culture of the Indigenous Peoples of the Arctic. The Paris agreement will result in the cooking of the planet. “We, Indigenous Peoples, are the red line against climate change. We can not be idle, we have never been idle. Indigenous voices are rising up globally to demand climate justice for humanity — for human rights and the rights of Mother Earth,” Goldtooth added.
Director of the Health of Mother earth Foundation, Nnimmo Bassey says the Paris Agreement locks in fossil fuels and, to underscore corporate capture of the negotiations, the word, fossil, is not as much as mentioned in the document.
“It is shocking that although the burning of fossil fuels is known to be a major contributor to global warming, climate negotiations engage in platitudes rather than going to the core of the problem. Scientists tell us that burning of fossil fuels would have to end by 2030 if there would be a chance of keeping temperature increase to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. The signal we get from the silence on the fossils factor is that oil and coal companies can continue to extract profit while burning the planet,” Bassey said.
No going back on Paris Agreement signing
Meanwhile, arrangements for the signing of the Paris Agreement at a high-level event in New York are in top gear. The United Nations and its constituent bodies are of the view that the Paris Agreement is the only path to saving the planet from catastrophic climate crises.
