SOCIAL AND CLIMATE CRISIS: HOW BAD IS IT?

The world is caught in multiple and intersecting crises brought about by a world economy in recession, the pandemic, and climate change. 

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The climate crisis continues to intensify. Scientists and climate policy experts warn that without drastic moves to eliminate carbon pollution the planet will warm to 1.5° Celsius in the next two decades, resulting in long-lasting and irreversible impacts: rising seas displacing tens of millions of people, extreme flooding water shortages, extinction of species, ecosystems collapse, food insecurity, and loss of human lives. 

Despite the urgency, climate ambitions of global leaders remain low. Developed countries are not meeting their climate commitments. Carbon emissions continue to rise at a significantly alarming pace. While coal use has declined in the global North, they continue funding the construction of coal and other fossil fuel plants in developing countries, further increasing the latter’s dependence on these dirty energy sources.

Developed countries have not delivered on their promise of providing the needed finance to help people in the developing countries adapt to climate change. On the other hand, more funds are going towards reforestation projects and so-called “clean energy” solutions such as dams, geothermal, biomass, and hydropower that displace local communities and indigenous peoples and violate human rights. Climate finance is also coming more in the form of loans, than grants jeopardising the economic sustainability and, consequently, the capacity of developing countries to adapt to climate change. The demand of developing countries for reparations for loss and damage due to slow onset and extreme weather events remain unheeded.

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Market-based alternatives such as carbon trading and offsets are being pushed by corporations and governmental bodies so that developed countries can evade their historical responsibility while passing on the burden of mitigating carbon emissions to developing countries. The promise of renewable and sustainable energy is being hijacked by traditional big business interests, and some of the solutions may potentially engender global resource grabbing and exploitation.

Meanwhile, COVID-19 threatens to further deepen pre-existing problems of corporatized development, marginalization of people in the development process, socio-economic inequalities, and the climate crisis. Economic recovery strategies dubbed as the “new normal” are increasingly unfolding to be the same policies that have led to the monopolization of natural resources, privatization of social wealth, and rising temperatures. In many instances, important legislations and regulations to protect communities and the environment are being reversed. 

The crisis is only further aggravated with the erosion of peoples’ democratic rights such as their right to access to information, participation in the development process, their right to organize, and their right to mobilize. Official negotiations are happening virtually but without the meaningful participation of the civil society. Outside official spaces, repression is rampant and harassment, imprisonment, and killing of environmental, land, and rights defenders continue.