As activists lambast the annual climate summit for failing to produce substantive change, they’re envisioning an alternative convention that platforms people rather than powerful governments and industry.
By Yessenia Funes
Atmos
In 2017, A.J. Hudson was considering whether to attend that year’s annual U.N. climate negotiations in Bonn, Germany. At the time, he was a student at the Yale School of the Environment, which would cover most travel costs for COP23. The university couldn’t, however, secure badges for students to actually access the formal negotiation spaces as observers or participators. That responsibility remained with the students themselves.
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Since 2009, the leading environmental coalition Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJA) has invested resources to ensure its values of resistance and reciprocity have a presence at these high-stakes meetings just about every year. Back then, they were exposing the harms of carbon credit plans. These days, they’re calling out the lies of carbon removal technologies.
“We know that as difficult as the conditions are in the UNFCCC, that is where climate policy is being shaped at a global level,” said Jaron Browne, organizing director for the alliance. “If we are not there, it is just being shaped without us.”
This year, the organization isn’t attending the summit—a decision staff do not take lightly—to stand in solidarity with Palestinian environmentalists calling on allies to boycott due to the event’s “greenwashing of genocide in Gaza,” as the group described online. This isn’t the first COP to draw such scrutiny. In Egypt last year, many activists called on their peers to skip attending due to the country’s human rights violations of LGBTQIA+ communities. However, activists are similarly critical whenever the conference takes place in developed nations where fewer human rights violations occur but are logistically difficult and costly to attend. The event’s accessibility to those most vulnerable to climate change impacts has been a recurring concern throughout recent years. Meanwhile, the oil and gas industry gets to set the agenda.
And that’s exactly why groups like GGJA need to be at COP. The demonstrations they plan outside the event—and sometimes even inside—help expose the facade, Browne said. “The movement’s role is critical,” he said.