7 November 2016
A comprehensive article compiled by members of the Young FoEE Climate Justice working group to mark the start of the UN Climate Talks in Marrakech - outlining our views on the need for ambitious action on climate change to avoid causing further instability and injustice.
COP 22 : What will climate justice mean in Marrakech ?
Today opens the 22nd session of the UN climate change conferences, the COP 22. The Paris Agreement was signed last year, and while the Kyoto Protocol took close to ten years to enter into force, this text took less than a year to do so. Many hail this as a grand victory and a sign that things are on the move. However, as we pointed out in 2015, the point of these conferences should be reaching an adequate agreement, not just an agreement itself — and we know the treaty is nowhere near ambitious enough. National commitments are not binding, and they lead us to at least a 3.4°C warmer world. Last week, the UNEP published a report on such a scenario, and the picture has been described as an “apocalyptic scenario”. The UNEP hopes this report will serve as a wake-up call, however the alarm has been ringing for decades. We are currently at +1°C above pre-industrial levels and are witnessing extreme weather events, rising sea levels and lire la suite