THE 2021 UN Climate Summit, Cop26, is a crucial opportunity for world leaders to meaningfully commit to tackling the climate crisis. 

The decisions made will decide the fate of billions: who is to be sacrificed, who will escape and who will make a profit.

Preventing runaway catastrophic climate breakdown, which would leave many struggling to survive, requires global temperature rises to be capped at 1.5°C. 

For decades, the rich global North countries most responsible for causing the climate crisis have amassed huge wealth from exploiting people and our natural resources, while refusing to do their fair share to cut their emissions. 

Rich governments are now seeking to shift the burden to act onto poorer global South countries; all while failing to meet their own promises on climate finance and continuing to pollute and exploit the planet’s resources — gambling our future on risky and unproven technologies. 

This approach risks turning entire ecosystems, communities and cities into sacrifice zones. 

War on Want is campaigning — at the UN Climate Summit Cop26 and beyond — for a Global Green New Deal to deliver climate justice, by transforming our economies to protect both people and the planet. 

This transformation must uproot the systems of exploitation and oppression which keep the majority of the world’s population in poverty, while lining the pockets of corporates and rich shareholders. 

We need a just transition that protects both workers and the environment, puts ownership of our energy and food systems into the hands of people, and moves away from a politics of profit and competition, to one of solidarity and co-operation.

As the host of Cop26, the UK government has said that progress on “coal, cars, cash and trees” will be the yardstick to judge the success of the climate summit. 

Yet Britain is failing to meet its own weak targets for cutting pollution, refusing to put ambitious climate plans in place, continuing to expand fossil fuel use, and enacting destructive policies which protect the interests of big business and the City of London. 

What we are seeing is a PR offensive, as the British government aims to appear as a world leader post-Brexit by positioning Cop26 as a success, regardless of the outcome of the talks. 

However, Cop26 has been labelled the whitest, most privileged, and least accessible Cop climate summit yet. Delegates from global South countries most affected by the climate crisis, as well as civil society observers, have effectively been prevented from attending by the British government’s decision to enforce a Covid-19 vaccine “apartheid,” and by complex visa requirements and costs for entry. 

At the same time, fossil fuel industries have sent a larger number of representatives to the summit than any single country. 

And the British government’s poor planning and mismanagement has left many delegates representing those most impacted by the climate crisis locked out of the very negotiations that are determining their future, amid chaotic queues and severe capacity issues. 

Inside the talks, the British government is attempting to corral countries into following its lead of net-zero emissions by 2050. 

While experts have long warned that 2050 is too late a target date for rich countries to cut their emissions, net-zero targets also do nothing to shift reliance on fossil fuels. 

Net zero relies on unproven and risky technologies and the offsetting of carbon released into the atmosphere, rather than keeping fossil fuels in the ground, and will not limit global heating to 1.5°C. 

Net-zero schemes effectively greenwash a business-as-usual approach, enabling the countries and corporations most responsible for causing the climate crisis to continue to pollute and evade responsibility of their fair share of effort and climate financing. 

To tackle the urgency of the climate crisis, Cop26 must commit countries, at the minimum, to: 

• 1.5°C and real zero targets. Richer global North countries must do their fair share of effort and commit to real zero targets by 2030, with real zero targets for developing countries by 2050.

• Delivering on the previous promises of $100 billion in climate finance, and more. Rich countries must commit to an ambitious public finance goal based on the needs of those facing climate breakdown. The cost of addressing the climate crisis is already in excess of $1 trillion annually.   

• A global goal on adaptation that supports poorer countries with the planning and implementation necessary to adapt their economies and societies to the changing climate, along with financial and technological support.

• Reparations for climate damages. Richer countries must agree to provide additional public finance in compensation to global South countries bearing the brunt of loss and damage from climate breakdown, which they have done the least to cause, with lives, livelihoods and even countries at risk of becoming increasingly uninhabitable.

• Invest in real decarbonisation solutions. Countries must abandon the false solutions of carbon offsetting and carbon markets, and instead commit to non-profit co-operative approaches to advance the real solutions needed.

In reality, for Cop26 to succeed, countries must put people and the planet before profit by committing to a Global Green New Deal that meets the urgent need to act, through a global framework of co-operation and solidarity. 

That means a justice transition that uproots the systems of injustice and oppression which have led to the climate crisis. 

Unless justice for the global South is brought to the heart of the Cop26 talks, policies and actions will fall far short of those needed to tackle the climate crisis. Cop26 will have resulted in the same disregard for those whose lives and livelihoods are most at risk.

Click here for more information about War on Want and the Global Green New Deal.