Our Filipino colleague writes:
Before leaving for Peru, I hoped I’d see progress and unity at COP – especially given Lima’s key role on the road to Paris. So far I’ve been disappointed, and to add insult to injury another typhoon is lashing through my birth country.
As I write, a million people are living in evacuation centres praying their houses and sources of income are not affected as badly as last year. While we don’t yet know the extent of the devastation, we do know we will be counting bodies once again.
Year after year, devastating typhoons have slammed the Philippines during these negotiations. And year after year, negotiators express their sympathy and condolences – while bringing us ever closer to an unjust deal that will guarantee more extreme weather events.
And there is another perverse theme at these climate negotiations: the continued presence and impact of the fossil fuel lobby. The WHO does not allow big tobacco to even attend their meetings, yet the UNFCCC is saturated with fossil fuel
involvement. As a Filipino, this is outrageous and insulting. We pay the price for their continued influence in this process.
But as we continue to pay, we refuse to act as a poster child for devastation any longer. We are not drowning.
We are fighting.
We do not need sympathy – we need justice and solidarity. We need action now. We need an urgent pathway to a just and ambitious climate deal.
Let us not wait until it’s too late.
Civil society invites all COP participants to gather for a minute of silence in solidarity with people impacted by climate change: 9:30 am in front of zone C.
