Climate justice is a complex term, and there is a discussion paper on what climate justice means in European context, here.
Communities in the Global South as well as low-income communities in the industrialised North have borne the toxic burden of this fossil fuel extraction, transportation and production. Now these communities are facing the worst impacts of climate change – from food shortages to the inundation of whole island nations.
Inside the global climate negotiations, rich industrialised countries have put unjustifiable pressure on Southern governments to commit to emissions reductions. At the same time, they have refused to live up to their own legal and moral obligations to radically cut emissions and support developing countries’ efforts to reduce emissions and adapt to climate impacts.
Climate Justice Now! will work to expose the false solutions to the climate crisis promoted by these governments, alongside financial institutions and multinational corporations – such as trade liberalisation, privatisation, forest carbon markets, agrofuels and carbon offsetting.
We will take our struggle forward not just in climate talks, but on the ground and in the streets, to promote genuine solutions that include:
Leaving fossil fuels in the ground and investing instead in appropriate energy- efficiency and safe, clean and community-led renewable energy
Radically reducing wasteful consumption, first and foremost in the North, but also by Southern elites.
Huge financial transfers from North to South, based on the repayment of climate debts and subject to democratic control. The costs of adaptation and mitigation should be paid for by redirecting military budgets, innovative taxes and debt cancellation.
Rights-based resource conservation that enforces Indigenous land rights and promotes peoples’ sovereignty over energy, forests, land and water.
Sustainable family farming and fishing and peoples’ food sovereignty. We are committed to building a diverse movement locally and globally for a better world.
The Ecotopia Biketour will try its best to live these principles, and we hope to inspire others to make lifestyle and systemic changes.
Climate Justice Now!
Principles taken from the Climate Justice Now! website.
BT2010 in the Netherlands
The 23rd of August is the only full day that Biketour will cross through the region of Southern Limburg, in the Netherlands. There are two campaigns in the region that we’d like to mark out and connect with an activity this day:
– planned 4-lane highway «Buitenring Parkstad»
Toine from Milieufederatie Limburg (federation of about a 100 enviromental groups in Limburg) will hold a presentation on the destructive effects on nature and people if such a highway is to be build, and together with other regional cyclists we’ll demonstrate against it.
– NATO AWACS airbase of Geilenkirchen
STOP AWACS, a local civil group from the dutch neighbors of the military airport of Geilenkirchen is fighting against the noise disturbance, general existance of, and ever upcoming plans by the NATO AWACS base at Geilenkirchen. In 2005 they got support by environmental activists from Groen Front, whose lock-ons and resistance-in-trees stopped the cut down of 2/3rds of Schinveld forest.
STOP AWACS will give a presentation about the situation and resistance.