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Climate Justice Workshop: Organising for effective community action on climate change  
Source: Vicente García-Delgado, CIVICUS´ UN Representative and Global Youth Action Network

Release Date: 13 June 2008 - e-CIVICUS 392

Climate change is already affecting every corner of the world, every eco-system and every community, from Los Angeles to the Carteret Islands and from Reijkiavik to Ushuaia; but its effects are uneven, and the capacity of communities to adapt differs widely. For example, the wealthy North has the financial and technological resources to counter the worst effects of rising sea levels with costly engineering projects such as sea walls, but large swaths of the predominantly poor South lack the capacity to minimize the effects of increasingly destructive climate impacts.  

Climate change is not the consequence of a fortuitous cause: it is not just a natural disaster like an earthquake or a tsunami. Climate change is the result of a 250-year process of industrial growth which first ignored, and then dismissed the ecological costs inherent to such process. The resulting accumulation of wealth in the rich North has come at the expense of the Commons both in terms of depletion of natural resources and the devastation of our environment.  

Ironically, poor communities in developing and less-developed countries are  most vulnerable to climate change and least able to minimise its impacts. It is only fitting that the countries that caused the current climate crisis and benefited disproportionably from market globalisation should assist these vulnerable communities to cope. Indeed, rich countries have a legal obligation to do so under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).  

Our workshop and its 18-month follow-up process (leading up to the important climate change negotiations to be held in Copenhagen in December 2009,) aim to facilitate the development of community-based adaptation initiatives, capacity-building and best practices, networking and information dissemination, identifying resources, education and coalition-building. The project further aims to promote climate change advocacy in connection with the ongoing UNFCCC negotiations in three distinct respects: demanding Just and Equitable outcomes on climate change adaptation assistance for vulnerable communities; demanding immediate climate change adaptation assistance, and demanding immediate climate change mitigation implementation by developed countries, so as to minimize the degree of climate change impacts on vulnerable communities, thus reducing the mounting human and financial costs of adaptation.  

The workshop and its follow-up process are mostly a Youth-led project, but the project is intended to be fully intergenerational, ethnically and geographically diverse, and gender balanced. All sectors of civil society, governments and business are encouraged to participate.  

Mindful that CIVICUS is a generic civil society movement where members work on diverse sectorial areas, the workshop will ensure maximum participation and engagement by reaching out to civil society communities that are not necessarily focused on climate change. In the same spirit, with a view to assure inclusiveness and in order to reach out to the widest possible range of people in both the global South and the North, the workshop organizers, and presenters shall remain attentive to differences in cultural attitudes and geographic perspectives on climate change.

Please join us at: http://projects.takingitglobal.org/climatejustice .

Organisers/Main Sponsors: CIVICUS UN and Global Youth Action Network

Co-sponsors:                          African Youth Initiative on Climate Change

                                             First Peoples Movement

                                             Earth Charter Youth Initiative

Supporters:                            Plataforma Federal de Juventudes Argentinas

                                             Organización Argentina de Juventud pro NNUU

Please send your comments to CIVICUSUN@aol.com or editor@civicus.org

Below you will find all previous columns of Vicente García-Delgado, CIVICUS UN Representative: 

• GCAP, CIVICUS, ATD Fourth World address UN meeting on the MDGs

• Rebuttal to “Climate change is not as big a problem” article appearing on last week’s e-CIVICUS 384

• The global food crisis: Are the rich abandoning the poor?

• Climate Justice: Fighting climate adaptation apartheid

• Taking into account the full range of consequences --UN DPI/NGO COnference calls to action on Climate Change

• NGO Accountability: One size does not fit all

• Global Challenges call for Globalising Democracy

• October 24, UN Day-Cause for celebration; reasons for concern

• Digital Divide or Digital Solidarity: Bridging the gap between the information-rich and the information-starved

• The UN: Limping along

• The last thing the world needs: Dismantling the UN

• The world needs a more democratic United Nations

• UN Management Reform hits a nerve: roadblock or power grab?

• A UN Secretary-General for “We the Peoples”: Civil society calls for a more democratic selection process

• Charting new ways of participation: Is it time for a Parliamentary Assembly at the UN?

• Changing the tone: General Assembly President Jan Eliasson reaches out to Civil Society

• Changing the tone: General Assembly President Jan Eliasson reaches out to Civil Society

• Argentina: Thriving without the IMF

• The Big Letdown: UN Summit shortchanges the poor

• The World Summit : UN Reform will mean little unless poverty eradication tops the agenda

• Millions roar but the G8 whispers - Let the Millennium+5 Summit make up the difference

• “Global Justice - Northern citizens have a special responsibility to make it happen”

• Letting the United Nations be all that it can

• “Appointment with History: The world looks up to John Bolton to help achieve the MDGs”

• “We are rolling!: Civil society’s call for poverty eradication impacts the World Economic Forum and the Group of Seven”

• No more excuses!: The Tsunami must not be allowed to wash away the Millennium Development Goals

• A Call To Action 2005: Global Civil Society mobilizes to demand an end to poverty and the fulfilment of the Millennium Development Goals

• TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT: Should civil society and the Global Compact live under the same UN roof?

• The UN Global Compact: A big red herring disguised in UN blue?

• Happening now: A global revolution of consciousness

• Lasting security for all: Shifting from state security to security of the people

• The UN – Permanently relevant or temporarily relevant?