An agreement to face the “unknown territory”

By Pablo Solon

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report on The State of the Climate 2023 notes that the last year “was the warmest year in the 174-year observational record.” This text maintains that we were only a few hundredths away from exceeding the increase in the planet’s temperature by 1.5°C. The data provided by the WMO report on the warming of the oceans, the melting of glaciers and the rise in sea levels announce that a qualitative leap is taking place in the climate crisis. The United Nations, echoing the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, states: “The global average temperature in July 2023 was the highest ever recorded in at least 120,000 years.” Gavin Schmidt, NASA’s top authority, writes: “Climate models cannot explain the gigantic 2023 heat anomaly. We may be in uncharted territory .”

The evolution of crises in the Earth system is advancing in leaps and bounds. Last year the Pan-Amazon Social Forum (FOSPA), the Pan-Amazon Ecclesial Network (REPAM) and the World Assembly of the Amazon (AMA) together with several indigenous, peasant, women’s and social organizations delivered to the Summit of Presidents of the Amazon, gathered in Belém do Pará, Brazil, a set of proposals to avoid the point of no return of the Amazon . The presidents adopted a declaration that recognizes the danger of the point of no return in the Amazon and announced mechanisms for social participation, but they did not adopt urgent measures, with clear commitments, to stop deforestation, illegal gold mining, oil extraction, loss of biodiversity, and the recognition of indigenous and Afro-descendant territories. Just months after this Summit, the Amazon began to suffer extreme heat, with uncontrolled fires, rivers and reservoirs without water that left entire regions without electricity, while in other places rivers were seen overflowing due to the rains that devastated populations, claiming human lives.

The point of no return of the Amazon and the unknown territory that the Earth system is entering are two processes that feed on each other. The lack of action on one side fuels the crisis on the other and vice versa. From the XI FOSPA to be held in Bolivia from June 12 to 15, we must deepen our proposals to face the point of no return of the Amazon and at the same time promote actions to confront the collapse of the global climate system.

The Paris Agreement is no longer the answer to tackling climate “uncharted territory.” Nationally Determined Contributions are too weak to address the acceleration of the climate crisis. We are at a moment where we require a new type of agreement that confronts the structural causes of climate change. An agreement that is not limited to talking about greenhouse gas emissions, but that clearly establishes actions to get out of fossil fuels, stop deforestation in its tracks, dismantle the agribusiness model and combat the unsustainable consumption model, among other measures. . 

More than 4 billion tons of oil are extracted every year, a third of which comes from the United States, Saudi Arabia and Russia. We require a true climate agreement that sets annual goals for reducing the extraction and consumption of oil, coal and gas. Likewise, it is essential to have precise commitments to reduce deforestation and forest degradation for each country and region. It is not possible to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to quantify greenhouse gas emissions from forests in order to generate carbon markets for the sale of permits to continue polluting. The time of making money from climate flexibility mechanisms must end.

The new agreement we need must address both the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis. The division that exists between the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) responds to the logic of diplomacy rather than the reality of Nature’s processes. We require a comprehensive agreement that does not parcel out the crisis of the Earth system and even less reduces it to a single factor such as greenhouse gas emissions.

We need a non-anthropocentric agreement that is not subject to the interests of the rulers in power. An agreement that assumes Nature as a subject and not as an object. An agreement based on the recognition of the Rights of Nature to restore the balance of the vital cycles of planet Earth.

A comprehensive climate and biodiversity agreement that establishes measures to confront militarism, neo-fascism, racism, patriarchal violence and hunger that spreads around the world. A solution to the planet’s ecological crisis is impossible if we do not stop the escalation of arms and war that is spreading like a cancer. It is absolutely inadmissible that the main powers fail to fulfill their promises of financing for climate and biodiversity when they allocate a figure twenty times larger for their military budgets. The agreement we need must clearly speak out against military invasions of Gaza and Ukraine. Also, this new agreement that we need must strengthen the fight against neo-fascist movements that spread climate change denialism and undermine social rights, particularly those of women. Peace, democracy and justice are essential to confront the “unknown territory” of the planet and the point of no return of the Amazon.

We need to build a process for action that is based on territorial solutions such as those assumed by Ecuador in the Yasuní referendum for the withdrawal of all oil facilities that are in said block. The fate of climate change depends on the strengthening and propagation of these actions of territorial self-management at the level of hydrocarbons, food sovereignty, forests, rivers, cities and all spaces of society.

The XI FOSPA in Bolivia this June 2024 has the challenge of laying the foundations for this collective construction for this new pact for life on Earth from the perspective of the Amazon. The Meeting of the Mobilization of Peoples for the Earth and Climate, which will take place immediately after the XI FOSPA, will be key not only to provide a global dimension, but to deepen the proposals and actions against wars, neo-fascism, and the erosion of justice at different levels.

Between the XI FOSPA and the COP 30 in Belém do Pará Brazil in November 2025, we must build a roadmap of territorial struggles like those of Yasuní in Ecuador that calls us to the broadest solidarity to make the withdrawal of oil activities a reality and begin the phase of reparation to Nature and the affected peoples; territorial struggles for the demarcation and titling of indigenous territories; territorial struggles against illegal gold and mercury mining; territorial fights to defend and expand protected areas; territorial struggles for food sovereignty, the defense of water and recognizing the rights of rivers, lakes and aquatic ecosystems.

The COP16 on Biodiversity in Colombia in October 2024 will be another key moment to advance this collective construction that goes beyond the texts of the negotiations and focuses on proposals for action and the collective construction of a new comprehensive agreement. I do not detract from the discussion of diplomatic texts, I consider that we can and should use some paragraphs; But, after two decades of intergovernmental negotiations, I am absolutely convinced that social, women’s, youth, academic and other movements cannot consume our energies in these processes, much less feed false expectations.

We must take advantage of the G20 in Brazil in November 2024 and many other regional and international meetings to think beyond the straightjacket of these meetings. Our perspective must be not only to build a new agreement from the People and for Nature to be adopted in Belém do Pará, Brazil, but to advance an action plan for its implementation.

COP 30 should be remembered not so much for the empty declarations to which we are accustomed, but for the determination of the people who have said enough of impostures and have begun to walk the path of a pact for life on Earth.